First hormone-free male birth control pill enters human trials

Effectiveness and statistics

• Multiple comments correct jokes like “99% effective = three kids a year,” noting contraceptive efficacy is measured as pregnancies per 100 users per year, not per sex act.
• People distinguish “perfect use” vs “typical use” and point out that lab/animal figures won’t map cleanly to real-world use.
• Comparisons are made to female pills, condoms, and withdrawal:
  • Female pills: ~0.3% yearly pregnancy with perfect use (much better than most methods).
  • Condoms: very effective with perfect use, but real-world misuse drives failures.
  • Withdrawal: often dismissed, but some cite high ideal-use effectiveness, with heavy dependence on user behavior.

Gender roles and responsibility

• Strong thread around fairness: women currently shoulder most contraceptive burden and deal with hormonal side effects; a male pill could rebalance this.
• Some argue women “choose” side effects; others counter that progress is precisely about reducing harsh tradeoffs.
• Debate over how much men worry about pregnancy vs women, and whether a partner will trust a man’s claim that he’s on the pill (especially in casual sex).
• “Forced fatherhood” and baby-trapping (e.g., pill swapping, sabotaging contraception) are mentioned, but others stress these scenarios are rare and that similar tactics already exist with female pills or condoms.

Existing and alternative male methods

• Alpha-blockers (e.g., silodosin, tamsulosin) that cause retrograde ejaculation are discussed as non-hormonal male contraception, with reported 90–99% ejaculation suppression but side effects (orthostatic hypotension, “dry” or uncomfortable orgasms).
• Clarifications on physiology: sperm are emitted during the ejaculation phase; pre-ejaculate usually has no sperm unless contaminated from prior ejaculation.
• Vasectomy experiences are shared (sperm persistence for many ejaculations afterward, need to follow doctor’s orders).
• Testosterone and TRT are argued over: some present it as potential contraception; others emphasize poor reliability, fertility risks, and health effects at contraceptive doses.
• Heat-based contraception and neem are mentioned; neem is flagged as hepatotoxic in chronic use.

Mechanism and safety concerns

• The drug is a selective RARα antagonist targeting vitamin A/retinoic acid signaling required for spermatogenesis. Animal data show ~99% prevention of pregnancy and reversible fertility.
• Commenters worry that RARα is involved in wider cell differentiation and apoptosis, with unknown long-term cancer or developmental risks and possible effects on offspring.
• Retinoids’ known teratogenicity raises concern about any drug in that pathway, even if exposure is nominally confined to males.
• Others note this is precisely what early-phase trials are meant to evaluate; no one should assume “no side effects” yet.

Adoption, behavior, and broader issues

• Remembering a daily pill is a practical concern; some propose routines and pill organizers, others admit they’d be unreliable.
• Many foresee combined strategies (male pill + condom, or both partners on pills) for redundancy.
• Some raise concerns about whether blocking sperm production or ejaculation could affect prostate cancer risk, though mechanisms are unclear.
• Side threads dive into abortion ethics, “social contract” arguments, and religious vs secular views on when life begins—highly contested and unresolved in the discussion.