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Speaker 1: you from House top works dot Com. Hey there, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. This is Kristen. Hey, this is Molly. Molly. Uh.
Speaker 1: Birth control has been in some news this week, the
Speaker 1: week that we're recording. The big headline is that the
Speaker 1: Senate passed the foreign in ten billion dollar omnibus bill,
Speaker 1: and all of the earmarks that have gone into it
Speaker 1: had been, you know, controversial news item of the week.
Speaker 1: But one of those earmarks, uh, is a good thing
Speaker 1: for women who are on birth control, and that is
Speaker 1: the Affordable Birth Control Act, Right, I'm tell me about it, Kristen. Well,
Speaker 1: the net net of the Affordable birth Control Act is
Speaker 1: that birth control from health clinics, unity health clinics, and
Speaker 1: college clinics will be cheaper. So that's good. That is good.
Speaker 1: But Kristen, have you heard all these people who you
Speaker 1: know say this part of the bill doesn't help me,
Speaker 1: and this part of the bill doesn't help me. Have
Speaker 1: there been any men who have come out of the
Speaker 1: woodwork and said this part of the bill, this birth
Speaker 1: control part, does not help me. Well, Molly, I cannot
Speaker 1: exactly answer that question because I have not done any
Speaker 1: personal surveys of men I and I haven't heard of
Speaker 1: any men talking about it in the news. But that
Speaker 1: might be because when it comes to birth control, it's
Speaker 1: sort of sort of a woman's thing, right, Women by
Speaker 1: and large more responsible for birth control. And think of
Speaker 1: all the birth control options women have. We've got the pill,
Speaker 1: get the patch, ranks, shots, all sorts of things. But
Speaker 1: what do men have? Christen? Two things? Two things? You got, condoms,
Speaker 1: the old snip snip, sectomy, sectomy um. Not a whole
Speaker 1: lot of options. Yeah, pretty limited. But for years and
Speaker 1: years we've always heard this thing that in five years,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be male birth control in five years, in
Speaker 1: five years, and we're going to talk today about why
Speaker 1: this five years may never come ever. Right, So, birth
Speaker 1: control hit the markets and then you know, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and today around eighteen million American women take it,
Speaker 1: so that that's a pretty heavy burden that women are
Speaker 1: are shouldering for preventing unwanted pregnancies. It's sort of up
Speaker 1: to sort of up to us to decide whether or not,
Speaker 1: you know, that's going to happen because while condoms, you know,
Speaker 1: men can use condoms, but they're not as effective as
Speaker 1: female birth control. Right, Females do have the luxury of
Speaker 1: having birth control options there nine more than nine nine
Speaker 1: percent effective, and men don't have that option. But you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're a marketplace in this country. It seems like
Speaker 1: people should be rushing to the market with something that's
Speaker 1: nine nine percent effective for men. Give men that choice, right,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the progress that's been made, because
Speaker 1: obviously we're a country of entrepreneurs. People tried to do this.
Speaker 1: There have been studies and studies. Oh yeah, I mean sorry, Right,
Speaker 1: As far as research into male birth control, they're really
Speaker 1: two options. You can go the hormonal route as with
Speaker 1: female birth control, or you can go the non hormonal route.
Speaker 1: So the first thing that researchers looked into were hormones
Speaker 1: and specifically testosterone, right, And so this would be first
Speaker 1: I looked at a pill format because what's good for
Speaker 1: the female is good for the mail. If a man
Speaker 1: took a pill of testosterone, what would happen. It would
Speaker 1: shut down their sperm because basically how sperm production works
Speaker 1: in the mail is the testosterone releases the sperm, but
Speaker 1: eventually there's something in the brain that shuts off that
Speaker 1: sperm production, tells the brain there's enough sperm. So if
Speaker 1: you took an excess of testosterone, it would do that.
Speaker 1: It would say constantly to the brain, you have an
Speaker 1: of sperm, don't make anymore. But extra testosterone does not
Speaker 1: have the most pleasant side effects. We're talking acne, weight gain,
Speaker 1: prostate gland growth, and abnormal liver functions. So instead of testosterone,
Speaker 1: they looked to another hormone called progestogen. And if you
Speaker 1: are a woman who takes birth control, this might sound
Speaker 1: familiar to you because it is a hormone also found
Speaker 1: in female birth control, and progestigen kind of the same
Speaker 1: thing as testosterone in uh in men, and in that
Speaker 1: it would shut down sperm production. It also has some
Speaker 1: side effects like shutting down male sexuality altogether, basically just
Speaker 1: creating this really effeminine male that'd be pretty hard to market.
