4 ms·
It's a hard problem. I think there's a simple observation that helps explain why it's going to be so hard (the article hints at this without saying it): a healt
by ahh 9y ago
It's a hard problem. I think there's a simple observation that helps explain why it's going to be so hard (the article hints at this without saying it): a healthy adult man is, more or less, fertile. At all times. If a adult man is infertile--if him having sex can't result in pregnancy--there's something at least slightly wrong with him.
By comparison, an adult woman is often infertile--three weeks (ish) out of every month, or whenever she's pregnant, she can't get pregnant.
So it stands to reason that it's harder to produce male hormonal contraceptives: we can (at least sort of) fake healthy-but-infertile states of women, but there are no such states for men; we have to construct one from whole cloth, so to speak, and that's much harder.
- cgb223 9y ago> By comparison, an adult woman is often infertile--three weeks (ish) out of every month, or whenever she's pregnant, she can't get pregnant So you're telling me that I could have unlimited unprotected sex with my partner for three weeks out of every month (assuming we had perfect fertility information about those three weeks) and there would be 0 chance that they would get pregnant...?
- kbsletten 9y agoYes. The problem is nobody has "perfect fertility information". Little flukes in exact timing could change the "safe" days significantly. There's actually a whole bunch of info for couples wanting to do this with multiple ways to track fertility with more or less invasive options.
- chillacy 9y agoYes, this is called the Rhythm Method / natural family planning: http://www.everydayhealth.com/sexual-health/rhythm-method.aspx http://www.everydayhealth.com/sexual-health/rhythm-method.as... Of course the tricky part is having perfect fertility information
- dozzie 9y agoThis method is also called "Vatican roulette".
- true_religion 9y agoVatican roulette has worked for me for over ten years... Or I'm infertile. It's kind of a toss up, but anecdotally I wouldn't rely on it if you wanted frequent sex. All contraception is a probability issue but there's a huge difference between 99% and 80%.
- user5994461 9y agoYou're about to have a very bad surprise if you think women are infertile 3 weeks per month.