# Why are there no male birth control drugs on the market yet? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 6, 2007, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957 "2007-01-06T19:34:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2007, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/21 "2007-01-06T23:18:53Z")
[QUOTE=Operation Ripper] Hehe, how many men since the beginning of time (or birth control) have gotten accidentally pregnant? Zero? I guess that would point to at least all women being less dependable than men when it comes to same 😉 [/QUOTE] The number of men accidentally getting pregnant is expected to double OR EVEN TRIPLE once men are responsible for contraception. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2007, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/22 "2007-01-06T23:37:02Z")
[QUOTE=KidKaos] My actual Question is. Are there technical/medical reasons why a male birth control medication has been more difficult to develop? [/QUOTE] As I’ve always understood it, it’s hard to shut down male fertility without shutting down male sexuality; IIRC many “chemical castration” drugs came from failed attempts at male birth control drugs. I do recall a working drug that was invented years ago, but they never seriously tried to market it because it required daily injections. ---
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2007, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/23 "2007-01-06T23:41:42Z")
[QUOTE=kanicbird] The number of men accidentally getting pregnant is expected to double OR EVEN TRIPLE once men are responsible for contraception. :eek: [/QUOTE] hehehehe, wrong sweety, as long as men are not able to be impregnated, it is always the women’s fault. period. ---
**Author:** ![kimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f0a364/32.png) [@kimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kimera)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/24 "2007-01-07T00:08:34Z")
[QUOTE=Operation Ripper] hehehehe, wrong sweety, as long as men are not able to be impregnated, it is always the women’s fault. period. [/QUOTE] This is incorrect. There are many reasons why a woman can get pregnant on birth control that are not her fault. ---
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/25 "2007-01-07T00:16:00Z")
[QUOTE=kimera] This is incorrect. There are many reasons why a woman can get pregnant on birth control that are not her fault. [/QUOTE] Pfft, of course, didn’t think we were delving into rape, etc., just generalities of birth control, criminy. ---
**Author:** ![Powder\_Blue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/858c86/32.png) [@Powder\_Blue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powder_Blue)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/26 "2007-01-07T00:24:33Z")
It wouldn’t be very hard to come up with male birth control, but no one has really tried because it’s obvious there wouldn’t be a market for it. Many (though not all) men would be uncomfortable taking it because decreasing their fertility would be viewed as a threat to their masculinity. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/27 "2007-01-07T00:24:31Z")
[QUOTE=Operation Ripper] hehehehe, wrong sweety, as long as men are not able to be impregnated, it is always the women’s fault. period. [/QUOTE] No, if you can arrange for a period, you have _probably_ eliminated the pregnancy. At any rate, despite the carping (unseemly in this Forum), the failure to (yet) develop a male contraceptive pill has, as noted by the more serious folks near the beginning of the thread, very little to do with who would or would not be sufficiently responsible to use it and nearly everything to do with the _relative_ ease with which hormonal manipulation can be employed to create a female contraceptive in contrast to the more difficult issues of preventing sperm production or delivery. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/28 "2007-01-07T00:29:28Z")
[QUOTE=Powder Blue] It wouldn’t be very hard to come up with male birth control, but no one has really tried because it’s obvious there wouldn’t be a market for it. Many (though not all) men would be uncomfortable taking it because decreasing their fertility would be viewed as a threat to their masculinity. [/QUOTE] An interesting opinion, but I doubt that there is much evidence to support it. While that rationale does appear to be behind many cases where men have declained to seek permanent surgical solutions (vasectomies), it would seem that many men who did not wish to be held responsible for the procreation of a child on the occasion of a particular event might welcome a method by which they could eliminate the risk of pregnancy while neither incurring a permanent solution nor a barrier solution (condom). Barring actual studies, that would appear to be simply speculation in either direction. ---
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/29 "2007-01-07T00:30:27Z")
