RISUG has been undergoing tests for 15 years in India.  It’s non-hormonal, 100% effective when administered properly, lasts ten years or more, has no known side effects besides minor swelling and soreness for a day or two, can be administered in about fifteen minutes and is basically dirt cheap.  Thing is, nobody’s willing to fund it because corporations can’t make money on it and the government just doesn’t give a shit, which is kind of ridiculous considering they give about 300 million to fight prostate cancer and 625 million to fight breast cancer despite similar numbers of victims.  It’d take less than ten million to bring RISUG to market and pretty much hand basic reproductive rights to every man in the fucking country, but they just don’t care.

It’s being developed in the U.S. by a bloody non-profit.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation was completely willing to give them a whole bunch of money….to try and develop it for women.

A few criticisms…

First I’m always very sceptical of the argument “wonder drug x isn’t being released because corporations won’t make money from it”.  Whilst there may be a  couple of exceptions this argument usually fails and is often peddled by quacks.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the reason a government doesn’t take an interest in this isn’t entirely innocent. However if a pharmaceutical company owns the rights to this treatment they stand to make an extraordinary amount of money. Lets say £100 per injection and 10 million people take it that would be £1bn. The company would probably charge a hell of a lot more than that too until their patent runs out and it would still be excellent value, think how much 10 years worth of condoms would cost.

Now don’t get me wrong, from what I’ve read the treatment sounds EXTREMELY promising but it needs a hell of a lot more testing and I wouldn’t want anybody jumping to the conclusion that this is necessary a wonder drug.

A trial of 250 men is pretty small and more testing needs to be done before it could be considered safe, larger tests have ended in disaster.

I also haven’t been able to find out anything about the methodology of the trials.  For ethical reasons many new drugs and treatments are tested alongside the old method and if they show a large increase in effectiveness compaired to the old method alone they are then they are tested to see how effective they are by themselves. It may well be the case that as a standalone contraception it is only as effective as condoms.

The reversibility of the drug has not been demonstrated on humans yet, it has been shown to be effective on primates (which is an excellent first step) but it needs to be tested on humans before we can claim it is both safe and effective. Thalidomide comes to mind, it was tested extensively on animals without any adverse effects but the result of it being rushed out without adequate human testing caused the biggest disaster in medicine. There are hundreds of other examples of drugs/treatments passing animal tests only to fail at human trials.

If you have any links to more information about risug let me know. I hope it is a success and it does deserve a LOT more funding I just don’t want to jump the gun just yet.

That’s the problem, actually.  Even at $100 per injection, the damn thing lasts ten to fifteen years.  It’s the same reason they keep pushing oral birth control despite IUD’s being safer, more effective and less vulnerable to user error: an IUD costs a couple hundred dollars and then lasts five to ten years, whereas birth control costs several times that every year.  The issue is not that they wouldn’t make direct money off of it though, the issue is that it would instantly destroy the market for oral birth control.  Every man I know would instantly sign up for it just to get their girlfriend off the pill, because oral birth control tends to lower sex drive.  (Bit of a problem, that.)  Especially in today’s culture where men are held responsible for the actions of women regarding children, most men would be proactive about it.

We’re actually seeing the same problem with a couple very promising anti-cancer drugs here in Canada.  University research has shown their effectiveness, and we know for a fact they’re safe because they’ve been being used in similar doses to treat several other conditions for a long time.  However, they can’t be prescribed for cancer without further trials, and since the patents have expired no companies are going to make any money from it and (once again) the government’s not stepping in to provide funding.

It’s not so much that they wouldn’t make some money off of it, it’s that they’d make a hundred bucks off of a man, and then lose twenty-five hundred off of the man’s sex partners over the next ten years.  See the problem?  It would destroy part of their existing market by undercutting themselves, and no amount of money they could make off the injection would make up for the loss of share.  Even at $20/month for hormonal birth control, they’d have to charge over 2k for the injection in order to break even at which point someone would be better off taking a trip to India to get it.

The main reason primate studies are much more relevant for something like RISUG is because it’s not hormonal, nor does it act chemically.  It’s a physical process.  Basically, the question with reversal was “could it be flushed back out again”, and they proved that it could.  Unlike hormones or other chemicals which can have very different effects in different species, we’re talking about physical processes which don’t change in the same way.  Certainly human trials need to be done before it’s marketed as reversible, but the primate trials are more conclusive than for other methods.  The key is that it’s a lot more like a surgical procedure than it is a drug.

I believe that the India trials were done without other birth control, but that infertility was verified by checking sperm before they started to have sex again.  Keep in mind that the Indian regulations regarding trials are somewhat less stringent than here, especially in cases such as these where there isn’t the potential for enormous harm if it fails.

Keep in mind that this stuff has been in Indian trials for literally 25 years or so now.  It’s not exactly new, it’s got a comparatively proven track record and a couple dozen studies behind it.

I’m not saying that this should be being rolled out commercially tomorrow.  However, considering how insanely promising this is, the fact that the research isn’t being funded strikes me as downright ridiculous.  Again, this is something where a couple million government dollars would literally cover it, and they throw that kind of money around like crazy.  I mean, christ, buy one less tank or something so men in your country can have reproductive freedom, or at least know this doesn’t work.

Links here, here and here.

I know it’s easy to get caught up in the “wonder drug” thing, but that’s not the point.  The point is that this has the (at least theoretical) potential to offer the same contraceptive freedom to men that women have had for decades now, with fewer problems of virtually every kind.  It’s being ignored.  It’s being developed by a non-profit because the government that funds seven separate organizations specifically devoted to women’s health (possible including but it might be separate) about $360 million for Planned Parenthood per year.  Once again, ten million dollars would do it.  Hell, five would do it.  We’re talking about somewhere between a thirty-sixth and a seventy-secondth of what they give to PP alone to completely fund this treatment to the market.  In fact, over the last thirty years or so the federal government has spent over $100 billion on female-specific health care, and nowhere near that on male-specific care.  In fact, just between planned parenthood (overwhelmingly spending on women) and breast cancer versus prostate cancer that’s 685 million dollars a year.

I mean, christ.

Sorry, this one’s a bit personal, but the point is that I’m angry the government doesn’t care enough about helping men to hand them a literal drop in the bucket compared to what’s being spent on women for a treatment that might well save them money in the long run.