I know there are several trials being run right now to develop male contraceptive drugs, but historically, all such methods have been developed to act on the female body. IUD’s, skin implants, oral hormones, etc.
Is it purely because of biological / medical reasons, or are there other reasons people decided to only research female options?
I know men can get a vasectomy, but I am specifically speaking about reversible options of contraception.
In: Biology
Condoms have been around since Antiquity?
There is a very real disparate impact of pregnancy on the female rather over the male. This higher impact makes it a juicier target to solve. Birth control figures highly in the history of feminism.
Birth control pills have only been around since the 1950’s. There are still people alive who grew up in families that was not an option…
This is actually due to a combination of reasons:
1. It’s a much easier process in women than in men. Women usually create one egg a month, and during pregnancy this production stops. With hormones, a woman’s body is tricked into thinking it is pregnant, and so doesn’t develop the egg. However, men don’t have a naturally occurring period of time where they don’t produce sperm. On top of that, men produce much more sperm than women do eggs, so it’s a larger target with a larger margin of error. Even if you eliminate 99% of the sperm, there’s still a lot of sperm left for a possible fertilization event.
2. Birth control for men has had notoriously awful results and/or methods. Injectables worked decently, but nobody wants to use those for obvious reasons (location location location). Pills have been developed before, but they came with an awful lot of side-effects, such as hormonal changes, acne, weight gain, and more, which leads me to:
3. Women’s birth control was made a long time ago, and it has a ton of major side effects. To the point where these side effects might not fly by modern pharmaceutical development standards. But the pill has been on the market for a long time for women, so it’s seen as normal. The pill for men is being held to higher, more modern standards, which has slowed development somewhat.
The last point is somewhat of an inference, but I work in the industry, so it’s not just pure speculation here. It’s based on what I know about industry standards and the like.
There have been ones made for men. Unfortunately they have been a bit too effective for the ones that have worked and ended up making a percent of the rest subjects sterile. It’s just that there are many ways to stop a woman from getting pregnant and only two to stop a man from getting her pregnant. You can either make it so he doesn’t make sperm or the sperm he makes are not viable. You could make it so he doesn’t release any but that’s more surgical. For a woman you can make the egg not release, not implant, not able to be fertilized, not develop a uterine lining, have a period even in spite of implantation. You see how this goes.
A lot of comments touch on the differences in available approach favoring women, and a few touch on the history of sexism in the industry and the more stringent standards that would need to be met for a modern pill replacement.
One more thing worth mentioning is that there’s also a trust issue at play.
The male pill may be valuable in long term committed relationships, but it would probably be a step backwards in more casual circles.
Shifting the responsibility to the person in the relationship with (relatively speaking) the least to lose carries some risk.
The are plenty of situations where male bc would be great, but it’s a relatively small market, which makes it a low priority for pharmaceutical companies – especially considering that there will be an expectation of cost parity with female bc.
The majority of answers are good and informed but if you want it explain like you are five well basically, imagine you have a bottle of coca cola open and a lot of bees start trying to get to it, what would be easier? stoping each bee on it’s own or just putting a cap on the bottle?
We only have one form of drug based birth control for women. We just have different ways of administering those drugs. The release of eggs in females are controlled by hormones on a monthly basis and the drug are just exploiting this which is a fairly easy way to prevent pregnencies. However male ejaculation is not controlled in the same way. So it is not as easy to find a drug that can tap into this control mechanism.
However the most used birth control method is developed for men, the condom. You do also have similar devices for women but they are not as widely used as it is easier to put the protection on the outside of something then to line the inside of something. The other mechanical birth control methods for women works by preventing a fertilized egg from developing further, and needs to be placed where this would happen.
I am not saying that there is no gender bias within this field. If we for example look at castrations, a procedure which is very similar both in men and women, we can clearly see that there is a gender bias in the number of procedures being conducted on each. However the fact that it is easier to stop women from getting pregnent then stopping men from getting them pregnent is still a major factor in this.
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