1y ago

Male birth control breakthrough safely switches off fit sperm for a while

newatlas.com Male birth control breakthrough safely switches off fit sperm for a while

A non-hormonal, reversible and non-toxic male birth control could be a step closer, with scientists successfully targeting a protein that's crucial in making fertile sperm. Knocking this protein out for a period of time would give men control over their protection window, much like oral…

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Honestly, as a dude, I'm 100% down for male birth control. Can't wait.
- Hopefully it less hormonal side affects than the female pill. But yeah having an extra level of protection will be nice.
  
  “Extra Level”? It's more about taking the burden off the women for me. Why do they, and only they, always have to mess up their bodies?
  
  Obviously it depends on the relationship and how risk averse you both are. But yeah why not both? Seems like a pretty good way to be really sure!
  
  You can already do that with condoms and no one is messing up their body...
  
  Exactly.
  Condoms would be 99% effective if they could be made idiot-proof.
  
  Sucks you're being down voted, I mean maybe saying "idiot-proof" isn't nice but comprehensive sex ed should cover helping those with a noodle understand how to find ones that fit comfortably and what main causes there are for breakage n whatnot. I'm currently having that discussion with my sex buddy, and I can't tell you the amount of times I've had people try to coerce me into letting them go raw dog in the past. Like keep in mind I'm in a state that has not only criminalized abortion but is defunding all planned parenthoods now.
  
  It's the Internet.
  People downvote a lot of stuff.
  
  Like keep in mind I'm in a state that has not only criminalized abortion but is defunding all planned parenthoods now.
  Bummer.
  2/3 of the states will follow in another year. That's what happens when we elect people no matter how badly they do their jobs.
  
  I'm not voting for this scum, but yeah, we'll see. Hoping it'll make it to the ballot so the people can actually vote to amend the state constitution like others have. The people may be dumb at electing Representatives, but get a straight forward measure up for vote and the people seem to follow through in correcting it.
  
  Condoms are only 99% effective. You NEED a second layer of defence.
  
  They're 100% effective, the only reason there said to be 99% effective is to prevent lawsuits from people using then incorrectly.
  
  I'm a human, I can make mistakes in the heat of the moment. I've had friend couples I know get pregnant even though they're "professional condom putters onners".
  
  It's not the condom's fault if you make a mistake. Condom material doesn't let sperm through, it's that simple, it's been used incorrectly if it did. Companies don't want to lose time and money with lawsuits hence 99%.
  Also, anecdotal evidence while you weren't in bed with them isn't much of a proof, it's as valid as me telling you I've never got any girl pregnant even when we weren't using any protection therefore pulling out is 100% effective.
  
  The hippocratic oath, in this case. Medicine is all about risk management, the worse the "disease," the more tolerant we are of side effects for the cure. Pregnancy and birth are still pretty traumatic events that, while much safer than they used to be, are still dangerous. Female BC just has to be less risky than that. Male BC on the other hand, has to be as low the risk for a man impregnating a woman, which is to say, almost zero. Pretty much any negative side effect is worse than that, so it's very difficult to pass. I would gladly take one with comparable side effects to female BC, but sometimes unflinching ethics are inconvenient. Better than the alternative, but still.
  
  Somehow, we manage to accept organ transplants despite it hurting one healthy person a little to help an unhealthy person a lot. What's stopping us from treating birth control the same way?
  
  It's medical ethics, not the Hippocratic Oath. Most doctors swear to an ethical standard. Besides, "first, do no harm" is a bit unhelpful if you're a surgeon.
  Otherwise you're right, the risks of pregnancy outweigh the side effects of birth control, which is why birth control for women doesn't have as high a standard for mitigating other consequences.
  
  The Hippocratic oath is not a thing in most countries and not applicable anyway. If it was, kidney transplants would be done without a doctor present (in the US that is, don't overestimate your little made up oath ritual internationally)
  
  Hippocrates wasn't American and the oath was made sometime around the 4th century BCE. It's been part of medical tradition since then (at least if you follow ancient Greek tradition)
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath
  
  While that is indubitably correct, the only jurisdiction I know that makes binding references to whatever is used as “Hippocratic oath” is the U.S.
  
  Thanks! TIL
  
  What do you mean by always? The birth control makes sense because it's much harder to do it for men because sperm is constantly being produced and women only release 1 egg per month. What other ways do women have to mess up their bodies?
  
  Oh, wow, do you come off as uninformed! Birth control for women has tons and tons of side effects, and it's in no way easier to prevent successful ovulation than it is to prevent fertile sperm production. In fact, birth control drugs for men have been repeatedly blocked by regulators for having too many side effects, while those side effects pretty closely mirror those of the pill for women. So, interfering with everything from blood pressure to appetite is acceptable when women are affected, but can't be burdened upon men?
  Interrupting the ovulation cycle comes at great cost for the body. All the “non-hormonal” ways of birth control we have (except the condom) require either poisonous metals and foreign objects to be pushed inside the uterus, increasing the risk for cysts, causing pain, and regular checkups and painful procedures to be applied or fitted (diaphragm). Or toxins to be applied straight into a woman's private parts (spermicides). Calendar-based methods and “pulling out” have large margins of error, as have condoms.
  
  Do the copper IEDs have negative side effects? I thought the objection to those was purely moral.
  Edit: I meant IUD lol
  
  My wife got repeated infections and had a lot of pain from the copper iud.
  If you go looking for testimonials you'll find numerous people who had bad experiences with it.
  Also, they really should offer anesthetic or at least a powerful painkiller for the insertion and removal procedures. Doctors act like it's no big deal, but it's very painful.
  
