This year I’m supporting the Male Contraception Initiative to help fund research into non-hormonal male contraceptives.
The rationale for this is:
About 40% of pregnancies worldwide are unintended
There are limited contraceptive options for men
Male contraceptive research is very underfunded and there appear to be significant funding gaps.
Non-hormonal methods may have fewer side effects than hormonal methods.
I got interested in male contraception after reading this post about vasalgel: https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/4gvd40/vasalgel/
Some concerns are:
This research is very speculative and likely to fail
The cost of bringing a new contraceptive market is on the order of $100 million, and higher if you adjust for the cost of all the failures.
This year I’m supporting the Male Contraception Initiative to help fund research into non-hormonal male contraceptives.
The rationale for this is:
About 40% of pregnancies worldwide are unintended
There are limited contraceptive options for men
Male contraceptive research is very underfunded and there appear to be significant funding gaps.
Non-hormonal methods may have fewer side effects than hormonal methods.
I got interested in male contraception after reading this post about vasalgel: https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/4gvd40/vasalgel/
Some concerns are:
This research is very speculative and likely to fail
The cost of bringing a new contraceptive market is on the order of $100 million, and higher if you adjust for the cost of all the failures.