I can't recall where this came up, but male birth control stuff came up in some thread around here, and I finally rediscovered the paper I used in my research ages ago on it, plus another site about the pill being in the works. If anyone's interested, here ya go:

http://www.gumption.org/mcip/paper.html http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000718/hl/contraception_men_1.html

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

Answers

I remember reading a week or two ago about this male pill in the newspaper. They interviewed a few people about it for the article and one guy, who was about 19 or something, said it was a great thing and he'd happily take it because, to paraphrase him, you can't trust women these days to take theirs. Just wondering what people here thought of that. [Disclaimer: opinions expressed by 19 year olds in this post do not necessarily reflect those of the person referring to them]

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

A few months ago one of the guys at work was complaining because his wife was having nesting urges, and he was content as things were. So we kept teasing him about it, saying "it does take two you, know" and "one word: VASECTOMY"... I said something like "It's too bad there's no birth control for men" and all the other guys said "As if men would remember to take a pill every day, we can hardly remember to brush our teeth!"

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

This might sound horrible and sexist, but it's not intended to be, so here goes:

I'd have trouble trusting a man to remember to take birth control pills. I wouldn't chalk up their forgetfulness to "male stupidity" or anything like that, but to the simple fact that pregnancy is not an immediate concern for them. When a woman takes birth control pills, she's thinking, "Man, I'd be fucked if I forgot and ended up pregnant." For the man, I imagine it would be a more vague, "Yeaahh, don't want any babies around right now." Simply put, there are more consequences for the person who bears the child.

I guess I'm saying that fear motivates women to take birth control, and men simply don't experience that fear.

Maybe this particular issue has been discussed before; I haven't taken the time yet to read the paper or the article.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

I'd also have trouble trusting a partner to take birth control, for similar reasons to what Liz points out. It's a bigger deal for me than for him. Of course, I'm the kind of person generally who has trouble letting go of things I care about, if someone else is in charge of them. For instance when we go on a trip, I grill him about whether he remembered to pack various things.

I think I'd feel this way if things were reversed & I were the man. If you want something done right, do it yourself.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

I think male birth control is keen, and it's certainly nice they're coming up with new approaches to birth control in general, but oddly, it also makes me worry. Assuming that a reasonable percentage of men would take it on time, regularly, as they're supposed to- I'd be inclined to believe that condom usage would plummet.

Nearly all the complaints I've ever heard about condoms focused on sensitivity and comfort, and if there's an option out there that guarantees nobody's getting pregnant without the "hassle" of condoms, I'd be afraid that STD rates would skyrocket.

Of course, there are people who will always use condoms, regardless, and there are plenty of STDs you can get even while using a condom, but I think this is pretty analogous to the sharp increase of STDs seen when the (female) birth control pill was first introduced. Unfortunately, now we have STDs that can kill us, so these advances make me wary.

On the positive, and possibly cynical side, since this is a drug that can benefit a man's standard of living, it'll probably get through the system pretty quickly- which would be nice for my purposes. I can't use hormone-based birth control and my husband's amazingly fastidious about taking medication, so this would be a cool tool to have in our medicine chest.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

I think it depends on the person and the usage about a male pill. It sounds like it'd be best for the man who wants to not have children, no matter what (it sucks when they're forced to have a child), and is diligent, or for couples in which the woman can't take anything and the man is diligent. I'd agree with others that I wouldn't trust a man to take the pill and hope he didn't forget, because I would sure as hell forget myself! (Hence the Depo. Now if we get a shot for men, RIGHT ON, IMO) I like the idea of men having the option to have their hormones f@#$%$ with for a change so it's not always the woman's burden. Right before I was going to go on Depo, I showed my ex that paper and he started saying how he didn't want me on Depo, he wanted the birth control burden on him. He even went to Planned Parenthood and harassed the receptionists awhile about why there wasn't any birth control so the woman could not have to have all of the trouble.

The other methods in the paper are interesting to read about as well. Heck, you can do the hot water trick by yourself at home, even.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

This was actually a thread on MetaFilter a week ago.

I quizzed about a half dozen male friends (and my husband). Responses varied from "it's unnaturnal (but female bcps aren't)" to "well, i'd have to hear more about it first...." to "woo hoo! sign me up!" There were more "yeah, I'd use it" than any other response, which I thought was interesting. (There was only one, "it's unnatural.") My own husband would happily use it in place of me taking it. Probably since we've determined that it was birth control pills that killed my sex drive. (I've since gone off them altogether.)

