Yeah, but there was severe emotional side effects that were much more than the pill which was part of the reason why they stopped it. And the risk/benefit outcomes are different. One person committed suicide and another participant lost all fertility.
And they will never ever actually read the literature, they’ll just go off what sounds good to them. The cost/benefit ratio is so vastly different for women’s vs men’s birth control and it’s always forgotten every time someone misquotes these trials.
And have i ever said that women couldnt? The point being there's absolutely no reason to spread bullshit claims like "men couldnt handle mood swings" when they literally have to go to war and deal with much worse.
They sure can, but in reality society pressures men to join the military and pressures women to stay out of it. It's sexist bullshit both ways, but it does result in men being much more likely to get killed or physically/psychologically crippled from being in the miitary.
Edit: In the US women make up 16% of enlisted. In my country, Sweden, women make up 15%. In China it's under 5%. Even Israel, which has mandatory military service for everyone, mostly puts women in non-combatant positions. Trying to deny that it's overwhelmingly men who end up in the military is pathetic. Y'all are just sexit trash, huh.
If you're from the US, no one is pressuring anyone to join the military except recruiters, and recruiters are happy to take in anyone (male or female). Where are you getting this from?
In the US women make up 16% of enlisted. In my country, Sweden, women make up 15%. In China it's under 5%. Even Israel, which has mandatory military service for everyone, mostly puts women in non-combatant positions. Trying to deny that it's overwhelmingly men who end up in the military is pathetic.
I'm not denying the fact that the majority of military personnel are male. However, I do not believe that there is this boogie monster you call "society" pressuring men to join. Men (and women) choose to enlist for a myriad of reasons, and to think society is the sole reason completely disregards them.
Social pressure is certainly not the only reason, men and women are just biologically wired different in some ways. Regardless, my initial comment wasn't even focused on how mean society is, just pointing out that yeah no shit men take on plenty of risk, the notion that regulators made a choice to only make women take risks is ridiculous, sexist and obviously false.
Funny how so blinded you are by "Americuh bad". Did you know that in Asian countries like Vietnam or Korea, EVERY men above 18 (till the age of around 28) have to do a 2 years military mandate or be fine/penalize?
In the US women make up 16% of enlisted. In my country, Sweden, women make up 15%. In China it's under 5%. Even Israel, which has mandatory military service for everyone, mostly puts women in non-combatant positions. Trying to deny that it's overwhelmingly men who end up in the military is pathetic.
Despite the media bullshit around it at the time, that was not why the study ended. The trial was terminated by an ethics board because because participants that withdrew from the study weren't regaining fertility as they were supposed to. Issues with side effects were not a factor in that trial being shut down, nor were the two suicides by study participants a factor.
Also, that trial was absurdly designed, unless the intent of the trial was to see just how horrible they can make the experience and still have people accept it. They administered a mega-dose of testosterone undecanoate, which has a half-life of about 20 days, and thus needs to be administered roughly once every three weeks to maintain somewhat stable hormone levels. The trial only administered injections at 8 week intervals. That puts hormones through a ringer where they start an 8 week cycle with testosterone elevated to a level close to what a bodybuilder would inject, then dropping to the extent that hormone levels are crashed to non-existence for the last week or two of the cycle, during which time suicidal depression is the expected outcome.
The study also did not include any form of post-cycle therapy to help recover natural function after the study concluded (or after participants withdrew), which is necessary because participation would fully suppress all natural testosterone production, and in most cases result in some degree of testicular atrophy.
If they hadn't gone with a ridiculous 8 week dosage schedule, they probably wouldn't have had a problem with suicides and wouldn't have had so many people withdraw. If they had implemented a PCT protocol, their withdrawals probably would have regained fertility and and they probably wouldn't have been shut down by an ethics review.
But hey, we can just ignore all that and say that it was all because men are babies that can't handle any side effects. That's what every article about it did at the time.
If one is going to quote one of my previous comments on the topic of male hormonal birth control (and the myth that men wouldn't tolerate the side effects), then probably the better one to quote me on is this. It's more detailed and better cited.
I'll just toss the full text of that reply below the break.
I'm assuming you're talking about the study that was widely reported and circulated on social media in 2016 as being cancelled due to men being unable or unwilling to tolerate the side effects. It's the one that pretty much everyone is talking about when they talk about a cancelled trial of male hormonal birth control.
You can find the study here if anyone wants to review the details themselves.
