Congrats, Fellas! You're Closer To Getting Your Own Birth Control Pill
The pill was proven safe and effective in mice.
For decades, scientists have been searching for a birth control option for men other than condoms or vasectomies. There have even been some successful ones. They actually first created a safe and effective male birth control pill by accident in the 1950s, years before the female birth control pill was introduced, while trying to create a pill to treat parasitic worms. Unfortunately, the one major side effect it did have meant that it would never make it to market — men couldn't drink alcohol while taking it. At least not without getting unbelievably sick.
However, researchers from the University of Minnesota announced this week that a non-hormonal male birth control pill they developed is 99 percent effective in mice, with no observable side-effects at all.
This is a necessity, explained researcher Abdullah al Noman, because "targeting the male sex hormone leads to a lot of side effects such as weight gain, depression and increased risk of cardiovascular diseases." Because men aren't making a choice between side effects and actually getting pregnant themselves, he says, they "are less willing to take a birth control pill that has significant side effects."
The researchers also observed that 4 to 6 weeks after getting off the pill, the mice were able to father children again.
Via The American Chemical Society:
“Scientists have been trying for decades to develop an effective male oral contraceptive, but there are still no approved pills on the market,” says Md Abdullah Al Noman, who is presenting the work at the meeting. Most compounds currently undergoing clinical trials target the male sex hormone testosterone, which could lead to side effects such as weight gain, depression and increased low-density lipoprotein (known as LDL) cholesterol levels. “We wanted to develop a non-hormonal male contraceptive to avoid these side effects,” says Noman, a graduate student in the lab of Gunda Georg, Ph.D., at the University of Minnesota.
To develop their non-hormonal male contraceptive, the researchers targeted a protein called the retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR-α). This protein is one of a family of three nuclear receptors that bind retinoic acid, a form of vitamin A that plays important roles in cell growth, differentiation (including sperm formation) and embryonic development. Knocking out the RAR-α gene in male mice makes them sterile, without any obvious side effects. Other scientists have developed an oral compound that inhibits all three members of the RAR family (RAR-α, -β and -γ) and causes reversible sterility in male mice, but Georg’s team and their reproductive biology collaborators wanted to find a drug that was specific for RAR-α and therefore less likely to cause side effects.
Interestingly, the original male birth control pill also worked by inhibiting vitamin A.
The pill could solve a lot of problems. For one, everyone should be able to control their reproductive futures, including men. Condoms aren't always as effective as we'd like them to be and a vasectomy is a pretty big deal. Something in between those two choices would certainly be a nice option to have.
For another, there are situations in which female birth control can't be tolerated for whatever reason. And for still another, it will give men who hate abortion a reason to shut the hell up about that — especially those who believe that female contraception is "abortion." There's no question that it would be extremely satisfying to be able to ask anti-choice men who do not currently want to have children if they are on the pill.
Coincidentally, Maury Povich announced his plans to retire just a few days ago. Pretty convenient, given that a male birth control pill could really put a dent in the number of "You are NOT the father!" shows he'd be able to do a week.
Open thread!
[The American Chemical Society]
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Joe Manchin Unveils Exciting New Reason To Screw Over Electric Vehicles!
Oh, look what he did with that football he was holding.
A couple weeks back, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) was talking about how he'd sure like to help Democrats get something done in Congress before the midterms, like maybe a spending plan that would roll back parts of the 2017 tax cuts and then use the new revenue to reduce the deficit and address climate change. As you'll recall, we were cautiously cautious in whatever optimism we could manage, given that Manchin owns a coal company and said the lesson of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is that we need at least as much fossil fuel expansion as green energy in order to tackle the climate emergency. Never mind that fossil fuels are causing the emergency.
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Yup, identification confirmed: This is the right Joe Manchin all right, not a lookalike.
In his latest very Hot Take on climate — entirely too hot to prevent further planetary warming — Manchin said at an energy conference in Houston last week that he just doesn't see why we'd want to switch to electric vehicles at all, because China, don't you see.
I'm very reluctant to go down the path of electric vehicles. [...] I'm old enough to remember standing in line in 1974 trying to buy gas – I remember those days. I don't want to have to be standing in line waiting for a battery for my vehicle, because we're now dependent on a foreign supply chain – mostly China.
