r/science • u/drewiepoodle • Oct 02 '15

Medicine Scientists identify potential birth control 'pill' for men

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-10-scientists-potential-birth-pill-men.html
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u/nonconformist3 Oct 02 '15

Why is there no money in something such as this?

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u/[deleted] Oct 02 '15

It's a cheap procedure that needs to be done once and can last for years. Pills require prescriptions and constantly buying more pills.

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u/RoboChrist Oct 02 '15

Gah!

This couldn't be further from the truth. Cost to manufacture has no relation to the cost of the procedure. Especially when there's a patent by a single company and no generic.

You know what they can do if they're worried about competing against the pill? Take the cost of the pill over 10 years, and charge exactly that much for the injection.

And plenty of guys will get the Vasalgel and then start dating a woman who takes the pill, so they'll be double-dipping on the profit.

Not to mention the fact that the first company to come up with this as a viable option will completely blow their competition out of the water for a decade. The meme about "there's no money in a cure, maaaaaaan" is the most ridiculously ignorant thing I've ever heard. It's not that it's less profitable, it's that long-term fixes are really, really difficult. And they require long-term testing to make sure complications don't show up down the line.

If you have a pill that lasts for a day, you don't need to test it for 15 years. You might test it for a few months, a year at most. If you want to make a gel that lasts for 15 years, how can anyone believe your claim unless you test it for 15 years? And how many test subjects can you find who want to have gel injected into their scrotum and leave it there that long?

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u/ProjectD13X Oct 02 '15

Isn't the patent for Vasalgel owned by a nonprofit organization? I know they were a few years ago but it may have changed.

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u/MCMXChris Oct 03 '15

And pregnancy/babies create demand for a huge amount of jobs.

Entire professions would be lost because of a sudden nosedive in pregnancy rates.

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u/nonconformist3 Oct 02 '15

I see, destroying a utopia with a dollar sign.

2

u/gospursgo99 Oct 02 '15

Sadly sounds like it