SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
In present day 2015, the available options for contraception aren’t great, and the burden still rests largely on women to mitigate the damages of our wanton impulses. Aside from the copper IUD, all the birth control devices and pharmaceuticals available to women alter our hormones with various weird side effects. When it comes to birth control for men, aside from condoms and pulling out (neither of which are very reliable in practice), a vasectomy has been the only other option for preventing unwanted pregnancies. Though there’s about a coin-flip chance of it being reversible, those odds aren’t enough to make it something guys under 40 typically consider. A few other male contraceptives are being explored, but there are no approved male contraceptive drugs in the United States.
But what if there was a simple way a man to fire blanks until he and his partner were ready to have a kid—without the snip snap?
The process takes about 15 minutes. A doctor injects a tiny dot of a synthetic gel into the sperm-carrying tube just outside of each testicle. Once injected, the gel sets in the tube and acts like a filter, allowing fluid to pass through but not sperm. “Like water might percolate through Jello,” said Elaine Lissner, director of the Parsemus Foundation.
This isn’t like a Depo-Provera shot you have to get once every few months either—once injected, the sperm-filtering gel would remain in place for 10 years. If the recipient decides he wants to take a shot at having kids at any point in between, all it takes is another injection of sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda) to dissolve the liquid, and the sperm factory becomes operational again.
It may sound too good to be true, but clinical and animal trials in India have shown that the method works with near-perfect results and no serious side effects. And unlike the birth control pill and condoms, which have a real-life efficacy rate far lower than the ‘perfect use’ scenarios advertised on the packages, the birth control injection, like an IUD, comes with virtually no room for human error.
So why isn't this in widespread use? Well, one reason might be that commercially, there is more money to be made selling contraceptive pills than a 10-yearly injection, and secondly, I guess "needles in close proximity to testicles" is not something that many men like the sound of...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @07:25AM
The article is titled "The Perfect Birth Control for Men Is Here. Why Can't We Use It?" which is very misleading from the get go. No, it's not here. That's probably a rather large part of why we can't use it...
Then we start with all the optimist hype and BS only to degrade to the sorry facts that the results of clinical studies are ... secret. And nobody's funding this. SIGH
I mean this is important stuff and it's pretty incredible how bad the contraceptives are in 2015. And this is in the rich part of the world. So yes we do need better alternatives or perhaps I should say replacements. But let's not lie and confuse, it does not help.
(Score: 4, Informative) by davester666 on Monday April 06 2015, @08:20AM
There's no funding for it, because it's a one-off shot.
If it were at all like the pill for women, big pharma would be ALL over it. And I'm sure big pharma is working on figuring out a pill/ongoing medication for men, but it will be something you have to keep paying for. One time payments just don't cut it for moving the needle. They can't charge enough, while still getting enough men, to make the profits that pay the bonuses that keep the executives in hookers and blow.
like most industries, the last 30 years or so have fucked up big pharma because of wallstreet's demand for ever increasing profits, for "making the numbers" by any means necessary. the idea that if you aren't getting bigger and more profitable, you should stop doing business and somebody else should take over.
(Score: 2) by MozeeToby on Monday April 06 2015, @02:00PM
The implant for women lasts at least 3 and almost certainly 4 years or longer. Yes, there's a difference between 4 years and 10, but not an extreme one.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Monday April 06 2015, @03:27PM
One time payments just don't cut it for moving the needle.
I see what you did there. Bravo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 06 2015, @10:11AM
Great another person bitching about a headline, blowing its importance completely out of proportion so they can rant about, well, nothing actually - a story that presents the positives and negatives of the situation. What a terrible, terrible, piece of journalism. :rolleyes: