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Got to be a good thing on many levels to be honest?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-64635446
It stops the little fellas from swimming for a few hours.
So.... You'd pop a pill an hour before sex and keep an eye on the clock!😂
Of course, all the virile, alpha males on here go for hours, so this won't be of any use.😉
oral contraceptive for men
I read in Just 17 that you couldn’t even get pregnant that way?
In a way, Im glad "Rubber Buccaneer" responded to this thread
Would you trust a horny 22 yr old who swears he's taken the pill whilst waving around his hard on?
Would you trust a horny 22 yr old who swears he’s taken the pill whilst waving around his hard on?
Personally I wouldn't give a monkeys how many pills they have taken. It's a definite no from me.
Male pill has been around for years.
You put it in your shoe, makes you limp.
Very good sir.
If you have a look at the shopping trolley thread thats a good barometer of who you would or wouldn't trust 🙂
I thought it just changed your blood group
Oh?
I would use it. The female pill has a lot of side effects.
I'm married, that's the most efficient contraceptive of all. 😂
Am I mis-remembering? Or can sperm survive for quite a while inside a woman’s body - in which case does disabling them for a few hours really prevent fertilisation? I assume there is someone on the research team thinking about these things - but it’s a long way from “works in mice” to “works in humans” and even then still a way to go to “we trust the public to take it themselves, safely”
but it’s a long way from “works in mice” to “works in humans” and even then still a way to go to “we trust the public to take it themselves, safely”
Yeah but you can safely* have sex with as many mice as you like.
*Safe for you, not the mice.
Male pill has to disable millions of swimmers reliably for at least 24 hours. Female pill has to prevent the release and implantation of a tiny number of eggs. The female pill has access to the 'playing field' to help it do that.
I think I'd need a lot more convincing before trusting it to the same degree. Perhaps as an additional backstop to another form of contraception.
Am I mis-remembering? Or can sperm survive for quite a while inside a woman’s body – in which case does disabling them for a few hours really prevent fertilisation?
I would have thought that disabling for a few hours meant all your shots in that time period were permanent blanks
But I’m not a biologist, don’t rely on this post for family planning.
but it’s a long way from “works in mice” to “works in humans”
Why? Mice shag like rabbits and can have kids every 3 weeks. If it's 99% effective stopping them why wouldn't it be that effective with humans?
Apart from mice not having souls what's the difference?
Mice shag like rabbits
Role play?
*Safe for you, not the mice.
Cling film.
What a waste of f###### money!
We have real health problems in this world and some knob in "big pharma" thinks a male contraceptive pill is a good idea, ffs.
Well maybe it is if you are selling nappies as well.
It will boost nappy sales?
Speshpaul
Full MemberWhat a waste of f###### money!
I tend to disagree with that. There are some women that can't take the pill and even if they can it can cause potentially sever problems in a small minority. Many/most people just don't like using condoms in long term relationships.
Heck, theres huge money spent on studying the common cold, piles, hair loss... The list goes on and on.
“big pharma” thinks a male contraceptive pill is a good idea, ffs.
sometimes these things are happy accidents (which in this context sounds like a euphemism). Viagra - the most successful drug ever apparently, in terms of how reliably effective and safe it is - invented by accident whilst trying to develop a drug for angina.
No way as a woman I'd ever trust a bloke to take anything that was that important to my life.
It may have some use in a committed relationship but otherwise it's just just an opportunity on one side and a blag on the other.
Why just the female pill?
Other alternatives are available. Spend the money on a better female pill. Women should be in control of their own bodies.
Happy accidents, yeap great. I didn't say don't don't spend the money or do research. But there are better places to spend the money.
Speeder
Full Member
No way as a woman I’d ever trust a bloke to take anything that was that important to my life.It may have some use in a committed relationship but otherwise it’s just just an opportunity on one side and a blag on the other.
Whilst I don't disagree, it needs pointing it that not all men would necessarily trust their partner to take the pill either. This levels the field for want of a better phrase.
As a man that really didn't want to be a father in my earlier years I would have gladly taken this pill of it had come to market back then.
As a woman who has had to carry the burden and unpleasant side effects of contraception for over half my life I'm all for having an option for the man to have a go instead. Obviously not for use with someone you don't trust but then why would you have unprotected sex with them anyway.
Personally I wouldn’t give a monkeys how many pills they have taken. It’s a definite no from me.
Homophobe.
