A Welsh scientist working on a new male pill wants to reduce the burden on women of protecting against unwanted pregnancies.
Prof Chris Barratt is leading research on a non-hormonal drug which prevents sperm cells from reaching an egg.
His team at the University of Dundee has received significant funding from the Bill and Melina Gates Foundation.
“It’s been a very poorly researched topic for 40 or 50 years,” Prof Barratt said, but society has changed.
His team’s research could see men given a gel or a pill that would affect the sperm cell, effectively disabling its function.
Instead of targeting the production of sperm, his research focuses on slowing the sperm cells’ swimming action down and making them similar to those in infertile patients.
Part of it is that women are currently using it and taking on all of the risks/consequences from it. Some couples would like the ability to transfer the risk to the other partner (different couples will have different reasons for their choice).
Another thing to note is that regulatory agencies are more strict now than back when there was a focus on birth control for women. Like that thing with alcohol would be banned if it was “invented” today. If a male pill IS approved, it would likely be a lot safer than what women are taking now.
Idk about this specific trial, I’m speaking generally
It’s not really that the regulators have become more strict. Most of the female birth control options would likely be approved today. The issue with male birth control is more the way they assess whether a medication is ‘worth it’ to take.
For women the risk and side effects of birth control are weighted against being pregnant. Since being pregnant is really dangerous, the side effects can be more severe. For example, hormonal bc causes a slight risk of a stroke, however being pregnant causes this risk to go up more. Therefore the risk of the bc is acceptable.
For men there is no such medical benefit to bc, therefore it must have very very little to no side effects to be approved.
So it has to do with threshold and relative risk/loss analysis?
I share sentiments with tessellecta - not so sure we looked at all the features when comparing apples to oranges