[QUOTE=Powder Blue] It wouldn’t be very hard to come up with male birth control, but no one has really tried because it’s obvious there wouldn’t be a market for it. Many (though not all) men would be uncomfortable taking it because decreasing their fertility would be viewed as a threat to their masculinity. [/QUOTE] Good christ, just don’t market it as a “threat to their masculinity,” just that “you won’t ever get some chick pregnant, evah!” Then there would be an immense market for it. Why do all of you think men won’t take meds regularly when just about all men do? christ. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/30 "2007-01-07T00:57:51Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] At any rate, despite the carping (unseemly in this Forum), the failure to (yet) develop a male contraceptive pill has, as noted by the more serious folks near the beginning of the thread, very little to do with who would or would not be sufficiently responsible to use it and nearly everything to do with the relative ease with which hormonal manipulation can be employed to create a female contraceptive in contrast to the more difficult issues of preventing sperm production or delivery. [/QUOTE] **tomndebb** though it seems harder to make a male ‘pill’ due to the reasons you state, I don’t think you can dismiss the financial incentives and disincentives. I still contend that man are less dependable (cite in my post above), and speculate that they are perceived as such. Also I think issues for women, namely the possibility of personally getting pregnant if a mistake is made, will limit the number of women who will depend on another person to prevent herself from getting pregnant when she can take control of that herself. Also **Powder Blue’s** contention that the idea of loss of masculinity may also play a factor. All these can be factors in deciding where to spend research dollars as well as the ease and availability of the alternatives. ---
**Author:** ![Don26](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/edb3f5/32.png) [@Don26](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don26)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/31 "2007-01-07T01:22:26Z")
I doubt a male birth control drug, of any sort, will really catch on. IMHO, part of the reasoning is if she is on the pill and you “have” to use a condom, why take a pill too… ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/32 "2007-01-07T03:09:07Z")
As I recall (sorry, no cite right now) the biggest problem to date has been that every oral contraceptive that reliably controlled sperm production had the unfortunate side effect of causing impotence. Not 1 or 2% incidences, like most side effects, but in an ovewhelming number of the test sample. Not great conspiracies to subjugate women, not indifference to the problem of unwanted pregnancies, but the inability to come up with a pill that let the man be infertile without also being impotent. That’s all. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/33 "2007-01-07T05:01:50Z")
[QUOTE=WhyNot] Men, OTOH, produce sperm whenever there’s enough testosterone, and do it 24/7 [/QUOTE] Nope. We have a different hormone, a pituitary hormone, Spermatotrophic Hormone, or SH. Oh, you didn’t cover that one in the high school endocrinology chapter? Me neither. We also have Interstitial Cell Stimulating Hormone, or ICSH, which stimulates the interstitial cells in the testes to produce testosterone. SH and ICSH are the male analogues of Leutenizing Hormone (LH) and Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH), respectively. Back to the topic at hand, they don’t need to block testosterone, they only need to block SH, and no I don’t know why that’s difficult or problematic. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/34 "2007-01-07T05:14:59Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] Nope. We have a different hormone, a pituitary hormone, Spermatotrophic Hormone, or SH. Oh, you didn’t cover that one in the high school endocrinology chapter? Me neither. We also have Interstitial Cell Stimulating Hormone, or ICSH, which stimulates the interstitial cells in the testes to produce testosterone. SH and ICSH are the male analogues of Leutenizing Hormone (LH) and Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH), respectively. Back to the topic at hand, they don’t need to block testosterone, they only need to block SH, and no I don’t know why that’s difficult or problematic. [/QUOTE] No, I did not know about SH, and I’m not getting any google hits. Could you check the spelling for me? I’m well prepared to believe you, of course, I guess it’s just time for me to brush up on my male reproductive biology, as I’ve only studied female in depth. The point is still the same, though. For women, you simply need to give them more of what their body naturally produces, so the side effects are minimal. For men, you need to BLOCK production of something without causing side effects. It has also been brought to my attention via email that my reference to “the inventor” of the birth control pill as attempting to appease the Catholic church is slightly misleading. There were three men who worked together on the Pill, only one of whom is strongly on the record trying to reconcile hormonal birth control with church teachings: John Rock, the man responsible for clinical trials. Gregory Pinkus and Min-Cheuh Chang, who found the mechanism of the pill, did not, so far as I know, have an opinion made public on the matter. I was referring to John Rock only in my first post. [Here’s one article on his ideas about “natural” birth control and the church.](http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_03_10_a_rock.htm) ---