I would use it. The female pill has a lot of side effects
On a serious note. I know a lot of girls (let's be honest, I'm old, they're old.... They're women) who choose to take the pill. Their skin complexion and their general mood are better than if they don't. Some of them admit they don't like themselves if they're not on the pill, and this despite them not being sexualy active (I dot E dot married).
I would be happy to pop pills or have the cut if it meant it was a cure for being a massive sexual throbber. Despite the awkward issues this malaise presents, it's hardships generally subside when I wake up.
Mice shag like rabbits and can have kids every 3 weeks. If it’s 99% effective stopping them why wouldn’t it be that effective with humans?
Because mice aren't humans? Sure, using a mouse model is a good way to get an indication that the mechanism has promise, and get results more quickly, but they aren't always a reliable prediction of how a drug will work in humans.
Because mice aren’t humans?
But our reproductive systems are pretty much identical.
Which I guess is why mice are considered to be such excellent models.
Although I am happy to be corrected and informed of significant biological differences with a species of mammals with which we share approximately 98% of our DNA.
Edit: Just to emphasis this is in relation to the comment that it’s a long way from “works in mice” to “works in humans”. I'm struggling to believe that it's a long way. I am assuming that it is extremely likely and would be very surprising if the results weren't very similar.
^^ Your not wrong Ernie but don't we also share a massive amount of our DNA with bananas?
However, I just think that is an amusing and interesting fact, not a point of contention, all organic life shares so much in common on earth.
Edit: 60% I think, with a big caveat that "share" is not really the right term apparently.
Good point about bananas. As we all know bananas are sterile and can't sexually reproduce.
Makes you think.
from lived experience
No way as a MAN I’d ever trust a WOMAN to take anything that was that important to my life.
It may have some use in a committed relationship but otherwise it’s just just an opportunity on one side and a blag on the other.
Good point about bananas. As we all know bananas are sterile and can’t sexually reproduce.
Which is a damned shame to be honest as it would be one hell of a mating ritual.
So…. You’d pop a pill an hour before sex and keep an eye on the clock!😂
Would it be possible to overdose based on unfulfilled promises?
No way as a woman I’d ever trust a bloke to take anything that was that important to my life.
Committed relationships aside the purpose of such contraception is to give the man option to not be a father. It’s not really anything to do with women.
Although I am happy to be corrected and informed of significant biological differences with a species of mammals with which we share approximately 98% of our DNA.
We share 99.9% of our DNA with other humans, which is why pharmaceuticals work identically from person to person and you never get variations in efficacy or side-effects. 🙂
By the way, your 98% figure is misleading. In the bits that actually matter, the crossover is significantly smaller.
Mouse models are useful, but making this work (safely and reliably) in humans will require a lot more work.
Ernie, here's some info on why trials in rodents don't always translate well to humans. It this case whilst our sexual organs and mices look on the outside like scale models I wonder if physical scale is not a rather important factor if you are looking at "swimming ability". It would also be wrong to think only in terms of the reproductive organs - this is only viable if its an oral medication, so you need to consider the difference in scale of the digestive tract, the varying microbiota in our guts and how a drug gets from mouth to testicles. Human diets are far more varied than lab mice, so there's another big potential factor for messing with things.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/04/medical-experiments-on-mice
However, even assuming that ultimately this drug does work, its not a quick or fast process to get from mouse to man. Typically drug companies suggest it costs over a billion USD to get a new drug from idea to market, and takes 12 years. Proven in murine models is a good milestone along the way, but before it would get permission to even try in humans there will need to be further studies in larger mammals. Even once you've proven it in say monkeys (and I'm expecting that's a long trial to show that (a) it prevents pregnancy; (b) has no long term side effects). Now we move to testing in humans. First a phase 1 trial just to check it is not toxic. Often you lose half the candidates at this stage - its a challenge of weighing up pro's and con's. An anticancer drug might have more acceptable side effects than a contraceptive. Phase 2 studies then are needed to work out the right dose for humans. Only then can you do the Phase 3 study which most people consider the real clinical trial. I believe for contraceptives that is usually a study lasting more than 12 months so they can quote a "XX% of people using this method will get pregnant per annum" number. Now if that study is successful you can submit the results to the regulators for approval. With a totally new approach like this - I'd be surprised if you got a yes from a regulator in less than a year. Often they will ask for extra data / more information etc. If you don't have it, you need to set up and run those trials.
It usually takes about 5 years to get from "early stage promising results" to ready to start putting in people, and about the same again before you have enough data to make a robust regulatory submission. Often only 1:10 of the "worked in initial animal studies" makes it a marketed product.
