Iron Lightning said:
Sir, I respectfully submit that you are not fully correct.
I respectfully restate my submissions and argue for them.
1) Wrong, male sperm cells only last for a few days, if they are not released through ejaculation they will still die and be reabsorbed by the testicles. Therefore, by way of changing the process by which sperm are generated, the male pill has to only "hit" the relevant organs.
This is still talking long term change, over time to a cell that's only there for a short time. The eggs are within the female body for a huge length of time. All the actual "work" takes place inside the female over one cell.
To allegorise, if you don't want any cars within London, do you block off London, close down London or clamp every car outside London?
If there's 20 million cars on the M1 heading there, and you put up a roadblock at the last moment, do you think it'll stop them all?
2) Neither do rapists, I don't think this is a real issue.
You don't think that men saying "Yeah, of course I took it." and then having sex isn't a real issue?
3) To insinuate that men are incapable of remembering to take a pill every three months is quite an inaccurate assertion.
Have you always gone to the dentist everytime?
If I did a straw poll asking the guys if they'd ever forgot something important, I'd be willing to put money on at least 60% saying yes.
4) So 90% of the blokes are hypochondriacs, I have a higher chance of dying every time I step into a car.
90 is a bit low. Given that we're talking about the main reason for their life, at least in some circles, I believe it's certain.
Why, might I ask, do men not have as good a reason to use birth control as women do?
Because men can, and often do, leave for good as soon as they're bored. Also, it can be used as entrapment.
In response to you parenthetical statement, what choice are you referring to?
If your best male friend meets a woman he wants to have sex with out of the blue, do you trust him to delay having sex until he's take the male contraceptive pill and given it enough time to work. While drunk.
If the human trials show no problematic side effects,
Every last drug released has had possible side effects. Viagra can easily kill you, but some guys swallow them like smarties purely to get that last chance at intercourse.
And as for the drugs released without any real side-effects:
Thalidomide, launched by on 1st October 1957, was found to act as an effective tranquiliser and painkiller and was proclaimed a "wonder drug" for insomnia, coughs, colds and headaches. It was also found to be an effective antiemetic which had an inhibitory effect on morning sickness, and so thousands of pregnant women took the drug to relieve their symptoms.
Problem was that the drug also jumped through the placental barrier and thousands suffered. Now, can the Doctors say, with 100% certainty that this sort of thing won't happen again?
Because until then, it's a desperation drug.
I don't claim to know much about biology, or even sex education - given my schooling. I do claim that there's a huge backlog of relevant info on why other methods are more reliable at the moment.
We can hope for an effective male pill, but I don't think it's coming in our lifetime. And if it tastes of curry/lager, so much the better.