Seems a hell of a reach to use the prime example of overdependence on oil to argue we should rely more on oil, but then, it's Joe Manchin. On Christmas eve, visions of drilling rigs dance in his head.
Manchin went on to explain that he knows a thing or two about history, and then to get history exactly, almost completely wrong. He said he has a "hard time understanding" why the government would spend money on building out a network of EV charging stations, apparently forgetting that was in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that he insisted on passing separately from the rest of Joe Biden's agenda.
"I've read history, and I remember Henry Ford inventing the Model-T, but I sure as hell don't remember the US government building filling stations – the market did that," he said. The crowd erupted with applause.
So let's, as they say, unpack this latest load of "the market did it" hooey, and the rest of Manchin's nonsense here. (Because we can't possibly wait that long, we'll spoiler you, re: the gas stations, oh yes government certainly did.)
For starters, there's the straight out weirdness of his objections to a central plank of the separate infrastructure bill he championed.
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Beyond that, like all those dipshits at the 2012 GOP convention chanting "WE built that!" (In a venue mostly built with government funding), Manchin seems awfully blind to the role that government policies and funding played in making sure we're running around on fossil fuels. Like, has he never even seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit? A key plot point in that cartoons-in-real life movie accurately reminded America that Los Angeles used to have a terrific trolley system that went belly-up — with help from General Motors and Big Oil (and yes, the reality was more complex than a simple villainous plot).
It's also weird that Manchin would simultaneously try to stir up fear that China will monopolize the market for EV batteries and mock the very idea of government investment in EVs, given that, as S&P Global notes in reporting on his comments, China's "dominance of mineral mining and refining is thanks to years of investments and policy that has catapulted the country to become a world leader in less than 10 years." Chinese free markets certainly didn't build that. The article also notes that, in addition to the funding for EV charging stations, the Infrastructure Law Joe Biden signed also "includes $7.5 billion to develop domestic supplies of key minerals" to build the very EV supply chain Manchin says we need.
The moribund Build Back Better bill, we'd note, includes even more funding to develop clean energy manufacturing and supply chains, as well as the generous tax credits that will help Americans buy EVs. Oh, we keep forgetting — EV subsidies are bad, because Manchin thinks government never ever did a thing to boost the internal-combustion auto industry. To which we say, BULLSHIT.
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It's a ridiculous fantasy to claim America's automotive infrastructure burst forth in free market glory (possibly from the forehead of Milton Friedman), as anyone who's spent five minutes reading about the Interstate Highway System knows. The federal government literally built that, pouring billions into the planning, routing, and construction of the interstates, which reshaped American cities, exacerbated racial inequality, made suburbs possible, and radically changed everything about American business, manufacturing, and leisure.
Hell, those who profited from the creation of the Interstates were delighted to inform us that, with federal and state funding, they were reshaping American life. While looking for an image to use in this piece, I found this amazing little film funded by the Caterpillar Tractor Company, which hired Walter Cronkite to talk up the glories of the nation's enormous road-building spree, all for the low low price of $50 billion in 1956 dollars (about $451 billion today, cheap!).
Like any corporate propaganda, the film leans hard on the positive, insisting the Interstates will be unambiguously beneficial. But when Cronkite says the signing of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act in 1965 was a fundamental turning point in American history, that wasn't hyperbole at all.
The movie's a fun lunchtime watch, too, both for the "we'll eliminate traffic jams and deadly accidents" boosterism and the copious footage of bulbous late-'50s dream cars.
To put it bluntly, if Manchin thinks the modern auto industry developed purely in response to market forces, his memory is smoggy. If anything, the auto, oil, and construction industries shaped the massive government spending projects that created much of the future we now live in, for good and ill.
We'd also note that the auto industry is definitely poised for a similar boom in EV development. Ford and GM are both investing heavily in building a domestic EV battery industry, so for Crom's sake, the federal government has every reason to help that move forward more quickly.
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At the Washington Post, Yale political science prof Jacob Hacker, author of American Amnesia, notes that that
the modern roadway system, including the ubiquitous fuel station, was as much a creature of government as any major feature of our economy in the 20th century. [...]
Road planners, both state and federal, mapped out major roadways, purchased or seized land, and, in many cases, set up the well-spaced fueling franchises necessary to ensure that people could get where they wanted to go speedily. [...] Much of this was funded by gas taxes.
