Why We Can't Have the Male Pill (bloomberg.com) 347
Reader joshtops shares a report: For years, headlines have promised an imminent breakthrough in male contraception. Time and again, these efforts have fallen short. Last October, for instance, researchers reported that a hormone cocktail they'd been testing curbed sperm production and prevented pregnancies. But they'd had to halt the study early because men were reporting troubling side effects, including mood changes and depression. "The joke in the field is that the male contraceptive has been five years away for the last 40 years," says John Amory, a research physician at the University of Washington School of Medicine who has been working on the challenge for two decades. A new form of male birth control would be a public-health triumph and could snag a significant piece of the contraceptive market -- which is expected to surpass $33 billion by 2023, according to research firm Global Market Insights Inc -- or possibly expand it further. In a 2002 German survey of 9,000 men in nine countries, including Brazil, France, Germany, Mexico, and the U.S., more than 55 percent of the respondents said they'd be willing to use a new form of male birth control. A later study by Johns Hopkins University estimated that the demand could yield 44 million customers in those nine countries alone. And yet major pharmaceutical companies have mostly abandoned the chase.
Hormones are nasty things to screw with... (Score:5, Informative)
The Pill generally works for most women (and in some cases helps them stay 'regular'), a not-insubstantial number cannot go near the things without causing massive problems (irritability, fertility issues later down the road, etc). That said, it's fairly predictable, and you're not introducing anything more than just more hormones at the right times.
It's tougher with men, since we don't have predictable cycles to monkey with (sperm production is more or less constant until the guy is well past old age), unlike eggs (which are already present at birth), sperm is made on-demand, and various hormonal interdependencies with brain chemistry is likely way more complex.
Re:Hormones are nasty things to screw with... (Score:5, Funny)
We don't really need a pill that blocks sperm, we just need a pill that alters your DNA enough to make you fail a paternity test.
Re:Hormones are nasty things to screw with... (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny that, you don't have to be the biological father to pay child support. http://clementlaw.com/child-su... [clementlaw.com]
Even if the woman lies about birth control you are still liable. http://www.kidspot.com.au/birt... [kidspot.com.au]?
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Funny that, you don't have to be the biological father to pay child support.
While I don't disagree it sucks for the dude involved, being forced to pay for a child that is not his, I want to point out a couple of things about this case: Based on the court doc, they were married in 96, under two years later the kid was born, they weren't divorced until 2001. That would lead me to believe that for 3 years he raised the child as his own. The 2001 divorce filings "incorporated a revised marital settlement agreement acknowledging Richard as the father of the couple’s minor child
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I think the take away is ANAL. The sex act not the acronym.
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They have these little rubber thingies that you put on banannas to stop women from getting pregnant
I got some bad news for you. [babycenter.com]
btw, men do it too. Being an ass hole isn't limited to one gender.
Re:Hormones are nasty things to screw with... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if the woman lies about birth control you are still liable.
Yeah - it's called being responsible. Why trust what someone else tells you?
So if not being fooled is the fool's responsibility, why do we have laws against fraud?
Re:Hormones are nasty things to screw with... (Score:4, Insightful)
We have birth control, morning after pills, and abortion. The argument that we can't require women to take the absolutely minimal risk associated with the morning after pill or an abortion or even carry to term if the father doesn't consent to an abortion is a weak one when we require individuals to risk death just to determine if their blood alcohol level is too high. The current system of treating a pregnant woman as the patient rather than the fetus which is 50% part of the fathers body is unjustifiable. Keeping paternity testing as taboo rather than standard and automatic procedure during pregnancy to establish fatherhood as soon as possible is unjustifiable now that it can be done early and as simply as establishing gender with a 99.9% reliable bloodtest from the mother.
Even if you aren't willing to require minimal and reasonable levels of accommodation from women to provide something approaching equitable rights for expecting fathers, given that pro-creation is the least common motive for intercourse the father should at least have the right to waive parental responsibility while an abortion is still possible and later if the mother was negligent and didn't inform him during that time. In the case of rape the attacker should lose all related rights obviously, a man who rapes a woman has no rights to a resulting fetus and the same if a woman rapes a man and gets pregnant, she loses her rights and must go along with whatever decisions.
