– We are always hearing about breakthroughs in male birth control but I never seem to hear about it again. Why is this? Is there a reason why multiple different forms of male birth control never seem to materialize for sale?
In: Biology
The simple answer is it’s much easier to block 1 egg produced monthly than millions of sperm produced continuously.
It takes on average 10-15 years for a drug to go from initial discovery to getting on market. You hear the positive press releases from preliminary findings, but even then there is a long way to go.
The Gel that people referenced here has only been studied in a little over 200 people and it had only been studied in terms of sperm count reduction – after 12 weeks, 86% achieved a predetermined sperm count of 1 million per mL of semen. It hasn’t been studied for decreasing the risk of pregnancy yet and is going to need to be in a much larger study to do so that will take multiple years. If that fails, the company isn’t going to put out a press release stating it didn’t reduce pregnancy rates to a satisfying degree, it’ll just fizzle out and you won’t hear about it again.
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