KEY POINTS:
Gentlemen, it's an insult.
There is an entire multimillion-dollar industry out there that won't put money on the odds that men are willing to take responsibility for the number of children they father.
Some guys with big cigars and bigger expense accounts probably sat in a Mad Men-style
office decades ago and sniggered: "A contraceptive pill for men? Forgettaboutit." And we haven't budged since.
Big Pharma is happy as Larry to flood your junk email in-boxes with 50 ads a day touting Viagra to help start the ball rolling. Now, there's a market. But when it comes to controlling the repercussions of that amour, pharmacologically we're stuck in 1962.
A male pill? File that under man-bras and man-mascara. For every article you see touting the newest research to develop a male pill, patch, cream or injection, it's inevitably followed by a little disclaimer that mentions the reality is still five to seven years away.
The only problem is, that refrain has been repeating for more than 40 years now.
That's what happened when Wyeth, Schering and Organon were touting their breathless breakthroughs on the horizon, until they weren't. German drug giant Schering halted its research two years ago after its acquisition by Bayer. Other companies quickly jumped ship and folded their projects too.
The truth is, drug companies still aren't interested enough. For decades, Big Pharma has been skittish, to say the least. There is always the subtext: Men won't take it. Men don't want the risks that women are willing to tolerate. Women are already taking care of birth control in established couples.
Why spend millions splitting the market to men when the women's dollar is already captured? Women won't trust men to take it. Men fear it will affect their sexual performance. It's too expensive to develop. Think of the potential lawsuits. Were these the same list of questions on the Viagra research criteria?
When the pill came into being and revolutionised women's sexual freedom, there was plenty of cause to celebrate. Women hadn't known what it was like not to fear unwanted pregnancy.
Today women have the choice to use dozens of different types of pills, as well as sponges, patches, injections, IUD's and morning-after medications. While men are still stuck in the dark ages of condoms or a Hail Mary [vasectomy being a realistic option only later after a man has had children.]
Amazingly, there hasn't been a viable new form of male contraception for 100 years.
Until Aids crept on to the scene in the 1980s, when both men and women turned to condoms for safety, the domain of birth control had become a woman's job.
Today women take responsibility for contraception in two-thirds of all couples. It is the woman who now largely assumes the health risks behind whatever her choice, from increased risk of some cancers and blood clots with the pill, to infection and ectopic pregnancy from IUDs, on down the line. For my generation, it has always seemed like weighing the least worst evil.
What was once a heralded new freedom 40 years ago has now morphed into a women's problem. Today, adolescent women are taught they even have to carry the condoms, and back it up with whatever else feels safe.
How did we women get from taking control of our sexuality to relinquishing our right to spread the health risks with men?
Why aren't women angry that more money hasn't been put into developing male contraceptive products that are now well within scientific reach?
It would be different if Big Pharma got their 1962-tinged portrait of today's man right, but their own studies tell us otherwise.
A 2005 global survey by Schering of 9000 men from ages 18 to 50, reported that more than half were interested in "new male fertility control", with roughly 40 per cent of American respondents saying they would be willing to use an implant or receive regular injections.
Other surveys done in Cape Town, Edinburgh, Shanghai and Hong Kong put those numbers even higher, at 67 per cent, according to Slate magazine.
There are 100 million female customers for the pill worldwide. Think about what even a fraction of those male numbers would translate into global revenue.
Dr David Handelsman, a leading male contraception researcher from Sydney's ANZAC Institute, told Time Magazine: "The pharmaceutical industry is completely disconnected from the public and medical perceptions of need."
You bet. What's more, we women are suckers for not demanding it decades sooner.
* www.traceybarnett.co.nz
* A belated thanks to Air Tahiti Nui for travel consideration to the US for the Democratic National Convention.
