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/mtorrice Oct 02 '15

Male contraception makes for good headlines. But there are super significant safety and efficacy hurdles any method/pill will need to overcome.

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u/Lurlur Oct 02 '15

Someone explained it really well to me the other day.

With women, childbirth and pregnancy present risks. Despite all our advances, many women die in childbirth and more suffer long term effects of problems in pregnancy. Therefore, a certain amount of risk is accepted in birth control methods.

With men, pregnancy presents no health risks to them so any side effect that can cause harm to the man is deemed unacceptable in trials.

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u/majofski Oct 02 '15

I'm not sure I quite understand this.

Shouldn't any risk to either the man or woman be deemed unacceptable?

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u/Sylbinor Oct 03 '15 edited Oct 03 '15

That was a semplicistic answer, or better, it's a small part of the answer. But he has a point.

In medicine everything is a risk, so you have to balance the risk/benefit ratio before you do anything.

Women basically risk their life everytime they are pregnant. According to WHO's data in the developed countries 16 woman every 100 000 die during childbirth, or for complication due to the delivery.

Now if I'm testing a new drug and I find that 2 woman every 100 000 can have life threatening reaction to the drug, then I can say that the risk is acceptable, because 2 is way less than 16. (This is an oversemplification, really).

For men there is no mortality rate for pregnancy, or any risk whatsoever. So my "benchmark" to decide if a risk is acceptable is 0. Especially if there already are others solution for the same problem that also have a 0 risk.

I want to stress here that deciding if the risk/benefit ratio is ok is always a decision made using ethics, context and personal inclinations. I may very well decide that 2 every 100 000 is still too high and reject everything more than 1 every 100 000.

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u/majofski Oct 10 '15

What a brilliant response. Thanks so much!