Interesting thoughts
Giving women and girls reproductive control is one of the best ways to address global poverty.
Giving men (I assume predominantly in developed countries) an option between condoms and the snip is useful for a select few but seems a bit of a niche product. No doubt will be profitable though
We share 99.9% of our DNA with other humans, which is why pharmaceuticals work identically from person to person and you never get variations in efficacy or side-effects. 🙂
Exactly, as your sarcasm points out it isn't even possible to predict with complete accuracy how medication will effect a person based on its effect on other humans.
The point however remains that sharing very similar biological makeup is very likely to have similar results. I guess it depends what is meant by "a long way".
Would you not be very surprised if what effectively makes a male mouse infertile didn't have a very similar effect on male humans. I think the researchers would be.
Poly, perhaps we aren't quite talking about the same thing, I wasn't referring to the time element, I was referring to the likelihood of similar results in humans, with regards to "a long way".
"Viagra – the most successful drug ever apparently, in terms of how reliably effective and safe it is – invented by accident whilst trying to develop a drug for angina."
And also apparently discovered in trials as a highly effective cure for Period pain, but curing the world's limp dicks was way more important...
What a waste of f###### money!
We have real health problems in this world and some knob in “big pharma” thinks a male contraceptive pill is a good idea, ffs.
Well maybe it is if you are selling nappies as well.
What a bizzare statement.
1. The work was not funded or conducted by big pharma! It was academics funded by the US government.
2. Unwanted pregnancy is a real problem.
3. An imbalance in contraception methods between men and women means that too many of the downsides are left to women to live with adding to inequality in society.
4. Its likely that some of the fundamental research on how this works probably helps understanding of some male infertility (lack of motility) too - which it a significant problem worth addressing.
5. Spending time or money or contraceptive medicine doesn't stop other researchers from tackling the issues you perceive as "the real health issues".
6. Some of the profits from big-pharma do ultimately end up recycled into both philanthropic health research and government taxation which can fund further research as well as supporting your pension etc. Big pharma do a lot of bad shit, but just attaching a "big pharma" label to things as a synonym for "evil" is lazy and demonstrates your lack of real world understanding.
The point however remains that sharing very similar biological makeup is very likely to have similar results.
There's a very important variable though - humans would take the pills themselves with variable relaiability, mixed with other medications potentially, and so on, mice have them administered under laboratory conditions with as many other variables eliminated as possible.
THe female pill is taken regularly and routinely and is in effect all the time - the idea of a pill taken as and when, with limited window of effectiveness seems like a recipe for errors
So aside from pharmaceutical effectiveness theres a whole lot of 'person' centred variability. I think its very welcome in one sense - birth control is a shared responsibly and we've heaped a lot of the reponsibility and the risk onto one half of those relationships , but theres also quite a marked imbalanced level of consequence between genders. I think women would welcome men being able to take the responsibly but I'm not sure how many would actually trust their partner over something that would impact much more heavily on them. I think if the model for the male pill was the same as the female one - that you take it all the time and its effective all the time - it would be a more useful product
2. Unwanted pregnancy is a real problem.
It was quite alarming the other day to hear what proportion of abortions in the UK are due childcare costs - that an unplanned pregnancy in this day and age could result in losing your job and therefore your home.
We really have made a pretty grim world for ourselves in the UK
Viagra – the most successful drug ever apparently, in terms of how reliably effective and safe it is – invented by accident whilst trying to develop a drug for angina.”
And also apparently discovered in trials as a highly effective cure for Period pain, but curing the world’s limp dicks was way more important…
A cure for mangina
Would you not be very surprised if what effectively makes a male mouse infertile didn’t have a very similar effect on male humans. I think the researchers would be.
I'm sure it does have a similar effect on the viability of human sperm in vitro, but that's a long way short of producing a drug that is safe and effective in real humans.
There are significant differences in mouse and human reproductive structure which may or may not have an impact (positive or negative) on the efficacy of a drug which relies heavily on sperm not making it past the cervix (where, in humans, it can then survive until it theoretically regains its motility after a few hours). Any viable sperm in the uterus can theoretically lead to fertilisation.
And, as has been pointed out, the therapeutic action of a drug is only one part of the drug development jigsaw.
None of this is criticising the study, or ruling it out as a possibility. It's a very interesting potential novel route towards male contraception. But we just need to be realistic about its journey to real people.