Saying it is a woman's body it impacts and so it is all her decision ignores that the fetus is NOT part of her body any more than a piece of stolen jewelry she swallows. It ignores that carrying and birthing or the risks of outpatient abortion are the least of the risks, suffering, and responsibility that comes with a child. Are we really going to say it is okay for a woman to use her innate physical womb to take total control of lifelong decisions that impact another person at least as much as themselves? How can we reconcile that with the way we treat men who are even slightly assertive because women might fear the physical advantages they theoretically could take advantage of?
Women make up about 60% of the population in the United States. They hold so much power in our society they were able to push through a constitution amendment (prohibition) that men opposed even when they didn't have suffrage. They make up 60% of the potential voters and have an even disproportionately greater representation at the polls. Politically we pretend women are disadvantaged because they have the political and social power to push that standard when in reality they hold almost all of the actual power and our policies and laws are all designed to give them all the advantages while guaranteeing no advantage can ever be given to males.
Re:Hormones are nasty things to screw with... (Score:4, Interesting)
It is the woman's body, which is why it's her decision. Whether the developing proto-child is her body or not, it has to ride around in her body, and it's therefore her decision. There is plenty of medical legal precedent.
It seems reasonable to me that the man should bear reduced (or even zero, depending on the case) personal financial burden if he can somehow prove that he was lied to about birth control status for the purpose of conception. But that's about as far as that reasonably goes.
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It IS my body, which iS why it's my decision whether I risk it by allowing them to take my blood to determine if I'm intoxicated... Oh wait, no, no I actually it has been determined that my right to the sanctity of my body is outweighed by the rights of others. The fundamental rights of 40% of our population with regard to the single most important thing in any parents life is a pretty damn huge thing to weigh against the risks of carrying a baby or
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I agree with you, condoms so significantly reduce feeling and there is nothing wrong with enjoying that feeling for what it is...
But all that I posted was said in the context of what the GP posted. If you want to enjoy sex but also don't want pregnancy or STDs then you can either use a condom or find some other method to avoid those things, such as finding someone you trust to do it with or doing stuff other than just penetration to heighten the enjoyment.
What you can't do is what this person wants, which i
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No way dude. You want 100% guaranteed birth control, you create an inhaler that can simulate orgasm. One snort and you are orgasming long and hard, no muss, no fuss, the end of STDs and rape. Of course getting people to stop using it might be a bit trickier ;D.
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Yeah, our gynocentric society is really keeping all the womens down despite our entire civilization being built around "Women are Wonderful"...
Get fucked.
Says no one who has ever been in a corporate board meeting and noticed the centers of power are all under MALE control!
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The reason that male contraceptives cause depression is easily understood - both sexes need a sufficient quantity of one or the other of the sex steroid hormones - either testosterone or estrogen. This is why drugs such as dutasteride (to treat prostate cancer by dropping endogenous testosterone) come with warnings because they can cause depression and suicidal ideation.
One option is for the woman to sneak sufficient quantities of estrogen in the man's food (known as medical or chemical castration), same
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There's also the fact the consequences of pregnancy hit women more immediately and personally, so they're wiling to put up with more to get birth control.
Fundamental problems, both physical and monetarily (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah it's also cost/benefit.
If you get pregnant you're in a risky medical condition. The pill might put you at risk, but you're avoiding a different risk. For the male pill you're taking someone who is in a perfectly safe medical condition and putting them in a risky medical condition with no direct benefit to the individual.
It's a stickier ethics question than the slam dunk case for female contraceptive pills.
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Err....paternity suits, and having to be associated with this one woman and kid for 18 years can be a huge, long term, chronic health threat (mental, physical and financial).
Health risk by law...
