June 29, 2010
Introducing the First Male Birth Control Pill
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/news/a8721/male-birth-control-pill-contraception/That’s the earliest year I remember hearing about a male birth control pill. There are probably articles from years prior to 2010. Obviously this is a great advancement, but is it reasonable to expect one of these to actually come to market within the next decade?
Edit: Actually, this is discussed in an article linked to by the Scientific American article:
A joke among researchers in the field of male contraception is that a clinically approved alternative to condoms or vasectomy has been five to 10 years away for the past 40 years.
Female birth control has to be safer and have fewer side effects than pregnancy.
Male birth control has to be safer and have fewer side effects than letting women carry the burden of birth control.
There will not be a male birth control pill. We would be better off putting these resources toward improving the safety of female birth control.
Thing is, female birth control is easier, because female body already has mechanism that stops fertility, we just invoke it on demand. Male body basically keeps on making sperm till death. It’s usually issues with erection or something that acts like “it’s time to stop buddy” than anything else. It’s not really about male privilege, patriarchy or whatever, it’s just biology.
Condom has worked the best as physical barrier and some injectable gels in vas deferens, but they are highly impractical application wise. Most of hormonal methods didn’t work well at all.
Nether method is more complicated or more natural or “easier.” It’s fiddling with hormones to decrease fertility.
Your personal perception is that because when women are pregnant they can’t get pregnant, they should be the ones to have their hormones fiddled with, despite the risk of death, that has, thus far not been shown in male hormonal birth control. That’s got nothing to do with science.
I’m sorry to call you out, but I think you’re disregarding a valid point and establishing a false equivalence between this contraceptive method, and traditional hormone-based methods.
Please let me elaborate. This drug is not hormone-based. It works by blocking a receptor called “RAR-alpha” that exists in every cell’s nucleus, and it works as a switch that controls gene transcription - it determines what the cell eventually produces and does. The body chops up vitamin A and uses it to trigger this receptor, and we know that it plays a role in many different processes, from cell differentiation (including formation of the heart, nervous system, and white blood cells), to development (like the formation of limbs) and even cell death. Incidentally, it also plays a role in sperm production, which kinda makes sense because of how important it is for cell differentiation and development.
The body doesn’t produce a “blocker” for these receptors, which is the function that the drug in the study, YCT-529, performs. This actually mimics the loss of RARa signaling in a vitamin A deficiency, which unsurprisingly, causes fertility problems (among a host of other symptoms).
This is a different approach from “traditional” hormonal contraception, where the most common pills (progesterone only or progesterone-estrogen) activate the same receptors that the body usually activates (and this is what the person above you was referring to) - but in way that prevents the regular cycle from progressing. The fact that the body has these “natural levers” that regulate this process is the reason why birth-control pills have existed for decades - we just push those buttons harder (I’m not denying there are consequences to this, I’m just pointing out the buttons exist). There is no such mechanism for sperm production however, so scientists have been looking at all steps that lead to sperm being produced trying to find something they can block, and that hopefully won’t have terrible consequences elsewhere.
I 100% agree that calling either method “more complicated” or “more natural” or “easier" is wrong. But we cannot gloss over the fact that this drug is a compound that is novel to the human body, and that it works through mechanisms that we only have a limited understanding over, while the other is inherently less risky (because most of its effects are to mimic the body’s normal responses) and, at this time, much better understood.
Hopefully this will prove to be a very safe and effective drug, and that responsibility for contraception is equally divided because of it, but this needs to be proven first.
Also sorry for the wall of text, but it’s kinda in my ballpark so I sort of ran with it.
At first read that came off as callous, but I see your point. I had that thought as well regarding improving female birth control. Where’s the research into a hormone-free pill for women?
It is a bit callous. I’m old enough to have seen this pop up a dozen or so times.
Every time the depression, weight gain, acne and libido changes are deemed too severe for approval and women are sitting here like… yeah, it’s all that plus increased occurrence of stroke and heart attack for us, but ok.
Could it be the first one to pass this test phase?
To study the safety of YCT-529 in humans, we conducted a Phase 1a clinical trial where 16 healthy men received either placebo or escalating single doses of YCT-529 to assess its safety and tolerability. YCT-529 was well tolerated, and no adverse effects were noted. The positive results from this first clinical trial laid the groundwork for a second trial, where men receive YCT-529 for 28 days and 90 days, to study safety and changes in sperm parameters.
In the first clinical trial of its kind, a nonhormonal oral contraceptive that reversibly stops sperm production has just been deemed safe for human use…The trial did not assess the pill’s efficacy in reducing sperm
Uh, lol…I have to admit, I’m not really going to start caring about whether it’s safe until I know that it actually does what it’s trying to do.
How can you even honestly say it’s a “contraceptive that reversibly stops sperm production” without qualification, if you haven’t even determined it fucking works, yet?
This how medical studies work, because of ethics. First they prove it works on animals, which they did with great success. But before testing it works on humans, they must first confirm it is not dangerous, before they can ethically test for actual efficacy on a larger cohort.
Compliance ain’t gonna happen. Try getting a dude to take something regularly that isn’t a painkiller. Let’s mix it with advil.
I dunno, I think “take this pill every day and you’ll never have to pull out again” is a pretty convincing argument to that type of dude.
Guys will do anything rather than cut off their own balls
I mean, yeah. But getting a couple of tubes inside them snipped was pretty easy.
I feel like i could never trust this even if i was on it.
Good! You shouldn’t. If you’re trying to not have children, you should be on birth control, or partner should be in birth control, and you should use condoms.
I’ve been there done that, lol. I’m old and already did the contraception and condoms long ago. Have 2 children now, do not want more. It sounds like a nice alternative to snipping, but I just can’t trust it. We are fine, and im sure menopause is not far away for her.
Don’t fear the snip. Mine was almost entirely painless and it’s really nice to have one less thing to worry about.
Only side effect is now my right testicle dangles lower than my left.
It sounds like a nice alternative to snipping,
Don’t fear the snip.