The point about drugs having different levels of efficacy between different humans, despite our near-identical genomes, is very relevant to this. If a drug has a 75% efficacy rate against a previously untreatable form of cancer, or prevents heartburn in 75% of cases, that's to be celebrated. A 75% efficacy rate in preventing pregnancy would generally be regarded as unsatisfactory - current female oral contraceptives, if taken correctly, have a 99% efficacy rate.
I suppose it would add to bodily autonomy options for Men, meaning males have as many options to prevent unwanted pregnancy as their female partners.
There seems to be a few framing sex as being a bit of a fraught trust exercise, which I suppose it is in some cases, but really the main point is (assuming this pill makes it to market) men potentially get to choose how active their swimmers are for themselves rather than hoping or assuming their partner will.
It's not a bad thing, it provides options, how people exercise those options is another question.
I dunno, most of the western world is rightly pro-choice, but the consequence of that is men lack any agency in that choice (unless they're a Republican senator), rightly or wrongly your say in the matter ends even before the contraception fails. So a 'backstop' to stop you becoming an unplanned teenage dad would probably be a good thing for most men.
(the STD issue being far more 50:50 on the blame and consequences, FA&FO)
And also apparently discovered in trials as a highly effective cure for Period pain, but curing the world’s limp dicks was way more important…
Not the whole story, the effectiveness in reducing cramps was outweighed by the risk of the side effect headaches, it's been 15 years or so since I studied it at uni, but IIRC because of how it works it was tried as a treatment for alsorts from insomnia to DOMS.
a treatment for alsorts from insomnia to DOMS.
I think if anything a pill that keeps you up all night is going to be pretty futile in tackling insomnia 🙂
Poly, perhaps we aren’t quite talking about the same thing, I wasn’t referring to the time element, I was referring to the likelihood of similar results in humans, with regards to “a long way”.
I think you can measure "long way" in time, money, and "technical risk". The links highlighted some of the technical issues in jumping from mice to humans. I'm not a biologist but intuitively I can see that something that the physical scale of things is going to have a big impact. e.g. is the time from swallowing a drug to it diffusing through your body and reaching all your semen likely to be the same in 6 ft human and a 2" mouse? In fact, how variable are lab mice in terms of physical scale (I'm guess not very which is useful for data interpretation - but harder for dosing humans who might be 4'11-6'8" and 65-130kg etc). e.g. If the pharmacokinetics mean in humans you need to take the drug 4-7 hours before hand rather than 1-3 that becomes a much harder product to position with the public; or if drinking alcohol impedes the uptake of the drug you've suddenly got a real problem. For most drugs treating serious medical conditions, saying "no booze" is commercially acceptable but for a contraceptive it's a product killer.
Those men worried about getting partners pregnant - there already is a solution - wear your overcoat.
Apparently there are significant differences between mice foreskins and human foreskins. More details here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5012965/
Unfortunately Ernie, I believe that paper has been retracted in full now.
Has it? That's a shame - I thought it was the reason why condoms weren't feasible for mice and why they were looking at alternatives?
I feel I must apologise for the foreskin joke.
It was a bit of a flop
All for it if it works. There just 'wasn't' much of an alternative for blokes wanting to take an active choice in birth control. Condoms or surgery. MrsF didn't like condoms, so I went for surgery. What a "f" up that was. Further major surgery removing bits of the mess the doc did, and 10 years of pain (constant), followed by daily medication due to the damage done. Give me a pill anytime.
I thought it was the reason why condoms weren’t feasible for mice
Only because they’re idiots and try to wear them as balaclavas
I’m struggling to believe that it’s a long way. I am assuming that it is extremely likely and would be very surprising if the results weren’t very similar.
🤷🏻♂️ about murine -> human translational sperm models but devising animal models seems tricky for a few things. And it’s not plain sailing thereafter.
It’s not really anything to do with women.
Hmm, there seems to be a lot about gender that you might not understand.
<blocpoly
Free Member
What a waste of f###### money!
We have real health problems in this world and some knob in “big pharma” thinks a male contraceptive pill is a good idea, ffs.
Well maybe it is if you are selling nappies as well.
What a bizzare statement.
1. The work was not funded or conducted by big pharma! It was academics funded by the US government.
2. Unwanted pregnancy is a real problem.
3. An imbalance in contraception methods between men and women means that too many of the downsides are left to women to live with adding to inequality in society.
4. Its likely that some of the fundamental research on how this works probably helps understanding of some male infertility (lack of motility) too – which it a significant problem worth addressing.
5. Spending time or money or contraceptive medicine doesn’t stop other researchers from tackling the issues you perceive as “the real health issues”.
