A male contraceptive pill has been in the works for more than three decades now. What's taking so long? Well, from a scientific standpoint, a male pill is much more difficult to develop than the female version. After all, to achieve birth control in a woman, one only need block one egg a month. To do the same in a man would require shutting down each and every of the roughly 100 million sperm that are produced a day. Furthermore, this high degree of effectiveness would have to be achieved with minimal side effects.
In spite of such obstacles, the pharmaceutical industry has been pursuing a male contraceptive aggressively in recent years, driven by the knowledge that men account for nearly a third of the market (even though women have a much wider range of options).
With the recent announcement that the National Institute of Child Health and Development will be assisting federal agencies and drug companies in this field of development, many now expect to see a male pill on the market in the next five years.
Don't expect it to take the form of an actual "pill," however. The general trend in recent research indicates that the first male contraceptive will probably be an implant of female hormones, topped with monthly testosterone injections to offset their side effects.
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