Slashdot Mirror
Two New Male Birth Control Chemicals In Advanced Stages
BarbaraHudson writes Researchers at the University of Kansas and Harvard are working to give men more choices for avoiding unwanted pregnancies. From the article: "H2-gamendazole keeps sperm from maturing. The unfinished sperm fragments are then reabsorbed into the testis, never ending up in the semen. 'If there's no sperm, the egg's not going to get fertilized,' says Joseph Tash, a reproductive biologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Almost two years ago, the FDA reviewed the compound, and now the agency wants Tash to investigate if the compound remains in the semen and whether that would harm a woman if it ends up in the vagina. Jay Bradner, working with other anti-cancer researchers at Harvard, discovered that the JQ1 molecule blocked a bromodomain in cancer cells, causing them to forget how to be cancer. One side effect is that JQ1 also obstructed a testicle-specific bromodomain called BRDT, making the sex cells that would otherwise produce sperm non-functional — mice treated with JQ1 can hump with abandon yet generate zero mouselings. Researchers are looking for a version of the molecule that works on the testicle protein only, to avoid any weird side effects."
It would be awesome if this could be part of a men's liberation movement, like how women were liberated in the 60s when the pill became available. Not just contraception, a change in the way men look at themselves.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is a murder of potentially trillions of human beings and as such an obvious affront to god!
would be worth a condom
Birth control is a womens issue. I won't be putting any unknown chemicals into my body for HER sake. This sounds like "science by social justice warriors".
TFA: [...] discovered that the JQ1 molecule blocked a bromodomain in cancer cells, causing them to forget how to be cancer. [...] Researchers are looking for a version of the molecule that works on the testicle protein only, to avoid any weird side effects
Since when slowing down cancer is a "weird side effect"? :D
This could really help men everywhere, there are a ton of options for women but very few for men. I can only hope when the day comes that it's viewed as a positive direction from all rights groups. Doubtful, but one can dream.
"anti-cancer researchers at Harvard, discovered that the JQ1 molecule blocked a bromodomain in cancer cells, causing them to forget how to be cancer."
"Researchers are looking for a version of the molecule that works on the testicle protein only, to avoid any weird side effects."
Umm... can I please have the side-effects, if the side effects are, you know, NOT GETTING CANCER?
You just watch. The amount of false rape claims will skyrocket for a while when this hits the public, from the kind of women who try to "accidentally" get knocked up to ensnare men.
"mmm yes it was so good. :) No no, don't worry about forgetting to pull out, I'll just flush myself out/I'm on the pill/it's not the right time of the month anyway/etc. [later] (Why the fuck is it always negative? Ugh... tomorrow for sure) [later] (Negative again?!) We need to talk. [one explanation later] WHADDAYA MEAN MALE BIRTH CONTROL?! SHENANIGANS! RAPE! RAAAAPE!!! POLICE HELP, HE RAPED ME!!!!!!!!!"
Or the stuff will just get hung up in FDA approval for a while, long after all the bugs have been worked out.
How else are they going to keep a man if they can't trap him by 'forgetting' to take their pill? I personally view this as a boon for men who until now, other than condoms, have only had a mostly irreversible surgical procedure to ensure they don't get trapped by some evil wench into a lifetime of torture. Bravo.
They already have a male contraceptive. It's called Slashdot.
Why don't all you guys out there try it first. In the meantime time I may just go for the vasectomy.
This is news, but not with useful content for nerds..... ;-/
The number of responses here along the lines of "women always trick men into marriage by getting pregnant" or "birth control is a woman's responsibility" make me sad for my gender. I can't be the only man on Slashdot who 1) respects women (my wife and I both manage our portions of birth control together - I would never suggest that's HER job and not for me to be bothered with), 2) sees fatherhood as a positive outcome - not something that is only entered into via trickery, and 3) would like to see new birth control methods available on the market (whether or not this one would work for my wife and I aside, the more options the better). Can I?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Just plain-old heat
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."
##
"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm000...
##
"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." - Mel Gibson (from an interview)
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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director
##
"The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing - for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy - so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it. As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president - every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as "plausible denial." The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so."
- Victor Marchetti, Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History
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George Carlin:
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city h
Really. The best way to avoid 'accidental' father hood is _________? If this wasn't slashdot, you'd get one guess.
In order to really be on par with women, men need a birth control pill that they can take after waking up in bed with whoever they drunkenly hooked up with the night before.
To serve its purpose, it doesn't have to prevent the pregnancy, it just needs to change the man's blood type.
i'm JQ'ed!
These sound great, but also like you'd have to constantly be taking some pill.
I'm still waiting for this thing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_inhibition_of_sperm_under_guidance
In today's world, most people are financially stable and ready to provide for a child long after their reproductive prime. That's a problem.
