Health - Resources and discussion for everything health-related

2396 readers

661 users here now

Health: physical and mental, individual and public.

Discussions, issues, resources, news, everything.

See the pinned post for a long list of other communities dedicated to health or specific diagnoses. The list is continuously updated.

Nothing here shall be taken as medical or any other kind of professional advice.

Commercial advertising is considered spam and not allowed. If you're not sure, contact mods to ask beforehand.

Linked videos without original description context by OP to initiate healthy, constructive discussions will be removed.

Regular rules of lemmy.world apply. Be civil.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Awa

WhoRoger

RoyalEngineering

122

Male pill: The scientist working on 'progress for humanity' (www.bbc.com)

submitted 11 months ago by MicroWave to c/health

43 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I saw what they did to women

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] stepan 1 points 11 months ago

So it has to do with threshold and relative risk/loss analysis?

[–] stevedidWHAT 3 points 11 months ago

I share sentiments with tessellecta - not so sure we looked at all the features when comparing apples to oranges