  Yet another case of the medical industry not caring one iota about women and women's ability to identify what is going on with their own bodies. The number of times I've heard of doctors dismissing women's pain and issues makes me want to scream.
  
  Yep.
  Firstly: Disregarding the discomfort of having to see the doctor and having something shoved inside your body is a weird mistake, especially men tend to make regularly when talking about those things. Having your genitals exposed to and then painfully tampered with by what is ultimately a stranger isn't a thing most people would describe as a pleasant afternoon activity.
  The side effects aren't just from hormones. Imagine having to do a prostate exam every 6 months and a metal plug shoved close to your prostate through your urethra every few years (not the same, of course, just an attempt at an analogy, since men are one hole short down there). Wouldn't you dislike that? Many women are really sensitive around their cervix and implanting the IUD can therefore be really painful.
  Secondly: Period cramps increase in severity, bleeding increases for most people, and there are hints that those IUDs can increase the risk for cysts, which in turn cause issues, pain and sometimes need surgical removal.
  
  Period cramps increase in severity, bleeding increases for most people
  The two women I dated that had an implanted IUD legit didn't have a period anymore. So not only was the bleeding and cramps not worse, they simply didn't exist.
  You honestly seem to just trying to be pushing some agenda, possibly because you had a bad experience and you're assuming that's just the way it is for everyone, when the reality is it's pretty rare.
  
  why is your experience the norm and what I say "pretty rare" not the other way around? Or do you consider "two women I know" a representative group? Are "two women I knew" more significant than what professionals will tell you?
  Paragard side effects can include:
  undefined
  
  spotting between periods irregular periods heavier or longer periods more or worse cramping during your periods pain when your IUD is put in, and cramping or back aches for a few days after
  https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/iud/iud-side-effects
  Was that a copper IUD (which was what I wrote about) or a hormonal IUD?
  
  Periods going away or getting lighter is a side affect of hormonal IUDs. Copper IUDs have no mechanism to make them go away, and seem to pretty commonly make cramps and bleeding worse. .
  
  IEDs have very negative effects, but you wouldn't really call them side-effects.
  And IUDs involve surgery which has its own risks including perforating the uterus, plus they can become infected and cause sepsis which is deadly, plus in general infections suck. Some women suffer immense pain which may or may not be ignored by their doctors. They also do release hormones which have fewer side effects because they're more local, but they're not side effect free.
  Many of these issues were much worse in the earlier days, where many women died or suffered serious illness and permanent infertility whilst doctors didn't take them seriously because women are often ignored by doctors where men would not be. So the level of safety the devices now have was bought with a lot of women's unnecessary suffering.
  https://www.verywellhealth.com/iud-risks-and-complications-906766
  
  Honestly, as glad as this article makes me, I'd still like to see a perfect birth control for women. Periods seem like they must be the worst part of being a woman (biologically, not socially). Having a temporary, reversible way to stop ovulation without fucking up a dozen related systems and causing physical and mental anguish would be nice.
  
  I know it has many side effects. My girfriend suffered many of them when she was taking the pill and I had to beg her to stop because it just was not worth it.
  And fuck off of course it's easier to stop ovulation than sperm production. It's a numbers game. Also not like I fucking made hormonal birth control. What we have now is bad and you can go ahead and find a better alternative with less side effects. That does not mean the new birth control should also have side effects. Take issue with the people that approved the current ones.
  
  A “numbers game”? Do you think there are little men in your balls, strangulating every sperm cell when it's formed? Or… do you think the pill works by somehow interfering with the ovum itself?
  Because it doesn't. Quite the opposite. Just as male contraception methods don't try to kill sperm, but to shut down the factory. Besides: You cannot measure the difficulty or complexity of medical procedures by how many cells are affected. By that logic, brain surgery would be way easier to do than amputating a leg.
  
  What I meant is that it's easier to ensure it works being a numbers game. If you constantly have new sperm being made it's way harder to shut that down consistently than to stop one egg releasing once per month.
  
  That's not how any of this works. Did you never take reproductive anatomy?
  
  No. Where would I take that?
  
  In school. But I'm sure you could gather the essentials from the internet.
  
  This is a really dumb take. The onus of birth control should not be only on the women.
  
  Condoms are a thing
  
  Condoms don't work for everyone's body.
  Edit: to be clear I'm saying it's not that simple. There should be more options for anyone with a penis to be able to handle this important implication of having sex. For anyone in general, more options are always good.
  
  Calling someone dumb isn't a good way to start a discussion. When men wear condoms how can you claim the onus is on women? My wife didn't want to take hormones so I wore condoms, every couple has that option.
  
  I didn't call them dumb, I called the statement a really dumb take, not the same thing.
  
  Forgetting about pregnancy and childbirth perhaps? I take it that they meant those things fuck up women's bodies pretty severely sometimes. It's a tough struggle to recover from pregnancy and childbirth, and some never do.
  But apart from that, birth control should be an equal burden, IMO.
- Same. I've always preferred to be in full control of my own contraception, mostly because I just don't trust anyone else with something that consequential
  
  Will definitely be awesome when all parties have comfortable, reliable, safe options to protect themselves
- Agreed. Always better to unload the gun rather than try to stop it with armor

292 comments