Beyond Condoms: The Long Quest for Better Male Contraception

I think this is an excellent route to reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions. I'd like to see more support for these products to be created, tested, and made available commercially!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... A_facebook
Beyond Condoms: The Long Quest for a Better Male Contraceptive
For decades new, reliable contraceptives for men have seemed imminent. Why isn't there one available yet?
By Nina Bai | June 14, 2011

The so-close-yet-so-far state of male contraceptive development has persisted in large part because of three serious hurdles: the technical challenges of keeping millions of sperm at bay, the stringent safety standards that a drug intended for long-term use in healthy people must meet, and, ultimately, the question of whether men will use it.

Any sex-ed grad can tell you: the only two effective contraceptives for men today are condoms and vasectomy. Condoms have been around for at least 300 years, with early versions made of animal intestines. On the other hand, surgery to cut the vas deferens (sperm ducts) is nearly foolproof in pregnancy prevention but is usually considered irreversible and tantamount to sterilization. "It's appalling that besides condoms men only have a surgical nonreversible method," says Regine Sitruk-Ware, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Population Council in New York City.

Most of the new alternatives under development are geared toward men in long-term relationships who seek a dependable, reversible form of contraception. For couples in which the woman cannot handle female birth control for whatever reason—in some women, hormonal contraceptives can cause significant side effects such as bleeding, reduced libido and increased cardiovascular risks; IUDs (intrauterine devices) can cause severe cramps; diaphragms can kill spontaneity and require manual insertion—male contraception may be the best or only option. "It's really an unmet need," Sitruk-Ware says.

About half of pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned and half of these end in abortion. An effective male contraceptive might have salutary implications for population growth worldwide, but for William Bremner, who leads the Center for Research in Reproduction and Contraception at the University of Washington (U.W.) in Seattle, the goal is providing options to individual couples. "If people had effective methods and real choices, there would be fewer unwanted children and markedly fewer abortions," he says.

Worthy intentions, notwithstanding, the reality is that funding has been a continual challenge for the field. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) currently provides nearly all of the funding for male contraception research in the U.S.—and for some international studies, too. Researchers agree that for a new contraceptive to come to market, support from pharmaceutical companies is a practical necessity, but interest in the industry has been waning in recent years. Although none have reached clinical trial stage, nonhormonal methods of male contraception are gaining traction.

The most tireless advocate for new male contraceptives may be Elaine Lissner, director of the one-woman operation Male Contraception Information Project , which tries to raise public awareness of nonhormonal male contraceptives.

The risk–benefit analysis for male contraceptives is different from that of female contraceptives because at the end of the day, men are not the ones getting pregnant, Colvard says. For that reason, future male contraceptives may come with incentives other than pregnancy prevention: side benefits such as muscle gain, fat loss and even baldness prevention.