Women's prayers have been answered: it may soon be men's turn to go on 'the Pill'. Lucy Atkins reports
We have come some way since sheep's bladder condoms, but men's contraceptive options are still pretty basic. Not counting one Chinese invention - a small electronic device worn in the underpants that causes infertility for a month after a current is switched on briefly - it is still down to the old favourites: abstinence, coitus interruptus, condoms or vasectomy.
None is wholly reliable - my son is living proof. But now scientists at the Anzac Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, have come up with a completely effective alternative.
Previously, the best effort was a male Pill that last year proved 93 per cent effective, so the Australian study is a breakthrough. It is the first such trial using real couples. The treatment is a combination of an abdominal implant containing testosterone, which has to be replaced every four months, and a three-monthly injection of the drug from female contraceptive injections, to switch off two hormones that stimulate sperm production.
Prof David Handelsman, who led the research, once wrote that for male contraception the central problem is that "reversible methods are not reliable and the reliable method is not reversible". This trial, he says, "shows the way for a final product to be a single injection containing testosterone and a progestin which will easily be given by local doctors on a three-four monthly basis and still maintain male sexual health".
Unfortunately, you - or your partner - won't be popping to the doc's tomorrow for your fix. More trials are needed and pharmaceutical companies have still to develop a marketable treatment. And there is industry scepticism about its appeal.
But Dr Richard Anderson, a specialist in reproductive medicine at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, in Scotland, says the Australian study is an important step. Indeed, his team is completing an implant-based study of its own - "different drug, same idea" - which has also, he says, proved 100 per cent effective. So it seems that it is now possible to switch off the hormones that stimulate sperm production without unpleasant side effects. And for the first time the treatment is reversible.
The latter point is important. Many men would not want to neutralise their testes for ever. Anderson says these trials are fully reversible, although it "can take a bit of time - a few months - for sperm production to be back to normal, because it normally takes two and a half months, from start to finish, for the body to produce a fully formed sperm".
Another major challenge in male contraception is testosterone levels. "When you switch off the two key reproductive hormones," Anderson explains, "you also, unavoidably, stop testosterone production." You might think this could help avoid world wars and fights when the bars turn out, but a man without testosterone would, says Anderson, "feel very unhealthy indeed". The key is to replace testosterone at "normal" levels.
The Australians reported virtually no side effects - and many of the men in Sydney said their sex drives had improved. That generations of women have suffered weight gain, depression, nausea and an increased risk of blood clots and strokes in the name of planned parenthood surely puts this bonus into perspective.
Tony Kerridge of Marie Stopes International says, "this is a great advance," mainly because "it broadens the options for men to take responsibility". That alone is probably enough to persuade many women to lobby a pharmaceutical company or two. ...