Shooting Blanks - The Male Pill

There has been new hope with the male birth control pill. A new study confirmed that men who were on this prototype contraceptive were able to regain their normal virility after only a few months off of the pill. That means that the male pill would be both effective and reversible, something that vasectomies and the ever-popular 'pulling out' can't boast. So how does it work?

Here's how the pill works in women. If a woman is not pregnant, the levels of progesterone and estrogen will drop before menstruation and stay low for a while. This allows other hormones like LH and FSH to stimulate both egg development and egg release (ovulation). When you take the pill, you keep both estrogen and progesterone at high levels, preventing ovulation.

The new male pill contains testosterone (or testosterone and a synthetic progesterone mimetic in areas other than Asia). During the course of a day, men have several peaks of LH which immediately cause testosterone levels to peak. At these peak times, testosterone is high enough to drive sperm production. But high testosterone will inhibit LH, perpetuating these waves of hormones. The male pill contains enough testosterone to inhibit LH but not enough to stimulate sperm production. So taking the pill will wipe out the LH peaks for about a day, stopping testosterone peaks as well.


It has been difficult to make a male contraceptive pill becuase it has to work really well in order to be effective. If you inhibit 99% of sperm production, you're still making about 40,000 sperm each day. That's more than enough to fertilize an egg.

Now that the male pill is one step closer to a reality, the real question is whether women will trust men to take it regularly. Would you be confident in a man who's trying to get in your pants saying "It's all good, baby. I'm on the pill"?