The Never-Quite-There Male Pill

The Never-Quite-There Male Pill

Originally a class assignment (2007)

Side effects of condoms: possible allergic reaction to latex, desensitizing for both partners, friction burn for both partners. Side effect of the oral contraceptive, or The Pill: weight gain, nausea, mood swings, loss of libido, blood clots. Side effects of the contraceptive sponge: possible Toxic Shock Syndrome, not to mention a failure rate of 16 percent, according to the manufacturer of “Today’s Sponge.” The diaphragm, while devoid of side effects besides some vaginal irritation, has an even more abysmal 20 percent failure rate, according to the American Pregnancy Association.

    For supposedly being a liberalized, modern nation when it comes to sex, our country’s contraceptive options are awfully limited and redundant. The contraceptive patch and tri-monthly injections are just The Pill delivered in a different manner. The Sponge is really just a combination of the diaphragm and spermicide, and only came back on the market last year after being gone for 11 years. Condoms are overkill for people in long-term relationships who don’t have to worry about venereal diseases. And don’t even make me bring up the joke that is the vaginal condom.

    There is hope, though. The Dutch pharmaceutical company Organon is working on a male contraceptive, as effective as the female version, if not more, with many fewer side effects. If it comes to market, it could make other contraceptives look as outdated as the rhythm method.

     First, a primer on what the male contraceptive is and isn’t. The drug is a cocktail of hormone blockers and testosterone. The blockers turn the sperm into duds, while the testosterone prevents the loss of libido that the hormone blockers by themselves would induce. However, like pretty much every contraceptive that isn’t a condom, it wouldn’t prevent venereal diseases. The minor side effects include weight gain and possibly acne, although these have almost entirely disappeared from recent clinical studies. A recent MSNBC article says that Food and Drug Administration approval is a scant 5 years away.
    But that’s what they always say. In a 1995 Science News article, Spyros Pavlou, an endocrinologist at Vanderbilt University, was quoted as saying that the male contraceptive will be available “within the next ten years.” More than ten years later, it’s still “coming soon!” Compare that with the The Pill, which was synthesized for the first time in a lab on October 15, 1951, and was approved by the FDA in April of 1961. Viagra first started getting covered in the news in early 1997; it went on sale in April of 1998. Now something like the male contraceptive, much more complicated than something like Viagra, is going to take some time. But here’s the rub: the contraceptive type Pavlou was referring to was a hormone blocker combined with testosterone, the exact same concept being developed today.
    So what’s taking so long?
    Conventional wisdom says that the market wouldn’t support male hormonal contraceptives; women don’t trust men with such a decision and responsibility. However, that opinion doesn’t seem to be present in the general populace. Neil Thompson, a 20 year-old delivery driver from Indianapolis, Indiana, said that for “one nights and bar stuff, nobody trusts anybody,” but says that his girlfriend would trust him with the pill. Kaylee Joergen, a 19 year-old Indiana University student from Bloomington, Indiana, also says that she would trust her boyfriend with taking a male pill, although she was more concerned with reliability. “I don’t want to hope that it works,” she said. She also mentioned a good reason that men would take the pill, “If it meant not using a condom they would [use the male pill].” Thompson said that his biggest concern about using it would be the results of the testing and any possible side effects. He wouldn’t want to end up looking like a “stereotypical nerdy cartoon freak.“ Furthermore, men have plenty to lose from involuntary getting a woman pregnant, and are just as concerned about avoiding such a situation. As Thompson noted, men have to trust women as well. The final stake in the coffin is that in all likelihood, the contraceptive would be first available as an implant in a manner similar to norplant, set and forget. So it would seem that the argument that the market wouldn’t support a male hormonal contraceptive is false.
    But it’s not. While there’s plenty of market for the male contraceptive, it’s not the one pharmaceutical companies are interested in.

    If an extra-terrestrial being who had never encountered American culture before was asked what the most pressing diseases facing earth were based on watching a day of television, he would not answer that it was cancer or AIDS. Rather, he would answer with cholesterol, male-pattern baldness, and erectile dysfunction.
    Pharmaceutical companies, being commercial entities, have decided that the big money is in treating conditions in the middle-aged population that are at best inconveniences, and at worst the fault of the patient in question. Contraceptives, for the fifty plus crowd, are an issue that’s been rendered mute by menopause, vasectomy, inability to fertilize due to age, or some combination of the above. The young people of this nation would want it, but they aren’t willing, or in many case able, to fork over the kind of cash middle-aged people currently are. Thus, Viagra came out with much fanfare, ads, and big profit even within the first month of sales. Compare that to the contraceptive sponge, which slipped back on to the market with barely a murmur. So none of the big pharmaceuticals are working on it (Organon is a relatively small outfit); as of 2000, none of the ten largest pharmaceutical companies were active in male contraceptive research and development.
    According to a 2004 slate.com (which also said the product would be out in 5 years), in the same year the FDA balked on holding trials for the hormonal male contraceptive, due to fears over the 3 month period it takes for men to return to normal fertility after ceasing usage of the drug. While some feminists complained that the FDA’s stalling was due to sexism, given that it takes the same amount of time for women to regain fertility after quitting The Pill, this was also an economic decision. The FDA, closely tied to the pharmaceutical companies, was more worried about the possibilities of lawsuits. As Carl Djerassi, one of the scientists who originally developed The Pill, pointed out in “This Man’s Pill,” the 1960’s and ‘70’s saw a string of lawsuits against manufacturers of The Pill. While most were unsuccessful and had tapered off by the eighties, they incurred lawyers’ fees and taught the industry a lesson. “The keepers of corporate accounts requires little imagination to envisage an even more expensive horror scenario around any prospective male pill―one that a man might take for 30 or 40 years and then blame for his enlarged prostate or his waning libido,” said Djerassi.
    What can be done to overcome this fear? For one, making more people aware of the possibility of a male hormonal contraceptive. Thompson was only aware of a shot version of the male contraceptive, while Joergen, a human sexuality major, didn’t even know of any version of a male contraceptive. If more people know of the male hormonal contraceptive, more people for whom it would be the ideal form of birth control would be demanding it.
    If a male hormonal contraceptive does come on the market, it probably wouldn’t make as big a change as the female version did, but there would be change. For one, it would equalize the birth control playing field and make men be seen as being just as responsible for it as women. It would also allow women to have safe, condom-free sex during their ovulation when they’re wanting it the most, a feeling that’s lessened or not even present when they’re on the female pill. At the most basic level though, it would simply be one more option, which is always a good thing. As Joergen put it, “In a perfect world, we’d all be on the pill.”