[0:00]Millions of women across the US could lose their legal right to abortion. This could be the most consequential opinion in decades from the Supreme Court that would overturn Roe versus Wade. Raises questions about the future of Roe versus Wade and what this means for abortion rights in our country. So this is happening in the US right now and lately I've been wondering why the is there not a birth control pill for men. I mean it's 2022. We can make vaccines in like 10 seconds. We send telescopes into space, and we can take photos of things millions of light years away, but yet we still have not figured out how to make it so that I can take a pill and not have a baby when I have sex. I mean, we're kind of trying. Look at this Instagram ad that I got served. It's like a ball sack ultrasound sperm killer pouch device. There's actually an appetite for this. People want it. I pulled all of you. 80% of men are saying that they would be up for taking a birth control pill. So, let's talk about birth control. First let's start with a list of the options you have if you want to have sex and not have a baby. There's like 10 options for women and two for men. Two condoms and vasectomies. Oh, and I guess pulling out question mark. Oh, and of these two, one is notoriously unreliable, and the other one is like permanent. None of these require us to take something on a regular basis, put something in our bodies permanently, or affect our hormones in any way. It's not the 1950s anymore. Why is the burden of birth control still predominately on the partner who carries the pregnancies? We got to the bottom of this through a lot of reporting and I want to show you what the deal is because in this story you will see the dark side of medicine and why some things get studied and why others don't. But you'll also see a bit of hope in the future. Like this is slowly changing. Not fast enough though. Oh, and I'm going to dive into sex ed because the details are kind of fuzzy for me. It's been a while. The human reproductive. Let me let me. The uterus becomes richly supplied with blood to nothing. One sperm succeeds in breaking through. Okay, hold on.
[2:14]Welcome to sex ed class. Okay, we're all adults. I know we know how sex works and things but if you're like me, you kind of don't remember the details. So I just want to quickly go over a couple things that to me as an adult are really relevant to this discussion. First, let's talk about hormones. Hormones are chemicals, but there's so much more than that. So let's think of it as an analogy here. This is your body, and all of the veins and arteries are the internet. This is how stuff gets around. Hormones are like emails that are sent from the managers of the body. All of these glands. The managers are telling different parts of the body what to do to change something, to kick off some certain process or behavior all in the name of keeping the body balanced and regulated and healthy. Everything from digestion to stress to sleep to mood, all of this is dictated by hormones. These emails being sent around your bloodstream in the form of chemicals to tell your body what to do. Okay, so that is hormones. Now, let's talk about how babies are made. If it's fertilized by a male sperm cell, it'll grow into a baby. The doctor lends a helping hand and the new baby meets the outside world. Every month a woman's body managers send out some really important emails. Remember, emails are hormones, we're just going to stick with the analogy, okay? The hormones tell this big bag of eggs to release one of the eggs down this tube so that it can end up here in the uterus. The uterus, which has already received its own set of emails, saying that the egg is on its way and please prepare the place so that it's cozy by putting this nutrient rich lining, like a nice cozy blanket, so that the egg has the best chance of thriving. So the egg finally arrives and hopes that a male sperm will join it so that a baby can start growing for the next 9 months. But if the sperm doesn't arrive on the scene within like this really narrow time period, it's like a day, then the hormone managers send another set of emails saying, too bad, so sad, he didn't show up. We're not reproducing this month. Let's clear all this lining out that we created for the egg and start preparing for next month. They clear it all out, they flush out all this blood lining, while the woman is on her period, and the cycle starts over. Do you see how this entire thing plays out because of very specific instructions that are written and sent by hormones? They cue each step of this process. Okay, but most of the time you just kind of want to have sex and not have this egg and the sperm meet up, right? Even though the body really wants that, you don't necessarily want to have a baby and this is why we invented birth control. The most effective of these is the pill. Don't forget to take your pill. Pause really quick. I just need to tell you something which is one of the questions I get most often is, how do you know so much about all of these random topics like male birth control? The answer is, because I read a lot of books. Actually, no, I don't read a lot of books because I'm super dyslexic and I don't have time to sit and read books. I listen to a lot of audiobooks, which brings me to thanking today's sponsor, which is Audible. This is really easy for me because I've been using Audible for like a decade. For someone who loves information but struggles to read either because it's hard for me to read or because I just don't have time to sit and read, Audible has changed my life. When you subscribe to Audible, you get to choose one title a month of any type of audiobook. You also get unlimited access to their audible originals, which are only available to Audible members. I often just scroll through here and say like, what do I want to listen to for free? There's so much good stuff. Currently listening to an audiobook from one of my favorite science explainers, Bill Bryson. It's called The Body. It's a really well-written science explainer book about the human body and every system. It like gives you a new appreciation for your body. And it allows me to research and learn about new things so I can make videos for all of you. You can try this out for