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Female hormonal birth control can cause serious and even deadly side effects, however they are acceptable in women because Pregnancy carries far higher health risks for women, especially older ones. For males such side effects are very problematic because men don't face any additional health dangers if they do not use contraceptives
That's not how it works are all. In fact, it's somewhat worse: When the Pill got through testing, all of the side effects were considered perfectly acceptable in general. Not in a 'because pregnancy is more risky' sense, but in a flat-out 'because we do not actually give two fucks' sense...which should be a hint as to why the rules got tightened, too. (Nearly all the rounds of the FDA's rules getting tightened can be traced back to it being realized that they're fucking people over; the one exception is
Or, you know, the working alternative - CONDOMS (Score:3, Informative)
A pill doesn't solve all the problems with sex, just birth control.
A condom isn't perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than a non-existant pill with the added benefit of preventing STDs.
I'm disappointed that the male contraceptive that basically glued the vas deferens closed but could be dissolved by another solvent hasn't taken off: https://wired.com/2011/04/ff_vasectomy/
Re:Or, you know, the working alternative - CONDOMS (Score:5, Insightful)
A pill doesn't solve all the problems with sex, just birth control. A condom isn't perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than a non-existant pill with the added benefit of preventing STDs.
I'm disappointed that the male contraceptive that basically glued the vas deferens closed but could be dissolved by another solvent hasn't taken off: https://wired.com/2011/04/ff_v... [wired.com]
Birth control is not just for one night stands. Sometimes wedded couples decide they have enough kids at whatever number they have and would like birth control that doesn't make the wife throw up and allows them to have sex. A LOT of married men would gladly take birth control over expensive constant buying of condoms.
Re:Or, you know, the working alternative - CONDOMS (Score:5, Informative)
Birth control is not just for one night stands. Sometimes wedded couples decide they have enough kids at whatever number they have and would like birth control that doesn't make the wife throw up and allows them to have sex. A LOT of married men would gladly take birth control over expensive constant buying of condoms.
And they all have that option already: a vasectomy.
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For me at least, the ability to change my mind is why I am partial to the idea of male BC. When I am a little older or at least certain on the permanency of no children then a vasectomy makes more sense.
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A LOT of married men would gladly take birth control over expensive constant buying of condoms.
Married men have sex enough that the purchase of condoms is constant and expensive. Whahaha!!!
Seriously, though. It takes a day at the doctor's office and a weekend of holding frozen peas in your crotch. I made the decision after two.
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I'm guessing that for a man who is circumcised, and who already lost most of his sensitivity, a condom doesn't make much difference, but for me the condom cuts far too much sexual pleasure. I prefer masturbation (and obviously a blow job) to having sex with a condom.
Of course, the best solution would be for society to realize that it's women who get pregnant, not men, and that it's obviously their body, their choice, and therefore their responsibility, but society doesn't like the idea that women should be
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Of course, the best solution would be for society to realize that it's women who get pregnant, not men, and that it's obviously their body, their choice, and therefore their responsibility, but society doesn't like the idea that women should be responsible for their body.
I know you're just trolling... but for the record. Damn right, if you get someone pregnant you're 50% responsible and better be prepared to take ownership of that child.
If a woman tricks you into getting her pregnant that would suck really bad. I'd much rather have control over my own destiny than leave it up to someone else.
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Vasagel ( https://www.parsemus.org/proje [parsemus.org]... [parsemus.org] ) is pretty far along, with human trials expected in 2018. It's shown good efficacy and reversibility in animal studies already.
RISUG, which uses a different polymer, has been in human trials in India for more than a decade, with good results and no serious side effects. It's currently in Phase II trials there, which is the last step before being available by prescription.
Most of the information on RISUG is either very superficial or very dense, but
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I'm disappointed that the male contraceptive that basically glued the vas deferens closed but could be dissolved by another solvent hasn't taken off
Is that because you've never heard of retrograde ejaculation? Personally, I would be happy if that never happened to me again.
Let's do the math (Score:2, Interesting)
I would think it's far more prudent (and effective) to kill one egg than a gazillion sperm.