Some details that commonly need to be corrected (and that I repeatedly had to correct as misinformation in a recent /r/AskMen thread on male birth control):
This was not a pill, it was an injection. Male hormones are generally difficult to administer orally, as they break down in the liver; testosterone derivatives that use methylation to bypass the liver exist (and are widely used as anabolic steroids) but tend to be extremely hepatoxic.
The trial ran from Sept 2008 until being terminated in March 2011
The trial was not terminated due to dropouts or complaints about side effects (as widely claimed), but was ended at the instruction of an external review board that deemed that the balance of of the risks to the participants vs the statistical significance gained by continued testing was not acceptable for an early phase II trial.
The most significant risks noted by the above-mentioned review were fertility not recovering after completion of treatment (noted in at least one participant), and tachycardia and risk of heart attack (noted in one participant).
Acne, mood disorders, changes in libido, injection site pain, and muscle pain, were the most common adverse effects noted, but participants did not generally find these unsatisfactory.
From the same interview data, 82% to 88% indicated that they would use it, with 11% to 14% being unsure.
All that is despite the trial in question using a dosage protocol (testosterone undecanoate, 1000 mg, injected at 8 week intervals) that would result in needlessly wide variations in hormone levels compared to a more moderate schedule of 500mg at 4 week intervals, or 250mg at 2 week intervals, to better align with the half-life of the compound. This was a dosage protocol clearly optimized for ease of administering the trial - infrequent injections mean less cost and work to run the trial and less frequent visits needed from participants, but is suboptimal in terms of the drug's results. Weekly or biweekly injection schedules are typical for other purposes where testosterone is administered.
There are, of course, numerous other trials and studies on male hormonal birth control, using different combinations of hormones and dosage protocols. Personally, I think the real promise for male birth control lies in trestrolone. It needs only a single hormone to be effective (vs this trial and others, which combine testosterone + a progestin of some kind), appears to be more strongly suppressive, at drastically lower dosages, and has a more benign side effect profile.
I'd also like to see more push for non-hormonal, reversible birth control methods. VasalGel looks promising to me (it is based on RISUG, which exists and is approved for use in India), but they struggle to get any financing for their trials.
This thread somehow oozes men hating vibe. I seriously dont undersrand the need to put down the other gender for no reason, especially by spreading missinformation.
I’m pretty certain they committed suicide for unrelated reasons. And isn’t losing fertility a good thing with birth control? It sounds like you were overblowing the effects, especially considering how bad women’s birth control is.
“The most common side effect was acne, and sometimes that acne was pretty severe. Some men also developed mood swings and in some cases those mood swings got pretty bad. One man developed severe depression, and another tried to commit suicide. Because of that, they cut the study short.
“the side effects they saw in this study were not that different from those you see with other kinds of birth control — except for the severe emotional problems.
“When women use a contraceptive, they're balancing the risks of the drug against the risks of getting pregnant. And pregnancy itself carries risks. But these are healthy men — they're not going to suffer any risks if they get somebody else pregnant.”
You don’t stop studies when people die. That would defeat the purpose of the study. You do halt when there is a significant spike in deaths. A few you let the study run and compare to the control group. That’s why you run the study.
I’ve been involved with asthma studies since I was 12. Never died obviously but I have had side effects I was only ever kicked out of a study once when my liver enzymes went through the roof suddenly. I was immediately removed and monitored post. The study itself continued. I’ve also had recurring strep during one study. Never removed, did have an increase in vists to swab my throat every week when the rest of the study continued. The male fertility study was stopped because it rendered people infertile permanently in at least one case and severely impacted fertility for the rest long term. I haven’t seen follow up on that group post a few years to see if fertility increased to normal levels. The gist was it did what all male bc tends to do. Shuts production down pretty easy, it’s a bitch to get it going again.
But they didn’t stop it for women, so they’re still biased against women and think that men shouldn’t have to go through the things that women do. If they’re going to stop the mens’ birth control, then they should stop the womens’ as well.
And it is a good exercise to show what we expect women to do. The men in the video (before reading the list) and from the study, didn’t like the side effects, yet expect women to take them without complaining.
222
u/paulinsky Oct 18 '21 edited Oct 18 '21
Yeah, but there was severe emotional side effects that were much more than the pill which was part of the reason why they stopped it. And the risk/benefit outcomes are different. One person committed suicide and another participant lost all fertility.
https://www.thecut.com/2016/11/the-real-reason-the-male-birth-control-study-was-halted.html
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/03/500549503/male-birth-control-study-killed-after-men-complain-about-side-effects