It’s the golden goose of reproductive health. For years, oral birth control was in the hands (or mouths) of women in the form of the Pill. One of the most important discoveries in the history of human reproduction, the pill has changed the way humans live and socialize, but a male version of the pill was long thought to be an impossibility due to hormone levels, male reluctance to take pills for birth control, and female reluctance to trust in their men to take a pill daily. All that’s over, said researcher Haim Breitbart of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, who developed a male birth control pill that can be taken monthly or every three months.
Said Professor Breitbart, “Men don’t cope well with side effects and having side effects would probably put many off wanting to take a pill. We’ve had none of those problems with our pill. What we found is that by treating the mice with our molecule we can get sterility for a long period of time -in the lower dose, about one month, and in the higher dose we found three months of sterility. The mice behaved nicely. They ate and had sex. All I can say is that we couldn’t see any behavioural side-effects – all their sex behaviour was retained, which is a very important consideration for men.”
Human trials of the pill are due to start next year. The pill, rather than inhibiting production of sperm, actually blocks the sperm from being able to fertilize the egg. Basically, it works on the same principal of the female birth control pill in which it still allows for egg production, but inhibits pregnancy. It won’t bring about a new sexual revolution, but it’ll definitely find willing users among married men looking to avoid the permanent snip, or at least looking to add to their contraception options.
Image: Phoney Nickle
Tags: reproductive health, birth control, male birth control pill, birth control pills, unusual birth control, unusual health news, weird science, Haim Breitbart, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