This was also a topic on a woman-only mailing list I'm on (which is where I first heard of it), and it was declared that the 'dipping the scrotum in hot water' method of temporary sterilization is utter bunk. Men produce sperm almost constantly, so those killed by the heat would be quickly replaced. And, even if you had a guy willing to scald his sack, the contraceptive effect would more likely be a result of the pain and discomfort.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

Pamela: The paper I found didn't make it sound quite that bad...I'll quote the appropriate bits:

These methods derive their effectiveness from the simple fact that the testes must be several degrees cooler than normal body temperature in order to maintain proper spermatogenesis. Since men with high fevers are infertile until they are well again, newborns will then be more likely to have healthy fathers, thus increasing infant survival rate.

The body conveniently provides cooling by enclosing the testes in the scrotum. The scrotum performs a twofold function by keeping the testes outside the body wall and by creating a heat exchange, much like the one in the coils of a modern refrigerator, between incoming and outgoing blood vessels. When this twofold function is impeded by the wearing of tight jockey shorts (as many advice columnists have warned their readers), by high environmental temperatures, or by one of the four methods presented here, fertility will be impaired.

Along with reducing count, heat reduces ability to fertilize. This is an important factor to remember for researchers who are accustomed to using azoospermia as their only acceptable goal.

Voegeli's program for temporary sterilization is as follows: "A man sits in a [shallow or testes-only] bath of 116 degrees Fahrenheit for forty-five minutes daily for three weeks. Six months of sterility results, after which normal fertility returns. For longer sterility, the treatment is repeated" Although some men could support temperatures up to 125 degrees, water at 116 degrees Fahrenheit was found to reliably produce at least six months of sterility.

I'm not entirely sure as to how-hot-is-too-hot, male-wise (we have a spa at home, so I'm used to hot), but it sounded like the goal was to make him infertile more than lowering the sperm count down to nothing. And that high fever bit is really interesting.

But I'm not a scientist. Jen Wade? Anyone else? Any thoughts as to whether or not this is crap?

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

I don't know if it's crap, because they're not very explicit about how successful the method was. I suspect it is crap, just because the paper came out a while ago, and it should have been very easy and cheap to develop the method for the market if it actually worked.

It does seem that it would be difficult to ensure that all sperm were killed, since as someone else mentioned, men produce sperm constantly and there is A LOT of variation among individuals in sperm count. I think this is the central reason why male birth control is considered to be more difficult to develop than female birth control

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

Now, this could be completely incorrect, and I haven't been able to find a cite to bolster this bit of potential rumormongering, so I'm handing out a grain of salt to everyone, but. . .

I believe that during Desmond Morris' The Human Sexes, he indicated that the sperm in a man's ejaculate today was actually formed in his testes as long as 60 days ago. If that -is- the case, I don't see how the scalded testes method could work.

But, as I said, that could very well NOT be the case, so take that for whatever it's worth. :)

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

Actually, the long sperm shelf-life would actually make the method work better, and not worse because it's more likely that the sperm would be around during the period of sperm-killing heat. But as I said, I'm skeptical anyway.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2000

I'm completely unable to think outside the box, which is my grand downfall. I was thinking. . .

Bob goes and gets his sac scalded. Bob goes home and has sex with his wife. Even if this theoretical sac scalding method works, it won't be effective for at least sixty days. Bob's family just grew by one.

But now that I look at how the method as writ, providing nobody was telling these guys they were immediately protected, the sixty days thing does mean it would work better.

Not that I'm saying it works at all. :))

-- Anonymous, July 26, 2000

Ok, I'm probably just off again because I don't have much scientific knowledge and my scientist friends aren't available to ask, but I thought the goal with the water um, to NOT try to kill all of the sperm. I think that sounds very difficult to do. But making the little boogers infertile somehow sounds like a better goal to chase.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000

Yeah, the hot water would kill some sperm outright and just weaken others. It's probably safer if you kill them all, though, because otherwise there's a chance that they might still work, right? Also, you don't want to have a messed-up sperm actually fertilize the egg, because then you can end up with a messed-up baby. That's one of the main reasons why ejaculate contains millions of sperm: so the fittest sperm will outswim all the others and prevail. Anyway, the bottom line is that men have a lot of sperm, they make sperm constantly, and it's really tough to make sure you've disabled every last one of them.

With women, they usually only produce one mature egg per month, so it's an easier target.

-- Anonymous, July 27, 2000