Birth control has mainly fallen under the responsibility of women, but that could change — soon.
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00:00Birth control pills should be for men.
00:03It makes more sense to unload the gun
00:05than to shoot out a bulletproof vest.
00:14Birth control for men could be closer than we think.
00:17We are getting closer to the day when men
00:19will have the option of taking a birth control pill.
00:21A possible birth control breakthrough.
00:24The joke in the field has been that
00:26a male contraceptive has been five years away
00:28for the last 35 years.
00:30It's been a long time.
00:38Okay, so apparently male birth control
00:40is like underway, but it's non-hormonal
00:43because they didn't want men to have the same side effects.
00:46And it's like, um,
00:49cause you have like a little bit of side effects.
01:01Both of these have their drawbacks.
01:03Condoms, while fully reversible,
01:05are somewhat intrusive,
01:07and are associated with about a 13% failure rate
01:10over one year of use.
01:12Vasectomies are a highly effective form
01:14of male contraception,
01:16but they require surgery,
01:18and they can be difficult to reverse.
01:20So if you have a male contraceptive,
01:22and you have a female contraceptive,
01:24and you have a male contraceptive,
01:26and you have a female contraceptive,
01:28they can be difficult to reverse.
01:30So they're not considered a fully reversible
01:32method of male contraception.
01:46People often ask,
01:47why do we have female contraceptives,
01:49but not male contraceptives?
01:51Well, there's two reasons.
01:52The first of which is that
01:54men make over a thousand sperm every second,
01:57whereas women make one egg every month.
02:00The second reason is that
02:02women have a period during their reproductive lives,
02:04that is when they're pregnant,
02:06when they're not actively producing eggs,
02:08whereas men don't have an analogous period.
02:11This means that the female contraceptive
02:13works by mimicking pregnancy,
02:15making the woman feel she's pregnant,
02:17so she doesn't produce an egg.
02:27The notion of risk from a male contraceptive
02:41is somewhat novel.
02:43And in thinking about this,
02:46ethicists have proposed
02:48that as long as the risk to the couple is reduced,
02:52that even some serious risks
02:54associated with a male contraceptive,
02:56as long as they are rare,
02:57would be justifiable.
03:05Men in surveys that have been done around the world
03:09have evinced a strong desire
03:11to have the option of a male contraceptive available.
03:14Roughly two-thirds of men, when surveyed,
03:16say that they would be very interested
03:18in using a male method,
03:20as long as it were proven to be safe and effective.
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