The Quest for a Male Pill Is... Hard

摘要

Why is it taking so long to produce a birth-control pill for men? Women make one egg a month, but men make 1,000 sperm eveiy second of eveiy day, from puberty until the day they die. Turning that off is difficult. How does hormone contraception work? If you give a man enough testosterone, the brain will shut down the secretion of gonadotropins, which are the hormones that signal the testes to make sperm. This is why most bodybuilders are infertile, by the way. But it doesn't work in all men.