free if you want. You're going to have an entire month free. All you need to do is go to the link in my description. It's audible.com/johnnyharris. Or text Johnny Harris to 500-500 and get signed up for a month of free Audible. Thank you, Audible for supporting this video. Let's dive back in. Okay, most modern methods of birth control work by messing around with the emails being sent around the body. Q the pill. So a woman takes this little pill every day. Hmm, what's the pill? I have a pill. This is the pill. Actually, it's 28 pills because a woman takes this every single day and it changes everything. The pill contains a new batch of emails, or hormones, that override the old instructions and tell the whole system to do something totally different. Announcement for the next 28 days we're under new management. So the new emails are coming down to the ovaries, where all the eggs are, and they're like, hey, guys, just don't do anything this month. You're fine. Just relax. Take a nap. And the ovaries are like, but does that mean we won't get anything done? We're going to be super unproductive. We're like the most important thing for keeping the species alive, and the pills are just like, shh, shh, take a nap. Go to sleep. Okay, here comes another email. This time it's going to the cervix telling it to start making really thick sticky mucus. And the cervix is like, but wait, we make mucus that isn't thick and we actually try to make it so it's perfect so that the sperm can swim upstream and get to the egg. And the pills are just like, shh, shh, just do what you're told. Oh, and uterus, change the lining that you're creating so that it's not very cozy for an egg to survive in case you know, one gets through. And the uterus does, and this is how the pill works. It writes new emails, it sends new hormones to tell this whole system to do something totally different than what it was programmed by evolution to do to keep our species going and it totally works. If you want to have sex and not have a baby, take this pill every day. And there's the downside. You have to take this pill every day, and that comes at a cost. Side Effects. It turns out that changing the hormones that make it so that this doesn't happen, also has some side effects. Because hormones are not isolated to one system. They don't just affect this. You've messed with hormones, you mess with all the systems. It's an interconnected thing that changing the level of one can affect many others. But listen, who am I to talk about this? I've never taken this pill. I've never been on any sort of hormone treatment, so let's talk to people who actually have. I had never had a panic attack before. I rarely had anxiety. When I started taking birth control, literally everything made me anxious. I had very oppressive and debilitating depression to the extent I've never felt before. I would look in the mirror and wouldn't recognize myself. My brain felt like mush. I didn't realize how much it's changing me, how much it affects me, until I stopped taking it. So I only felt real me once I stopped taking the birth control. Definitely the worst part was the emotional toll. I felt like a different person. I was constantly upset. I got angry. I was crying. Because of the pill I developed this giant blood clot inside of my uterus and I had to get it removed. Hormonal birth control was in some ways really awesome but at the same time I didn't have a sex drive and I started birth control before I started having sex. So I really thought that there was something wrong with me. It was a very dark time in my life and when I went to the doctor, I asked if the birth control pill could contribute to that and I was basically laughed at. It is so frustrating to deal with side effects that mess with your mood and with your feelings because it's so easy to just internalize that and to gaslight yourself into thinking that this is just the way you are now. I guess I'm just moody. I guess I'm just grumpy all the time. And it's hard to take a step back and to think, am I going through a hard time or are these side effects for my birth control pill? It was like a roller coaster for 2 years. What you don't know is like, you, when you go off your hormones are crazy. Like, you shed hair like crazy. Like I was pulling out clumps of hair. I was like, is something wrong with me? And you Google it and you're like, oh, no, that's normal. That'll last for like 6 months to a year. I mean, this is a very widespread, well-known, well-documented thing. A study from Denmark found that women who take the pill that has hormones in it are more likely to suffer depression compared to women who don't. And again, this isn't just like once a month, this isn't just like every once in a while. This is every single day you are putting this hormone modifying thing into your body. And is it surprising that some women have really serious effects with this? I mean, the pill is tampering with arguably the most biologically important system we have. Okay, but really quick before you like demonize the pill, the pill is amazing and it's totally safe. 150 million women take it every day and for a lot of women, it actually helps regulate some of their hormones that are off balance. So if you have questions about birth control and hormones, don't listen to a random dude on YouTube, go talk to a healthcare professional. Thank you. I want to get to male birth control eventually. Like that's the reason you clicked on this video. That's the purpose. We're going there. I'm going to explain male birth control. But to get there, we have to understand where this pill came from and the price that women had to pay to get it. And then we can all sit around and ask ourselves, would men be willing to pay that price to get a pill of their own? So let's talk about where this magic pill came from. Well, before playing around with hormones, humans were still trying to have consequence free sex. And they basically had one tool available to them, which was some form of condom. Sometimes it was linen, sometimes it was animal intestines or in Japan they use turtle shells. But wait, what? Turtle shells? Oh, turtle shells. Wow. That's a great fitting turtle shell. What kind of turtle is this? Anyway, this is what they used. Once the material latex was