**Author:** ![space\_fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@space\_fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/space_fish)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/35 "2007-01-07T05:21:41Z")
“yea hunny I took it” _has sex without it and gets girl praggars._ Women are better off trusting themselves. Now as a secondary birth control it’d rock. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/36 "2007-01-07T05:39:17Z")
I see what you mean about no hits for “spermatotrophic hormone” (or “spermatotropic hormone” for that matter, I tried both spellings). [Here](http://www.webmd.com/hw/health_guide_atoz/tn9619.asp) is one link among many where the spermatotrophic effects are described for the hormone in question but where the hormone in question is called “follicle-stimulating hormone” in the male body as well. That’s silly. It aint’ hair follicles we’re talking about here, you know. Us guys don’t _have_ any of the girlie kinds of follicles to stimulate. The text I found said that hormone is called “spermatotrophic hormone” in males, but it could’ve been a way out-of-date text even at the time I read it, which was in the 80s. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/37 "2007-01-07T06:01:34Z")
Thanks for checking, at least I know I’m not going bonkers! And thanks for the link, as well. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/38 "2007-01-07T09:37:11Z")
[QUOTE=Powder Blue] It wouldn’t be very hard to come up with male birth control, but no one has really tried because it’s obvious there wouldn’t be a market for it. Many (though not all) men would be uncomfortable taking it because decreasing their fertility would be viewed as a threat to their masculinity. [/QUOTE] Not really. The other side of this, as I’ve seen on men’s rights websites, is that men desperately need the male pill given the current “if it’s your sperm, it’s your choice, your child and your responsibility” position. Sell it to men as their only defence against conniving women who are supported every step of the way if they wish to shanghai them into fatherhood and child support, and you’re up and running. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/39 "2007-01-07T11:28:54Z")
[QUOTE=Malacandra] Sell it to men as their only defence against conniving women who are supported every step of the way if they wish to shanghai them into fatherhood and child support, and you’re up and running. [/QUOTE] You are talking about a campaign to change public opinion, which is a very expensive undertaking. A good example is the impotence drugs. They changed the view of impotence from unmanly to one that people will take these medications to increase their performance, pleasing their partners, and even changed the name impotence to ED. So yes it can be done, but as you surely must assume from the constant bombardment of viagra, levetra and ceilas ads that such a campaign is very expensive. ---
**Author:** ![Turek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/turek/32/18782_2.png) [@Turek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turek)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2007, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957/40 "2007-01-07T14:07:02Z")
Yes, we’re ranging into the realm of GD now. [QUOTE=kanicbird] But assuming only one is to take such a pill. If she forgets and has sex she is assuming the risk of pregnancy that comes directly from her actions (or inactions). If the pill is up to him, he forgets and she gets pregnant that comes directly from his action (or inaction). There is a big difference if you change your own life, or your life is changed due to the actions (or inactions) of another party which you had no control of. [/QUOTE] But men face a very similar life-changing risk every time they have sex with a woman who is (according to her) on the pill. And as **Malacandra** stated: > [@malacandra](#): > > men desperately need the male pill given the current “if it’s your sperm, it’s your choice, your child and your responsibility” position. There have been several heated threads on this board regarding sexual responsibility where a fair number of posters have stated just that: regardless of any precautions that were or were not taken with or without you knowing, if you have sex, as a man you should, at the moment of penetration, be prepared for the fact that you might have just created an 18 year responsibility. I think men would be extremely willing to use a pill that gave them a similar measure of security as the women. Even if you accept the premise that women are somehow magically more responsible in regards to taking a daily pill (which I don’t), men are now at a great risk due to the actions or inactions of another person, the woman they’re having sex wiith. While I agree the risk is different, it’s naive to say that they’re at no risk at all and many, many men would be willing and responsible enough to reduce that risk. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-male-birth-control-drugs-on-the-market-yet/386957.md?page=3)