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Oops, I meant some assholes, not people.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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There are cases in women where starting birth control helped balance out their natural cycles.
Men do not have such natural cycles, and thus, there would be no chance for positive benefit (outside the 'no babies' part).
That said, back when my then-girlfriend-now-wife was uninsured, I wished I could have been the one to take the pill. Would have saved us a crapton of money when we needed it the most (early 20's, just starting out in adulthood).
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But the difference is that women BC tricks the body into being in a normal natural state while male BC is forcing the body through hormones into an unnatural state. This is evident by some women are prescribed by their doctor to be on birth control to help regulate their bodies hormone imbalance.
It reminds me of Addyi (female Viagra) and Viagra. It's biologically easy to get it up via drugs because it's all muscle and blood flow such that Viagra was an accidental side effect to originally help hypertension
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Google "How Much Do Vasectomies Cost" (Score:2, Interesting)
"Vasectomies cost about $350 to $1000 — far less than surgery to sterilize a woman — and many insurance companies will cover the procedure."
How much profit do they think they'll make off these pills?
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Yes, but currently they're not 100% reversible. So they're not a good option for people who aren't done having kids.
Because men would lie "Yeah baby, I'm on the pill" (Score:2, Offtopic)
Woman have a valid reason for BC. Men would lie because we're stupid.
Re:Because men would lie "Yeah baby, I'm on the pi (Score:4, Insightful)
Because women don't lie about being on the pill? I got some bad news for you.
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Because women don't lie about being on the pill? I got some bad news for you.
A responsible adult (man or woman) should be able to take control of their own birth control. They should never have to rely on the other party doing their part- or be in a position where the other party could be misleading them.
Doesn't matter if you're man or woman, it's much better to have your destiny in your own hands.
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Absolutely agree and that is one reason I hope for a day with male BC so that I don't have to make a permanent decision like a vasectomy to take control of my own birth control.
or be in a position where the other party could be misleading them.
This is more difficult because it amounts to; "Trust no one". Being in a relationship, a healthy one at least, is built on some level of trust.
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Woman have a valid reason for BC.
So do men. No-one wants to be lumbered with 18+ years of child support from a one night stand.
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I've heard this before (Score:5, Insightful)
"The joke in the field is that the male contraceptive has been five years away for the last 40 years"
Did anyone else immediately think of nuclear fusion?
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Did anyone else immediately think of nuclear fusion?
Yes. Because that is the exact comparison that researcher in the article was making:
When I was in high school, I thought I was going to become a physicist and work on developing fusion,” Amory says. “Then I started working on this, and now I wonder what we’re going to have first: workable fusion or a male pill?”
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At least with AI the initial goals were hit and our definition changed to some degree. "AI will play chess and win!"... "Ok, it can play chess really really well but that's only because it can see every move and choose the best one not because it is intelligent.".
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Get the AI to design the pill AND fusion and we'll be golden. It's Just That Easy (TM)
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"The joke in the field is that the male contraceptive has been five years away for the last 40 years"
Did anyone else immediately think of nuclear fusion?
Nuclear Fusion seems a bit heavy handed just to achieve a male contraceptive.
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People often forget that corn based fuel ethanol was only supposed to be a bridge to cellulosic, but that was passed during the Bush administration, and yet here we are...
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I think I first heard that joke about AI, maybe 15-20 years ago, and it was an old joke then.
Female biology has an off switch, males do not. (Score:3)
If you already have a basic mechanism to stop fertility in place, it's a lot easier to trigger it on command. Specially when it is designed for external control. It is the fetus that signals the mother's body to switch to pregnancy mode. This makes it a lot easier to find and trigger the chemical pathways that will do the trick.
Males, on the other hand, do not have such mechanism, which makes this much harder to achieve without serious side-effects,
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Contraceptive pills for women piggyback on the existing infertile period: pregnancy and lactation.
Lactation? Women (and men!) can lactate independent of pregnancy.
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harder to clean up...
The alternative... (Score:2, Troll)
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Yes, sleep in a separate bed away from the wife... She has cooties ya' know!
