There’s the rub... men get it so easy

IT’S CAUSED a few titters over the past couple of days – and many eyebrows have been raised – over the announcement of a groundbreaking new contraceptive for MEN! Headline writers had a field day when they found that it’s a gel that is, wait for it... rubbed on. You can only imagine the double-entendres that hit the newsroom floors as newspapers struggled to keep their front pages clean.

But the truth is that you rub this new gel, daily, on to your arms and legs – and if used regularly it apparently suppresses sperm production.

In Manchester and Edinburgh, they are about to start a two-year trial, and are asking for couples to volunteer and promise that they’ll use it as their only form of birth control, with the men attending monthly clinics to monitor sperm production.

Well, you can’t help but applaud the continuing search for an effective method of contraception for men. It’s been tried before. There was a big fuss about one a few years ago that had to be injected. It didn’t seem to come to anything, just fizzled out.

And we all understand that contraception shouldn’t just be the responsibility of the female. In this enlightened world, we should accept that men ought to play a part in family planning and even that they, too, should muck about with their hormones.

Why should it just be us females? There’s a serious reason too. We know that many women simply cannot take the Pill and experience difficult and distressing reactions to other forms of contraception. But still at present the only effective options for men are condoms and vasectomies. So here we have a major step forward towards men controlling their own fertility in a safe and simple way. Yay! Cause for celebration? I think not.

I don’t know one woman, in a loving relationship or not, who would readily entrust contraception to the man in her bed.

There’s a reason the male contraceptive has never taken off, either in the laboratory or in the social psyche, and that’s because men don’t like taking medication, especially hormones. They don’t like anything they think will affect their virility, and women don’t trust them because at the end of the day, it’s the women who get pregnant.

Until we solve those huge issues – and perhaps they are irresolvable – we’ll never be happy with the idea of the male contraceptive.

OK, so the scientists will also tell you that the reason the male contraceptive has been so slow in development is because it is ultimately a question of mathematics.

It’s harder to eliminate millions of sperm than it is to eliminate an egg or two each month. Women only ovulate

LITTLE DARLING: But would any woman really put her trust in a man?

one or two eggs a month, and men on the other hand are making 1,000 sperm a second. So every time a man is in a baby-making situation, he produces millions. And there are other factors too. Like the fact that pharmaceutical companies haven’t been hugely interested, perhaps because they know their customers wouldn’t be, either.

This one, however, looks promising, though it is still a long way off from being available in your local chemist.

Called NES/T, the gel has been an international project funded by the US National Institute of Health and led by the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute and the University of Washington School of Medicine.

In the UK, work is being done by Saint Mary’s Hospital, part of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, and the University of Edinburgh. They’re committed to finding a hormonal contraceptive for men, and feel they’re nearing a breakthrough.

This gel apparently reduces sperm production to “low or non-existent levels”, doesn’t affect libido, and is, of course, reversible. The gel takes four months to completely halt sperm production. Sperm levels should return to normal about six months after daily treatment ends. In trials, they have apparently seen no nasty side effects.

What? No nasty side effects? No nausea, headaches, breast tenderness or worse? No pills, injections or implants? No humiliating invasive medical examinations? Isn’t it amazing that when they do finally appear to come up with a contraceptive for men, it’s easier to put on than sunscreen?

BRAVO the Fourlanesend Community Primary School in Cornwall which has banned plastic red noses from its fun days and charity events.At first you think, why? What dismal scrooges the teachers must be to have taken such a stand. I mean, the red nose has become iconic in this country, synonymous with altruism and thinking of those less fortunate – an absolute icon for fundraising.(By the way, did you know thatRed Nose Day in New Zealand became the symbol for campaigning against cot death?)But I reckon other schools should follow in the wake of the very brave decision by this little Cornish primary. Because the children had been watching – and discussing – a BBC Blue Planet episode. And they concluded that the red noses, made of single-use plastic, would simply end up in a landfill. So they wrote to Comic Relief and said they’d paint their noses red instead.They even had a rebuke for the charity, saying: “We find it surprising that you are still marketing red plastic foam noses. They are essentially just another form of single-use plastic.”Isn’t it great when the youngsters we’re all trying to influence actually turn around and show us the right way?