Further, people are at their most hormonally-driven to breed before it is even legal, let alone wise. That's a problem too.
The real melee, however, is during and especially right after college. In that dating pool, there exist a lot of men who are overjoyed that sex is legal for them now, but who still have a good decade of youthful playfulness ahead of them before they will be able or interested in settling down. In that same pool you have plenty of women who want to have kids and need to find a provider. So, there *are* plenty of women trying to rope men into financial obligations, and men trying to get what they want and then sneak out the window.
You aren't the *only* person who approaches relationships in a mature and level-headed way, but you don't seem to be in this demographic, either.
Sounds better than the method studied in 2013- having gold nano-rods injected into the testes and only lasting a few months. http://www.rsc.org/chemistrywo...
And STDs will skyrocket. There is pretty much no reason you should ever have unprotected sex if you do not want to father a child. Imagine if this was available a generation ago, 80% of the population would of died along side all of those homosexuals. I might imagine that we have STDs slightly more under control now and the death rate won't skyrocket quite that much, but still...
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
If the sperm is destroyed, is there anything left that contains DNA in the semen?
If not that this could be a big boon to rapists who no longer have to worry about leaving their DNA behind.
you insensitive clod.
Click Bait.
This sounds like a big improvement over the original male birth control pill. That one was 3 inches in diameter. How did it work? Well, you put it in your shoe, and it makes you limp.
Injection of a solution of the JQ1 molecule to bind to a pocket of BRDT necessary for chromatin remodeling, which gives the proteins that regulate how genes act access to the genetic material.
Citation: Matzuk, Martin M.; McKeown, Michael R.; Filippakopoulos, Panagis; Li, Qinglei; Ma, Lang; Agno, Julio E.; Lemieux, Madeleine E.; Picaud, Sarah; Yu, Richard N.; Qi, Jun; Knapp, Stefan; Bradner, James E. (2012-08-17). "Small-Molecule Inhibition of BRDT for Male Contraception". Cell 150 (4): 673–684.
doi:10.1016/j.cell.2012.06.045
PMC 3420011 PMID 22901802.
Injection of a solution of the JQ1 molecule to bind to a pocket of BRDT necessary for chromatin remodeling, which gives the proteins that regulate how genes act access to the genetic material.
Citation: Matzuk, Martin M.; McKeown, Michael R.; Filippakopoulos, Panagis; Li, Qinglei; Ma, Lang; Agno, Julio E.; Lemieux, Madeleine E.; Picaud, Sarah; Yu, Richard N.; Qi, Jun; Knapp, Stefan; Bradner, James E. (2012-08-17). "Small-Molecule Inhibition of BRDT for Male Contraception". Cell 150 (4): 673–684.
doi:10.1016/j.cell.2012.06.045
PMC 3420011 PMID 22901802.
Maybe you could have kept your pants zipped.
why don't we reserve our respect for individuals of whatever gender who demonstrate respectable behavior?
No. It is called D&D but some say it is only a placebo.
Thank you. This seems to be the relevant information that needs to have it's assumptions checked for us to generalize:
Of course, data regarding the system of interest would be superior. That may be difficult to gather cheaply/ethically though.
I live in America. And here in America, the women are so fat & ugly, we manly men don’t need to be concerned with pregnancy, because the rolls of fat get in the way.
Drop some drugs for prostate goodness and forget about that hair loss.
Great, just what we need. More methods to decrease birth rates in an already rapidly aging Europe.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
D&D players can have children..., they just have a higher likelihood of being half-elven.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Real question...Would any woman believe a man who said, "Don't worry I took care of it."
...dropping this (by drone of course) into the water supplies of the Middle East? Just curious.
While it is nice to see continued research along these avenues, I feel that methodology that require us to alter internal, chemical bodily functions via some sort are going to have pretty considerable side effects. Even after more than a half-century of research, we've still not been able to create female chemical/hormonal birth control that doesn't have significant side effects and trade offs. While many women put up with the side effects, which can range from lack of libido, depression, weight gain, acne, mood swings, to rarely more serious cardiovascular issues and other dangers, it is far from a simple choice. Best outcomes often require a knowledgeable and caring physician to tweak and find out what particular product works best for a given woman's individual chemistry.
