For about a week, media outlets rejoiced in being able to paint men as wimps who couldn’t handle the side effects of male birth control.
A typical headline, such as this one from USA Today, read: “Male birth control study nixed after men can’t handle side effects women face daily.”
It turns out that, yet again, the media rushed to report their preferred narrative and didn’t look into the study. Because if they had, they’d learn that it wasn’t because men couldn’t handle the side effects (just 20 dropped out of more than 300, which is common for any study).
Instead, a committee overseeing the study found that the rate of men who experienced adverse reactions was far too high. Even the liberal Vox pointed out what went wrong.
“The 320 men who participated in the research reported a whopping 1,491 adverse events, and the researchers running the trial determined that 900 of these events were caused by the injectable contraceptive,” wrote Vox’s Julia Belluz.
“Nearly a quarter of participants experienced pain at the injection site, nearly half got acne, more than 20 percent had a mood disorder, 38 percent experienced an increased sexual drive and 15 percent reported muscle pain,” Belluz continued. “Other, rarer side effects included testicular pain, night sweats and confusion.”
In fact, even with the high rate of side effects, the men who participated still said they would use male contraception. Seventy-five percent of the men who participated in the study said they would keep using the contraception method if they could.
The high rates of side effects that men experienced don’t line up with research about female birth control. Yes, women experience many of the side effects the men did, but at much lower rates, according to OB-GYN Jen Gunter.
“These [sic] side effect rate is pretty high with this new study of men when compared with contraception studies for women,” Gunter wrote. “For example and perspective, a study comparing the birth control patch with the pill found a serious adverse event rate of 2 percent. The pill reduces acne for 70 percent of women and in studies with the Mirena IUD the rate of acne is 6.8 percent.”
So no, men weren’t too wimpy to deal with symptoms women deal with every day, because women aren’t dealing with those symptoms every day.
The researchers haven’t given up, however. “Given the efficacy and acceptability of this method, despite side effects, there continues to be a strong rationale for continuing research,” they wrote.
Part of the problem was that most of the adverse reactions were reported from one study site, in Indonesia. It might be worth knowing why that happened, but the researchers wouldn’t speculate.
This isn’t the first time the media have run with a narrative over facts, and it sadly won’t be the last.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