Speaker 1: I think I think so too. Well, Like we said,
Speaker 1: another sort of roundabout form of birth control. So there
Speaker 1: have been studies of trying to mash these together. Could
Speaker 1: you do something where the man got the testosterone but
Speaker 1: then also got the progestigen to kind of counteract, and
Speaker 1: what they were thinking was you would get actually progestigent
Speaker 1: implants and then you would have to go in for
Speaker 1: for shots of testosterone on a regular basis. I mean,
Speaker 1: all right, Molly, let's let's face it, that's kind of
Speaker 1: it's a kind of scary prospect. Implants in your arm
Speaker 1: plus shots as opposed to taking a pill not going
Speaker 1: the same thing. That's hard to market. That's a little
Speaker 1: two time consuming. Um, but a one company, one fart
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company was really looking into this, the reporting a
Speaker 1: lot of research money into it, and it's since kinda disappeared.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll talk about that later. The barriers to
Speaker 1: actually gain these things to the market. But as you
Speaker 1: can see, it's pretty time consuming process for these hormonal things.
Speaker 1: Not to mention that if a mail was on a
Speaker 1: hormonal birth control it would take months and months to
Speaker 1: kick in exactly. Females have the luxury that pretty much
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as you're on the pill for
Speaker 1: a week, they say, you know you're good to go.
Speaker 1: So all right, let's go non hormonal. What can we
Speaker 1: do that doesn't mess with men's bodies the way that
Speaker 1: our hormones do well. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts
Speaker 1: thought that the key to male birth control was something
Speaker 1: called the CS protein, and the c S protein is
Speaker 1: a trigger that causes the tails on sperm to grow
Speaker 1: as they are exiting the penis. Right, So basically, if
Speaker 1: you block the CS protein, you make all these sperm
Speaker 1: bad swimmers. Right, they're not that it doesn't kill the sperm.
Speaker 1: You're still the men are still producing all these millions
Speaker 1: and millions and millions of summer but they just can't
Speaker 1: really go anywhere. They can't go anywhere. They they they're stuck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so good idea, right, I mean we like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't gonna have many side effects like all these hormones.
Speaker 1: But they can't find an enzyme that will block that protein.
Speaker 1: So good idea, but not quite into practice yet. Now.
Speaker 1: Another option that scientists have been going forward studying Kristen
Speaker 1: is uh taking on the immune system. All right, So
Speaker 1: what they do is there's this protein called epen which
Speaker 1: is in the test seas and the epiddymis, and that
Speaker 1: sort of makes the sperm mature and readies them for
Speaker 1: their trip outside the body. And basically what scientists at
Speaker 1: the University of Washington have been able to do is
Speaker 1: to immunize monkeys against epen. So once you have an
Speaker 1: immune response to epen, then you're infertile. Basically, it's a
Speaker 1: temporary kind of you know, cut off of the open
Speaker 1: and then when you stop getting these injections that make
Speaker 1: immune to eppen, you're good to go again. Well, all
Speaker 1: of this sounds all the sounds really great. We've got
Speaker 1: all these hormonal options, these non hormonal options. What do
Speaker 1: we have in the marketplace? Nothing? Nothing, So that's the question.
Speaker 1: The big question is why? What is what has happened? Um?
Speaker 1: According to the pharmaceutical companies, the simplest answer to that
Speaker 1: question is money. They don't have it. They're not going
Speaker 1: to get it for this product. Well, they're just a
Speaker 1: lot of the research funding for male birth control has
Speaker 1: simply been cut off. Um. Like I mentioned before, the
Speaker 1: protestation implants and testosterone shot combo has been totally abandoned
Speaker 1: by the pharmaceutical company that was that was looking into it.
Speaker 1: And they say that they're cutting off the funding because,
Speaker 1: you know, they just don't think that they could sell
Speaker 1: it to men, you know who, you know, none of
Speaker 1: none of these guys are gonna want to have to
Speaker 1: take birth control and essentially render themselves infertile. I disagree, Kristen,
Speaker 1: and I have members on my side. All right. There
Speaker 1: was a study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation that
Speaker 1: said that two thirds of American men would be willing
Speaker 1: to try a pill that would, you know, take the
Speaker 1: burden off their lady friends. Oh so, so it's a mystery.