Keep in mind that all of these issues come from more or less, attempting to safely replicate a very natural part of a woman's reproductive cycle: pregnancy. Men have no such natural state of post-pubescent infertility, which makes it even more difficult to find a solution for for male birth control that comes in a pill. Thus, lot of attempts that seem promising end up failing thanks to the domino effect of messing with hormones that do more than one thing. As we become more technologically advanced the possibility of compiling a "custom" compound with less interaction outside the desired sphere is more likely, but as the article mentions this is still a long, long way from being deemed safe and effective in humans, especially over the long term. However, there is a much better male birth control solution that is going through trials in the US and Europe: VasalGel
VasalGel is a trade name for a well known process that has gone through more than 20 years of human trials in India: RISUG. RISUG is basically a significantly upgraded, reversible vasectomy. The process begins by injecting an inexpensive, safe polymer into the vas deferens (the same tubes cut/blocked in the case of male sterilization) . This polymer occludes, but does not totally block the flow of sperm, which is a major improvement as it avoids the side effects found in both "open" (ie sperm dripping into surrounding tissues, causing sperm granulomas and training the immune system to attack said sperm, a possible cause of failed vasectomy reversal) and "closed" (ie epididimitis, "blowout", reduced overall production and more) vasectomies. As the sperm pass through they touch the polymer which in essence denatures them, robbing them of the chemical charge they need for viability. Those that aren't immediately destroyed still lose their viability to penetrate the ovum and fertilize, breaking down long before All sperm fragments are reabsorbed by the body and it doesn't seem to limit quality or quantity of future sperm production. There are long human trials in India, where men had the same RISUG polymer placed for in excess of a decade without any issues and with continued effectiveness! Furthermore, the process is safely reversible over 98% of the time. Another injection, this time of a a complimentary safe agent, dissolves the polymer and returns the vas deferns to pristine condition, allowing reproduction.
This method allows men to take control of their reproduction in a safe, long term, convenient way that I think will be very alluring to many. By putting effort into such a localized effect, it means there is unlikely to be the sort of side effects that can happen when you're trying to mess with hormones, attach things to certain receptors and more. The Indian trials have been successful indeed and similar methods have been investigated in other nations. So why don't we have this procedure available to us now? Well, the answer as you might expect: Money. It isn't exactly profitable to provide a man one injection that will prevent pregnancy every 10 years. Consider that in the US, female IUDs that are much more comfortable, newer, and have lesser side effects aren't available for a similar reason: despite their existen
but I know lots and lots of guys who's girlfriend somehow became pregnant while on a pill that's 99.9% effective.
As for fatherhood: 40 years of declining wages have made fatherhood a tough sell. I grew up around and still know a pretty rough crowd. If you don't make much money and probably never will fatherhood doesn't end well. It's why birth rates in Japan keep falling. Nobody's paying us enough to raise a family...
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Its not birth control but it causes retrograde ejaculation (no semen makes it out, diverted to bladder instead)
Sex still feels good without the mess. No money shot , no rug rats
Yep.
Once you blow your load in her, its not your choice anymore, but it's your responsibility.
Don't like the idea of personal responsibility, keep it in your pants. You give her your load, you give her the choice as well: 100%. And yes, you are accountable even if you aren't married. So man up and deal with it. Want to get laid without the risk, find one of your buddies and exchange favors; because you aren't going to get him pregnant.
You want to bang chicks, you take the risks.
Liberatards talk about financial responsibility, but are really fucking pussies about it.
...Forgot I was on the internet. Stay classy, guys. And gals. Everyone who posted an opinion, really.
Honestly, you're a dumbass.
"Always"? Which comments would those be? In any case, some men are tricked into being fathers, or think they are fathers. The chances of that happening are small, but the consequences (the next 20 years of your life) are large.
How about respecting people?
Women have a plethora of BC options open to them - various IUD's, the pill, diaphragms. None of which (well, occasionally diaphragms) interfere with her pleasure during sex. Condoms do interfere for men, and most American men are already missing half their nerves to begin with, when their genitals were cut without their consent as infants.
Now we'll have male birth control chems going into our water supply, soon we wont be able to reproduce
It's just a tool.
It's how one sees it and uses it that liberates or enslaves.
One man's magical no-baby pill is another man's realization that no one want's his genetic material, only his sexual favors.
But being a cynical asshole, I hereby prophesize that this will be labeled as an "instrument of rape culture".
As the song says, this ain't no garden of Eden, this isn't the summer of love. It's no longer the '60s.
Now everything exists only as polar extremes. White-black, good-evil, love-hate...
You can't not choose sides, mildly dislike something or be ambivalent towards it.
You must love it or mildly praise it - or you are an -ist of some kind and a hater.
Which is now the ultimate reduction - Reductio ad Osoribus.
And since one pill liberated women, only logical black-white conclusion is that this one will enslave them.
Or are you an -ist of some kind?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
So... It's okay for men to have a form of birth control, but not women.... Figures... Gotta love 'Murika.....
Too many factual errors in this story to bother commenting about... there's barely a word of truth in it. Bleh.