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Yes, sleep in a separate bed away from the wife... She has cooties ya' know!
That's what my parents did — after my mother slept with the barbers from around the corner.
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lol, thanks for the giggle. I was not expecting that one.
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Not really a problem when you don't leave your mom's basement, eh?
I haven't lived with my parents in 25 years.
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Now you're a bad person if you're not hooking up and fucking strangers on the regular.
I come from a very bad family. I had an uncle who took a bucket of lard into the forest, larded up a knothole in a tree and did the deed. Unfortunately, the bees inside the knothole were too thrilled about being come on. My uncle took his wounded pecker home.
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(a) you're a pathological liar and every claim you make about yourself should be treated as attention whoring tall tales or
(b) you are absolutely not a reasonable nor decent person; you're a P.O.S. who will use your family's shameful past in a misguided attempt to entertain strangers on the internet.
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[...] you're a P.O.S. who will use your family's shameful past in a misguided attempt to entertain strangers on the internet.
Memiors is a popular literary category, especially if it involves fucked up families. My favorite memoir — and the template for my own stories — is "Fiction Ruined My Family" [amzn.to] by Jeanne Darst. Her family moved to New York City for her father to write the Great American novel, where her former high society mother became an alcoholic and her father became obsessed with an abortion in the 1930's for a novel that he talked about writing for 30 years. Her worse nightmare came true when she acknowledge
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Perhaps you just don't get the opportunity ......
Plenty of opportunities... just never the right ones.
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A fatty like you can't pretend that celibacy is a matter of self-control.
Right. Because fat people are incapable of self-control. If I can lose 13 pounds in 13 weeks from dieting and exercising, keeping my pants zipped shouldn't be that hard.
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[...] why did the weight loss only kick in in the last 13 weeks, when your story about your current weight and your scale magically changed?
I've been dropping weight for a while. When the gym scales (max weight 350 pounds) stopped "thunking" and two scales gave me different numbers, I got a digital scale [amzn.to] with a 400-pound capacity. I was 370 pounds 13 weeks ago. This morning I weighed 357 pounds.
Yeah, it should be easy - you know, considering you have nobody actually asking you to take your pants off.
I dropped a girlfriend in college because she wanted to have sex with me but didn't want to marry me. That wasn't acceptable in church. My bicycle-riding weight at that time was 325 pounds.
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No matter which way you slice it, you're a liar.
The only part I "lied" about was not mentioning that the gym scales maxed out at 350 pounds. The gym scales thunked and told me I was 350 pounds. That was good enough for me. Weighing 370 pounds didn't surprise me. If I was 400 pounds, I would have severe back pains and I haven't had severe back pains in years. Of course, this is Slashdot and everyone went ape shit over that small detail.
She wasn't a big girl at all [...]
She was Indonesian and went back home after she graduated, where her family made arrangements for her get married to a ni
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Stop posting until Monday morning.
I was planning to take the weekend off.
Your vanity and narcissism compel you to post anyways, you seek attention. Negative, positive, makes no difference as long as we pay attention to you.
ROFL
You can't control that.
I've been posting two dozen or fewer comments and inserting at least one Amazon link per day for the last several weeks. I also took last weekend off from posting on Slashdot.
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A drunk woman might fall on your penis one day, and then what will you do?
Duck and roll to safety.
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So I'm not sure why you would offer this as a solution.
Zipping your pants is still a very effective way of staying out of trouble.
Hate Facts. (Score:3, Funny)
This article is pure hate fact. We all know the only reason there is no "male" birth control pill is because of the cis-gendered alt-right white nazi patriarchy. Men and women are the same and any differences only exist because of social constructs.
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The least of our concerns. (Score:2)
Perhaps male contraception was a viable issue to address during the boomer generation.
Today, the divorce rate has never been higher. Infidelity(AshleyMadison/IllicitEncounters) and casual sex(Tinder/Grindr) have been turned from sins into products for the hook-up generation. All of this activity going on in the most dangerous STD landscape that has ever existed.