invented, condoms became very cheap and widely available. But you have to understand that for a long time, they weren't trying to not have kids. They were trying to stop diseases from spreading. But you don't get them if you use a condom. Because you know, children are a blessing from above. Why would you want to not have them? Let me see what you have. No. But then women in the modern age, heaven forbid, wanted to have fewer children. But they still wanted to have sex, and unfortunately, a top way of doing that was through dangerous and deadly back alley abortions. So in 1916, this nurse from New York opened a clinic, and the theme of her clinic was birth control, teaching women how not to get pregnant. By the way, this was like super illegal at the time. Because under this law, you couldn't publish anything having to do with sex. So she's totally breaking the law teaching women about sex. Jeez. Scandalous. But she fought back and eventually helped create Planned Parenthood. And it was her who led the charge in creating the pill. The thing that uses hormones to stop reproduction from happening. And in the 60s, this pill would change everything. Equal rights to have a job, to have respect, and not be viewed as a piece of meat. Women have a fundamental right to control their own bodies and to control their own lives. Women could now have autonomy over their bodies. They could go to work and earn money for themselves and decide for themselves when they wanted to have children. She was a hero, a liberator, and she was totally racist. Or at least she spoke about it in a very racist parlance, referring to it as a tool to help quote, the process of weeding out the unfit and preventing the birth of defectives. I mean, that's more than racist. That's called Eugenics, which was a popular pseudo-scientific movement at the time. That was all about breeding a superior race and eradicating the unfit, which these people were able to deem whoever they wanted, or people, people of color, immigrants, people with disabilities, all of them were to be weeded out. So a kind of inconvenient fact in all of this story is that a major motivation for the pill wasn't sexual liberation, but rather it was the overpopulation of the Earth with these unfit races and peoples. But nonetheless, the development of the pill went forward, and they decided to do trials on it to get it ready for market. And where did they turn but Puerto Rico? A place where all problems were blamed on overpopulation.
[14:26]In 1956, contraceptive pills 20 times as strong as the ones used today were first tested among Puerto Rican women who lived in government housing projects. In Puerto Rico, they were already sterilizing women to control the population, and now they were going to test out this new experimental pill. They pitch them like, hey, come do the pill instead of getting sterilized, because they were literally forcing people to get surgery where they tie the tubes and they like make it impossible to have kids. They started giving them the pill. Oh, but they forgot to tell them that they're a part of a trial for a highly experimental drug that was going to mess with their hormones. They were experimenting with us without our knowing what they were doing. One day I took the pill. I felt everything was spinning and almost passed out.
[15:18]All I thought about was, God, take care of my kids! These doctors didn't have their dosing figured out yet. So they were giving women pills that were way more hormonally aggressive than the ones we have today. So these women were experiencing intense side effects, but the doctors running the trial told the New York Times that these side effects were quote, largely psychogenic. Most of them happening because women expect them. 22 women dropped out of the study because of the side effects, and three women died, but their deaths were never investigated. But in the end, the trial was deemed a success. Eventually they dialed in the dosage, and the pill hit the market. And that's how we got the birth control pill. I wish it was a better story. Like I wish there wasn't the whole Eugenics Puerto Rico thing. I wish it was just like some badass feminist was like, we're going to have less kids, and we invented this pill because we can, and we're liberated, but that's just not how it happened. It's a reminder that something so liberating can also be oppressive, and that's just a contradiction we're all going to have to live with because life is complicated. Anyway, today the pill is the most popular birth control method, at least here in the US. I was looking at CDC data. But now we've got other options too, like there's this little T that women can put in their uterus for up to 10 years. And it can either release hormones to kind of do the same thing, or it can be wrapped in copper, which kills sperm. No hormones at all. It's 99% effective and the second most popular form of birth control. And the third most popular is a condom, which of course, doesn't release any hormones and does not get ingested into our bodies. And it is kind of our one birth control method that we have as men. In addition to a vasectomy, like those are our choices. That's what we've got. And that is my question. That is the heart of why I made this video, which is like, why is all of the tampering with the hormones to prevent babies thing a female thing? Why didn't this history happen to men? Why don't we have a pill that sends overwriting emails to our balls or something? Well, of course, there's the obvious unquantifiable reality that the people holding the power and the money and wearing the lab coats have always been men who get to decide what to research and what to focus on. Oh, and that controlling women's bodies has somehow always been normalized and still is. Exhibit A. The draft Supreme Court opinion, showing a majority would overturn Roe versus Wade. Overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade case. Oh, and of course, we live in a society where women are responsible for all things babies. After all, it grows in their uterus. So it's not that surprising to me that the scientists weren't out there recruiting Puerto Rican men to participate in some unethical study about controlling their bodies and what they can and can't do. It's laughable to