This must be "male contraception week" in the British media. Following my recent post on vasectomy, The Guardian discusses some ideas for male contraception under investigation. This includes one idea which might be a hard sell:
There are several at various stages of development, with the latest a single-dose pill that produces a "dry orgasm", the slightly eye-watering notion that the man experiences sexual pleasure, but does not produce any semen. ...
Under normal conditions, rhythmic movement of muscles running lengthways along the vas deferens and circular rings of muscle around the tube propel sperm during an ejaculation. But the two drugs [a schizophrenia and blood pressure drug] have the side-effect of shutting down the lengthways muscles. "They relax it," says Amobi. That means the sperm don't go anywhere. Usefully, the effect wears off 12 to 24 hours after taking the pills.
Um, I guess you kind of don't know if it has worked until it is too late. And if it had to be used with a condom for that reason (or for safe sex reasons,) there would be no point in using it at all.
1 comment:
There would be some point as condoms as a means of contraception are nowhere near perfect.
Male pill stories are fairly frequent occurrences - from rapidly failing memory a combination of depo-provera and testosterone works pretty well.
The problem is that men (taken as a whole and in this particular case for probably very good evolutionary reasons) are lying bastards and the sad fact is that women have to take care of their own birth control as a result.
I wonder if the Catholic Church would object - my suspicion is that the Vatican would prefer the pill to take away the pleasure and leave the procreation.
Geoff
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