We still don't have male birth control — but no, it's not because men are wimps

There’s a new study making the rounds about a seemingly effective male birth control. The hormonal injection, designed to slow or block men’s sperm production, had a 96 percent success rate at preventing pregnancy among couples who completed the study.

There was just one problem, according to some media reports: the public won’t be able to access this new method any time soon because the men in the study were wimps. They couldn’t handle side effects — moodiness, acne — that women on birth control deal with all the time, leading to the study’s termination.

"Male birth control study nixed after men can't handle side effects women face daily," read the USA Today headline. Similar stories appeared in the Atlantic and Cosmopolitan.

These stories are wrong and completely misleading.

The study wasn’t stopped because the participating men were weak; it was halted because two independent committees who were monitoring the safety data from the trial were concerned about the staggeringly high number of adverse events the men reported. And yes, the side effects in this study were more common than what women experience using hormonal birth control.

If you look at the research, which appeared in Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, you learn that pretty quickly.

This decision [to terminate the trial] was based on [the Research Project Review Panel’s] review of study [adverse events] and conclusion that the risks to the study participants outweighed the potential benefits to the study participants and to the increased precision of the study outcome findings from having the full cohort contribute to the final analysis.

The 320 men who participated in the research reported a whopping 1,491 adverse events. The researchers running the trial determined than 900 of these events were caused by the injectable contraceptive.

Nearly a quarter of participants experienced pain at the injection site, nearly half got acne, more than a 20 percent had a mood disorder, 38 percent experienced an increased sexual drive, and 15 percent reported muscle pain. Other rarer side effects included testicular pain, night sweats, and confusion. One study participant committed suicide, though the researchers determined it wasn’t related to the birth control. Twenty men dropped out of the study because of the side effects.

This was simply simply not an acceptable rate of side effects for otherwise healthy men who were taking the injection not for some disease — but for the purpose of preventing pregnancy.

"These side effect rate is pretty high with this new study of men when compared with contraception studies for women," OB/GYN and blogger Jen Gunter wrote. "For example and perspective, a study comparing the birth control patch with the pill found a serious adverse event rate of 2%. The pill reduces acne for 70% of women and in studies with the Mirena IUD the rate of acne is 6.8%."

The desire to vent about the lack of male contraception — and the side effects the women who do use it may endure — is of course understandable; women have always carried the burden of birth control. But we shouldn’t blame the men in this study for that inequality.

In fact, these men wanted to continue using the shot, according to a press release from the study. "Despite the higher than expected number of adverse events, many participants expressed their satisfaction with the method and indicated that their partners were relieved that they did not have to bear the burden of contraception themselves."

Keep in mind, too, this was a large-scale, multi-country trial involving ten study centers. The hormonal injection did work to prevent pregnancy. And there was some concern that many of the adverse events came from one of the study centers, which may have skewed the data. That’s why the researchers said in the press release, "Given the efficacy and acceptability of this method, despite side effects, there continues to be a strong rationale for continuing research."

This isn’t the first time the media misrepresented a promising male birth control. The last big misreporting event happened in 2014 when reports suggested Vasalgel, a method of birth control that involves injecting a gel into a man's vas deferens, would hit the market by 2017. In that case, the reports were based on a press release from the company and unpublished, anecdotal findings from testing on baboons.

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