think about that scenario because it just would never happen. But it would be slightly a cop out if I just left the explanation at structural sexism, which is absolutely a thing, it is real. But there are some other explanations for why we don't have a male birth control pill. Let me break those down for you, and then let me show you what options we dudes do have, which is kind of cool. Like there's some really cool emerging stuff. So let's look into it. I was just wondering why there are so many sperm cells and only one egg cell. Here, maybe a diagram will help. The major legitimate limitation is biology. It's a lot easier to stop one egg a month than it is to stop 180 million sperm blasting out of you every time you ejaculate. Blasting. Is that? Is that slightly too aggressive? Anyway, that's a lot to manage. But scientists are working on it and making progress. One of the most promising studies we found in our reporting was not a birth control pill, but a hormonal gel. This is not a pill. It's actually a gel that's applied daily to a man's arm or shoulder. And local researchers think this could be it. In men who've used it as directed, there've been no little surprises. The hormones tell your body to stop producing sperm, and it works really well in trials. The trials are being tested in dozens of places around the world, and it's definitely the furthest along of all of the things we looked at. And they're actually looking for more couples to participate in the trial. So if if you want to participate, go into the description and check it out. I would participate, but in full disclosure, and probably TMI for the internet, I have two children, and I'm done having kids. So I'm going to get a vasectomy. That's a story for another day. There's another method that scientists are testing called Risug. You get a shot in the groin, I know that sounds terrible, but you're probably numb and fine. And the gel from the shot blocks the sperm from passing. No! You shall not pass! Research is saying that the gel can last for 13 years, and that if you want to dissolve it, you just do a second injection, and it dissolves. It was originally developed in India, but some American companies have licensed the technology and are developing similar projects. But it's still pretty early. And lastly, there are, of course, pills that are being tested. There are a lot of different approaches to these pills. Some of them are hormonal, like the birth control pill that was racially developed in Puerto Rico, sending new emails to sex organs to get them to not do the thing they're used to doing. But some of these pills don't use hormones at all, but rather a Chinese herb that changes the shape of the sperm's head to make it a worse swimmer so that it can't reach the egg. It's so funny to me to think of like, we got too good at like procreating, and now we want to stop it, but evolution's like, dude, we've been trying so hard to make this easier. Stop changing the sperm's head to look like a hook. There's another pill that cuts off the special protein found in the testes that then stops the sperm production. It's like all these clever ways of like reprogramming the body. It's been 99% effective at preventing pregnancies in mice. And the moment they stopped taking it, they bounced right back to normal fertility. Very promising. On mice, clinical trials on humans are supposedly going to start this year. Like progress. But do you notice, it's like, it's 2022. We've invented all of this amazing stuff, and we're still in early trials. Like early trials of all of these inventions. Like, we weren't doing this in the 70s or the 80s, when they were in Puerto Rico, messing with people. We're doing it now. I mean, a lot of these drugs like have a decade to go before they're even close to viable to sell. And that has a lot to do with how we think about side effects for men. Hear me out on this. This is like the most important part of this entire video. And if you are still here watching, just hear me out. Side effects for men. There was one study that was canceled because the safety board deemed the side effects too severe. Even though 75% of the participants said that they would keep going, that the side effects weren't too bad, they canceled it. And what were these side effects? Feelings of depression, mood swings, acne, hmm, sound familiar? A woman experiencing mood swings and depression on a pill is now totally normalized. Happens every day to millions of women. And we're okay with it, because, you know, it's a small price to pay to prevent a giant thing, like a child growing inside of you. But if a healthy man experiences the same or similar volatile side effects, we deem it as too severe, unacceptable. Not enough benefit for the cost of those side effects. All of this means that experimentation of male birth control is limited. Which means that no one wants to fund it. No companies want to invest in it. It gets chump change in terms of funding. Like the entire pharmaceutical industry invested 13 million dollars into contraceptive research between 2018 and 2020. The former CEO of just one pharma company made more than double that amount in just one year alone. Like we're talking pennies goes into this because it does not have long-term viability. And this is the big failure to me. It's how we frame our acceptance of side effects for men that is at the root of all of this. If two people are engaged in consensual sex and one of them gets pregnant, then both should be equally affected. That seems like a no-brainer. That is an obvious thing to say, but we all tacitly disagree with that. When we deem a woman's risk as higher, and thus we have a higher tolerance for her side effects. But that's how it is. The partner who carries the pregnancy takes on the role of birth controller, even at the expense of the hormonal balance of their body, which affects so much more than just their eggs and their tubes. And it won't change until we men step the up and start seeing birth control as something that we both carry together. The good and the bad, regardless of our anatomy. You students who've been watching this film, you've heard the questions we're going to discuss. You can discuss these same questions with your teacher. There goes my uterus. My precious uterus. Okay.
