Originally published in the Guardian on 28 January 1971
Successful trials of a contraceptive pill for men have been carried out on rats in a London hospital medical school and, subject to approval, clinical trials may be carried out within a year.
Professor Denis Lacy, of St Bartholomew's Hospital Zoology Department, said yesterday that discussions were being held on whether to apply for permission from the Scowen Committee on Drug Safety to conduct trials on men. No side effects had been observed in the rats which had been given the pill and Professor Lacy did not expect any side effects in man, not even to the extent of those associated with the female oral contraceptive.
Provided the committee was satisfied, Professor Lacy said he would be looking for volunteers, preferably men whose wives had already been sterilised. The pill, he said, would be a mixture of two hormones designed to ensure that while a man was sterile he would not lose his sex urge and virility.
Research into a pill for men is being carried out by a number of drug manufacturers in Britain. The Family Planning Association said it was "excited" by the possibility of another form of contraception for men but particularly it regarded any new form of contraception as welcome. "There is no one method that suits everyone and the more alternatives the better," Mrs Helene Grahame, assistant director of FPA said. She said the vasectomy operation, which was claiming more interest, was still associated by many men with loss of virility. But at FPA clinics there was now a waiting list for the operation of between two months and two years. "The particular attraction of a male pill," Mrs Grahame said, would possibly be its non-permanence.
At present a vasectomy is irreversible and in many cases a man only made the decision to have one because he was unsatisfied or anxious about existing oral contraceptives for his wife. "But men are also becoming more aware they have a joint responsibility on birth control matters," she added. Professor Lacy has been working in the field on contraception for 12 years. His recent work has been aided by the development of a new electron microscope by Polaren Instruments Ltd of Watford, with the support of the National Research Development Corporation.
[Forty years on, and despite numerous scientific research projects, a safe and effective "male pill" is yet to make it to market. The only two methods of contraception still recommended for men are condoms and vasectomy.]