“Women are Just Better Guinea Pigs,” Esteemed Doctor Says
In 2008, after two years of failing to make a child organically, we learned the doom Kathy had already been feeling for more than a year was justified: I was diagnosed with male-factor infertility. Our only real chance to move forward would be in vitro fertilization. We couldn’t afford it; we couldn’t afford not to do it. One way we tried to work through that diagnosis, our anger, and our options was to start a secret infertility blog, “Less Than a Million.” This post and what comments from 2008 that are attached to it come from that blog.—gb
“Male contraception is a difficult sell to pharmaceutical companies,” explains the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
“It’s taking normal young men without a disease and testing a drug in them for years—that’s an issue,” [Bill Bremner, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington] said. And men aren’t the ones at risk of getting pregnant, which carries its own hazards, which justified testing contraceptives in females. The litigious nature against those in reproductive health and religious opposition are hurdles as well. (My emphasis)
Given Bremner’s research, it surprises me that he would offer such shallow excuses (justly excoriated at Feministing) for the adoption of male birth control. It was hardly necessary to argue that women’s risk of pregnancy was sufficient reason to test the Pill on women. Indeed, women had been prodded and experimented upon for decades without respect to the risk of pregnancy. John Rock, by all indications one of the best clinicians in the United States in the twentieth century, first identified the potential for using progesterone as birth control while he was researching infertility—that is, while he was trying to get women pregnant, not the other way around. He later developed the Pill and, as Malcolm Gladwell explained in 2000, pushed hard for its widespread adoption. Bremner might have more success selling the research he’s conducting if he would spend more time boning up on his history and less time inventing excuses for why his research will fail.
(Via Alex.)
Update: The sentence I emphasized above—in fact, much of the paragraph I quoted—actually paraphrases rather than quotes Bremner. I believe that the excuses are his; however, it is possible that Cherie Black, the Post-Intelligencer reporter, has overemphasized his points.