Speaker 1: It's like we've got one group saying one thing and
Speaker 1: another saying another. Well, we have to I think we
Speaker 1: do have to, uh have to address the fact that
Speaker 1: looking for male birth control option is kind of a
Speaker 1: different animal from looking for female birth control because females,
Speaker 1: we got one egg to tackle every month, all right,
Speaker 1: like clockwork, more or less. Men, what was that number
Speaker 1: that you threw out earlier. Moly million. That's more than
Speaker 1: three times the population of California. Wow, fun fact. And
Speaker 1: that is the number of sperm that a man ejaculates
Speaker 1: every time. That's right, insane. My mind is boggled right now.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of struggling for words. So you can see
Speaker 1: the problem that scientists or epic and so it is
Speaker 1: sort of a monumental study to get this right mix
Speaker 1: of hormones or non hormonal methods the work that block
Speaker 1: that many sperm. So it's a it's a huge it's
Speaker 1: a huge undertaking. Um And well, unfortunately, I guess, or however,
Speaker 1: fortunately or unfortunately, whichever side of the fence you're standing on,
Speaker 1: the funding from pharmaceutical companies is just drying up. But Kristen,
Speaker 1: you know think that if something worked completely like you know,
Speaker 1: we said it would, we would just be at market already.
Speaker 1: But like you know, as you just point out the
Speaker 1: hundred twenty million sperm, yeah, we just haven't had a
Speaker 1: study yet of all these great ideas that's a hundred
Speaker 1: percent effective. And some of the effectiveness studies on male
Speaker 1: birth control the men who worked on it worked one
Speaker 1: percent of the time. Awesome. But at the same time
Speaker 1: they found that around ten to fifteen percent of the
Speaker 1: men taking these forms of birth control were not affected
Speaker 1: at all. And that is a big slice of the pie.
Speaker 1: That's huge. And like you said, if we're dealing at
Speaker 1: the hundred and twenty million sperm, we need something that's
Speaker 1: pretty much a hundred percent effectively. But there are I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that we have to mention a few uh
Speaker 1: sort of renegade, if you will, male birth control options
Speaker 1: that are being developed right now thanks to an article
Speaker 1: in Popular Science magazine. Um, you want me to throw
Speaker 1: out a couple of these, Uh, these kind of interesting
Speaker 1: and slightly futuristic options they're looking at right. I think
Speaker 1: these are things that have come out since the article
Speaker 1: on our site was written. Um, there's a option for
Speaker 1: a sperm plug. These tiny sperm plugs are made from
Speaker 1: the same silicone as artificial joints, and they would basically
Speaker 1: block the sperm from exiting out of the penis on
Speaker 1: their epic journey. Um. Then we've also got remote control.
Speaker 1: You've got let's check this one out. Molly doctor inserts
Speaker 1: a thin piece of silicone embedded with circuits UM, and
Speaker 1: then the circuits convert radio signals to acoustic waves. Then
Speaker 1: UM cause the silicon material to expand and block the sperm.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a souped up version of
Speaker 1: those of those silicone plugs that I just talked about. Well,
Speaker 1: men do love remote controls, uh yeah, but maybe not
Speaker 1: in their penis. And there's something this is my my
Speaker 1: favorite nickname is a drain. Oh it's yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a gel inserted into the penis that scrambles the
Speaker 1: pH level in the sperms all membranes that basically dissolves
Speaker 1: the sperm on their way out. And finally, we have
Speaker 1: an ultrasound that would shut down sperm production for say
Speaker 1: six months or so. Right, you go and get an
Speaker 1: ultrasunate it basically scrambles your insides. So you know, these
Speaker 1: are some more options that I mean, they're in production.
Speaker 1: There's actually a study the Indian government, according to this
Speaker 1: Popular Science article, it's funding a long term study of
Speaker 1: that of that drain o GIL. So keep an eye
Speaker 1: out for that. Maybe we'll see maybe we'll see sperm
Speaker 1: drain o coming out soon. I hope they changed the
Speaker 1: name before that happens. It might yeah, it might be
Speaker 1: better for marketing, but I think until we see these options,
Speaker 1: obviously we're all going to hold on to our birth
Speaker 1: control packs because I'm just gonna leave you with this
Speaker 1: last number, hundred hundred and twenty millions. So if you
Speaker 1: want to learn any more about the dred and twenty
Speaker 1: million sperm and male birth control and female birth control
Speaker 1: and all that birds and bees information, you and check
Speaker 1: out articles on how stuff works dot com, and if
Speaker 1: you'd like to send us a question or comment, you
Speaker 1: can email me and Molly at mom Stuff at how
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