Pill contraception is a one-trick pony, and unwanted pregnancy is the least of our fucking concerns now.
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Perhaps male contraception was a viable issue to address during the boomer generation.
Today, the divorce rate has never been higher.
Divorce rates peaked in the 80's and have been steadily falling for decades now.
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http://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/reso... [bgsu.edu]
Will nobody think of the teetotalers? (Score:2)
As someone who doesn't drink at all, I would quite like this to be researched more. There are a non-trivial number (some millions in the USA alone) of people who don't drink, for one reason or another, and might be interested in a contraceptiv
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I've never been much of a drinker, and I would absolutely give up the few social drinks I have every year in return for otherwise safe male contraception. Hormone-based birth control gets riskier for women as they get older, and around 35 doctors start advising you might want to try something else. As a middle-aged man I'd be fine taking a pill so women don't have to.
And though I could live without it, there's also the possibility (I'm ignorant of the chemistry involved, so until someone who knows advises
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It's a free country, why don't you take on the investment yourself. But I heard that teetotalers are some 2% of the population, so you might find it difficult to profit on such a small market.
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http://www.add-resources.org/half-the-worlds-adults-do-not-drink-alcohol-what-should-the-policy-implications-be.5325474-315773.html
Past year abstainers (lifetime isn't so relevant as you can come off the drug in a day or two).
Doing more digging comes up with the figure of 28% of of-age males had been alcohol abstinent in the previous year in the united states. That's a damn large market.
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Proven solution (Score:2)
Sperm #1: "I'm getting tired swimming. How far is the uterus?"
Sperm #2: "I don't know, We only just passed the tonsils."
We're talking about men right? (Score:2)
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It's not about asking women to trust men, it's about not asking men to trust women.
If each party can see to it on their own that they're not going to make a baby, then nobody has to take anybody's word that they're handling it on their end, and if they're both taking separate precautions the pregnancy prevention is even more effective anyway.
Re: Sweep that under the rug!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Well arent you fucked up. "I dont like these peoples political opinions and who they vote for. So lets prevent them from having kids".
*snaps heels together* Seig Heil !!
Re: Sweep that under the rug!! (Score:2)
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Solve the liberal problem by preventing weak men from reproducing!
They should put it in the water in all the low education red states....
Well arent you fucked up. "I dont like these peoples political opinions and who they vote for. So lets prevent them from having kids".
Wait, which one is messed up? The one that matches your world view, or the one that is opposite of yours?
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Both.
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Nice dehumanization you did there. Remember, it's not murder if their not human. You would fit right in with ze Nazi's.
Re: Sweep that under the rug!! (Score:2)
My comment still stands true.
How about the people that voted for hillary. Im sure by your comment you fit in that croud.
That leaves the 60% that didnt vote to make the states a better place.
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This! (Score:2)
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Ask for a pay cut in 3 years.
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More often than not, you have to keep the standard of living the mother and the child are accustomed. It doesn't matter if you can still afford it or not.
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It' s been practiced for thousands of years. I do it. Just press at the base of the perineum just before ejaculation and voila. Orgasm with no ejaculation.
Yeah... and you know that is far from fool proof... right? There can even be sperm in your pre-ejaculate. You can get someone pregnant without even having an orgasm.
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Hardly a "massive" social turbulence. The number of births where the expected father isn't the real father is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2% (Find your own sources). This wouldn't even be a blip on the radar.
No. It's been measured from 20% to 35%. There are multiple sources for this, I suggest you start with the CDC.
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Hardly a "massive" social turbulence. The number of births where the expected father isn't the real father is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2% (Find your own sources). This wouldn't even be a blip on the radar.
No. It's been measured from 20% to 35%. There are multiple sources for this, I suggest you start with the CDC.
If memory serves, the higher numbers are specifically for those children for whom paternity testing is done--the 2% number is what I've seen given as predicted for what might be expected with a truly random sample, and usually gets brought up to remind people that the 20%-35% number is better understood as the percentage of men who are actually right in suspecting that the child isn't theirs.