Contraception. Almost everybody needs it. The current solution of flooding the body with hormones works, but causes side effects.
The pill for men won't make it. My prediction is that we'll have some other non-hormonal contraception within the next 20-30 years, probably invented by a startup that wants to disrupt this billion dollar market.
From what I understand, "they" have already developed this, and trialed it. It worked great, but for many men it had certain undesirable side-effects, and for a very few the side-effects weren't good at all. But for most, it worked well.
The interesting thing? Almost all of the side-effects that were experienced by the men in the study all sounded exactly like the side-effects women experience when they are on "the pill"!
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the reason we don't have a male hormonal-based contraceptive is actually because men can't handle the changes and problems women have been dealing with for decades.
As funny as this anecdote is, the real issue was that it caused a couple of cases of permanent sterility so the scientists were forced to abandon the study.
The whole thing is annoying because I've now seen the whole "lol boys can't handle what girls put themselves through on the pill" from print news, reddit, buzzfeed, my girlfriend's gynecologist, and now hacker news. It would be great if male contraception existed, and lots of men would be fine with the side effects, but permanent sterilization is a whole different ballgame as far as risk factors go.
The difference was the the men in the study were experiencing those side effects at an order of magnitude higher than men do, plus there was huge increase in suicides.
The last time I saw this discussed, there was discussion about whether the drugs caused permanent sterilization for a subset of men, and how large the subset might be.
It's also worth noting that the effects of current birth control on women are bad enough that a decent fraction of women can't use one or more methods. There's still substantial room for improvement on the side effects that women face.
Lots of women benefit from the flood of hormones, but this is slightly off topic. The real reason is that it it is impossible to develop any new drug that will be given to healthy people.
The legal and regulatory system basically makes it a losing proposition to make a new contraceptive - you could give sugar pills to everyone and someone will have a bad reaction and the lawyers will sue you into bankruptcy.
> Lots of women benefit from the flood of hormones, but this is slightly off topic
And many more suffer from side effects that they don't even attribute anymore to hormonal contraceptives after years of intake.
Do you think that daily medication for half of the population is acceptable? Because if so, you could also argue that lots of people might benefit from taking happy pills every day.
Taking medication for every little uncomfort might be more accepted in the US, but it doesn't mean that this is a healthy view of the body and the world.
Well until the regulatory situation is fixed then women of child bearing ages who don’t want to get pregnant have two choices: 1. Avoid sex or 2. Take medication [1]. I am not saying this is a good choice, but that is the only choice currently available.
1. There other forms of contraception, but all come with a significant risk of failure compared to the hormonal contraceptives. As a man I would like to have a reliable form of male contraceptive, but the current regulatory environment makes this impossible to sell.
I don't believe daily medication for something stupid like contraception is the solution. I mean, take a good and hard look at the mechanical aspects of human reproduction. Those tubes for semen are a bottleneck, a single point of failure. They're ripe for disruption in an entirely mechanical way ;)
> implying the pill for women doesn't have equally bad side-effects. But they're more likely to take them, because they're the ones that end up pregnant.
In case it isn't clear: yes the female pill causes depression. It may, also, like the recent male pill, cause suicidal thoughts. However the female pill categorically does not prevent coitus, whereas not having an erection does.
Also, the pill for women was the first product and therefore only had to be better than the alternative. A pill for men would be a substitute to the current one for women and would therefore have to show improvement over that. Investing several billion $ just to end up with a drug that has the same side effect taken by the other gender is not a wise investment. Yes, there's the topic of gender equality, but there are already other alternatives that come with less side effects (but are less convenient).
That's an excellent point. One possible improvement could be control by men of their own reproduction: ie, full contact sex without the possibility of conception if the male does not wish to conceive.
Developing drugs is not just about taking on big pharma, it's about the risk of causing long-term harm or death to innocent people. There are very good reasons why there is such a strict regulation around new drugs. They only exist to avoid repetitions of what happened in the past.
It's easy to be against big pharma, but we shouldn't forget that they improved our lives quite a bit (not associated in any way with a pharma company).
It would be an incredibly tough fight for sure. I guess this can only be won if there's someone with huge resources doing this more for philantrophic reasons than commercial ones.
The pill for men won't make it. My prediction is that we'll have some other non-hormonal contraception within the next 20-30 years, probably invented by a startup that wants to disrupt this billion dollar market.