Verified by 
Swiss researchers recently discovered an effective male birth control method. It is basically an injection administered every eight weeks that lowers sperm count while the guy is on it. It is nearly as effective as birth control pills for women. The team found that it was 98 percent safe, which is about the same as the effective success rate of the pill (when you include noncompliance).
Despite the importance of the discovery, which was published online this month in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, and despite the fact that many of the participants wanted to continue the birth control injections, the study was put to an end. The reason: some of the men developed mild to moderate depression, mood swings and acne.
As any woman who has ever been on the pill knows, the female birth control pill can have exactly the same effects. Yet no one wants to take these pills off the market on those grounds.
Is this a result of implicit biases or stricter standards for FDA approval (or the European equivalent) now than when the female birth control pill was developed? I am tempted to think that it is a combination of both. The implicit biases point to a common belief set to the effect that it is okay for women to suffer from depression in order to facilitate "unprotected" sex, but not alright for men to suffer.
The problem, though, is that men suffer in other ways, until this type of birth control becomes available. If they don't insist on wearing a condom with their partner, they risk pregnancy, the continuation of which they may have little control over. Wearing a condom is, of course, preferable when intercourse takes place outside of a monogamous relationship in which both parties have been tested for STDs and STIs. However, as we all know, many folks have good intentions and nonetheless end up having unprotected sex in the heat of the moment. It's bad enough that this can lead to incurable diseases. Add to that that you, as a guy, may end up paying child support for eighteen years for a child you were never interested in having in the first place.
If male and female contraception in the form of an injection or a pill are about equally effective and have similar side effects, both ought to be made available to the population, so individuals in the reproductive (or sexually active) age group can make their own decisions about whether they are willing to suffer the side effects of birth control in exchange for reproductive freedom.
Berit "Brit" Brogaard is a co-author of The Superhuman Mind.