6. Some of the profits from big-pharma do ultimately end up recycled into both philanthropic health research and government taxation which can fund further research as well as supporting your pension etc. Big pharma do a lot of bad shit, but just attaching a “big pharma” label to things as a synonym for “evil” is lazy and demonstrates your lack of real world understanding.kquote>
1, ok fair enough
2, correct,
3, correct, but more/better options for female contraception would surely be a better use of the money/reseach.
4, its a problem, but a very 1st world one, its not up there with a cure for malaria.
5, Er, yes it does. a Research budget a bottomless pit. Money spent on research for say a male pill can not be spent on say a cure for cancer.
6. really, you want to defend big pharma, and in the next breath say i have a lack of real world understanding. Tidy.
Spending on the conditions you mention already massively outweighs anything on male fertility (or female, for that matter), and rightly so. 'Big ticket' diseases already hoover up proportionately far more funding than some of the more neglected or unfashionable areas, such as reproductive health.
While there is clearly commercial potential in a male contraceptive pill, it could be that foundational work looking at the mechanisms of sperm motility could prove eventually to be highly significant on a planet where male fertility is declining decade on decade.
Male infertility is a first world problem until you can't conceive, then it creates its own mental health burden, so well worth the relatively small sums being currently spent on it.
But our reproductive systems are pretty much identical.
Yours might be, sunshine. Eh, like, eh? ;P
What system do you use?
3 seashells
The history of reproductive biology is littered (mouse breeding pun - sorry) with mouse model theories that didn’t extrapolate to humans. Lab mice are usually highly inbred but extremely fertile little things. Humans are not. Our reproductive system in inefficient (less than 10% effective in fertile human sex), produces lots of errors in eggs and sperm (mainly wrong chromosomes - aneuploidy). Humans also often produce sperm with numerous smaller DNA errors and badly formed sperm. There are many reasons why mouse models don’t translate to humans but it’s often where research starts. This work clearly has a long way to go before it makes to humans to show safe efficacy. That’s before you think of any possible human toxicity difference to mice.
Having said that it’s good to see other contrwctive options being developed, to add to condoms, the pill, vasectomy, the coil. It’s all about reproductive / sex choices and what works for different people. Clearly a male contractive pill will only work for some people but good if it works without side effects.
The academics that developed this are probably now looking to sell this to big pharma and make a ton of money for other research. Goon on them!
Speshpaul:
3, correct, but more/better options for female contraception would surely be a better use of the money/reseach.
Would it? Why is contraception primarily a female issue? Certainly if you speak to women you will find plenty who would "never trust a man to take the pill". Of course whether that is women in long term relationships or whether they had considered the possibility of a pill you take on the day rather than needing to remember every day is a bit more nuanced.
Lots of men take the fairly extreme surgical option. Perhaps they would like an option that isn't easily reversible, doesn't involve a knife, probably several days of pain and has some risk of short and long-term complications.
Whilst improving female contraception would be no bad thing, unless anyone has a clever idea they are tinkering with the approaches. This is fundamental research on a "new idea", a "different way" of tackling the problem.
4, its a problem, but a very 1st world one, its not up there with a cure for malaria.
I'm not sure it is exclusively a 1st world problem. There's plenty of issues with family planning the world over, although I accept funding for such a product in the developing world is likely to be challenging.
5, Er, yes it does. a Research budget a bottomless pit. Money spent on research for say a male pill can not be spent on say a cure for cancer.
Which would be a logical argument if you could show that this money prevented investment in other research, but in my experience of pitching research proposals to funders proposals are accepted on their merits. IF this work was funded in preference to other work on cancer then its likely that the other work was poorer presented / less credible / higher risk / etc. Often the level of benefit is part of that assessment. The NIH are one of the largest funders of Malaria research in the world despite Malaria being a relatively small problem within the US.
6. really, you want to defend big pharma, and in the next breath say i have a lack of real world understanding. Tidy.
I don't think I actually defended Big Pharma. What I did was point out that it is a lazy "trope". The Welcome Trust, LifeArc, the NovoFoundation and probably others exist because of the past profits of big pharma and fund a lot of research. Your pension almost certainly has some big pharma shares adding to its value. The pharma company profits get taxed supporting their host countries. You can simply say Big Pharma is evil and imagine a future where all pharma manufacturing is run on a non-commercial basis but keep in mind you reduce tax income, wipe out various philanthropic organisations and undermine your own (and everyone else's pension) at the same time. Capitalism is far from great, but before yo launch into a Big Pharma is evil thought - make sure you know the ramifications and the consequences of the alternatives.