In short, without that “foundation of government investment and regulation,” we just plain wouldn't have cars or highways like we do now. No matter how much Manchin may want to pretend otherwise.
And as ever, Manchin very deliberately hides the central point: We need to electrify and get off fossil fuels rapidly, to keep the planet habitable for large mammals that like to get around in boats and nice (electric) cars. That's true even for large mammals who don't know, or prefer to have their own American amnesia about, their own history.
[S&P Global / WaPo / Curbed LA / image: Periscope Film on YouTube]
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If Loving Putin Is Wrong, Trump Doesn't Want To Be Right
Not sure how we've made it six years without using that headline.
He just can't stop himself. He's not part of the action, but Donald Trump seems to really need Vladimir Putin to know that he's in the bleachers, wearing Putin's letterman jacket. So that's how we get Trump on Judge Boxwine's radio show explaining how Putin's brutal murderous invasion of Ukraine is, in his eyes, literally coming from Russia, with "love."
Yes, "love."
“They wanted to rebuild the Soviet Union," he continued. "That’s what this is all about to a large extent. And then you say, what’s the purpose of this? They had a country. You could see it was a country where there was a lot of love and we’re doing it because, you know, somebody wants to make his country larger or he wants to put it back the way it was when actually it didn’t work very well.”
Obviously there's a lot of babbling there. There always is when Trump chooses to talk. (For example, when will the war end, mister Trump? WINDMILLS! WINDMILLS KILLING BIRDS! BIRDS KILLING WINDMILLS!)
But there was just a lot of love and they were doing it because of there was so much love that Putin wanted to make his country larger or he just wants to put it back together again, the way it was before it collapsed at the end of the Cold War. (That part is correct. Once in a while, Trump, through the fog of his brain, stumbles on something that is generally correct. Of course, this being Trump, you sense that he is sympathetic to Putin's goal to put Dumpty back together again.)
Trump also spent some time during the interview whining that Joe Biden doesn't brag about how big all our bombs are near enough. Because in the eyes of a man like Trump, you sound powerful if you brag about how big your bombs are.
"Biden keeps talking about [Russia] as a nuclear power," Trump said. "He should be saying we're a nuclear power and we should not play games with it. He'll say, we can't do this, we can't do that while they are a nuclear power. Well, we're a nuclear power too. In fact, I rebuilt our entire nuclear arsenal."
Of course, when Joe Biden talks about Russia's nuclear arsenal, all smart people know he's talking about that in the context of how we are the other great nuclear power, and that he's alluding to the doctrine of "mutually assured destruction," which has been a thing for pretty much Donald Trump's entire life.
But he just really needs to hear Biden talk about how big those bombs are. And he needs Putin to know he loves him, and that he sees how much love Putin is murdering Ukraine with, just like he saw all the love of the people who came to his speech before they went down the street to attack the Capitol to help him overturn the 2020 election.
It's weird when Trump says the word "love." He just doesn't use it like humans use it.
[h/t RawStory]
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Idaho House Passes Very Sane Bill: Life In Prison For Giving Medical Treatment To Trans Teens
Top that, Texas and Florida! Shit, did we say that out loud?
The state of Texas has a population of 29 million. Florida is home to about 21.5 million souls. Idaho, with just 1.8 million residents as of the last Census, has far less national economic and political influence, but in the March to Madness of rightwing states, it's always a contender for the title of Craziest Place In America. Florida just passed its "Don't Say Gay" bill that would prohibit mentioning LGBTQ people in primary schools, and a couple weeks back, Texas criminalized gender-affirming care for trans kids by executive fiat.
Now Idaho legislators, not to be outdone, want to send people to prison for life if they provide such gender-affirming care to minors — and to achieve that goal, the bill's sponsor wants to amend the state's existing law banning female genital mutilation. Yes, as I so frequently have to say about my state's legislature, really.
State Rep. Bruce Skaug (R-Nampa) insists there's hardly anything controversial at all about his brainchild, Idaho House Bill 675, because as he explained to Boise TV station KTVB, it's simply a matter of "protecting children which is a legitimate state interest, we do that all of the time."
Skaug insists that all he wants to do is expand Idaho's 2019 law prohibiting female genital mutilation to also cover all minors, because isn't providing gender-affirming care to a trans kid exactly the same as a deeply scarring practice aimed at controlling women?
We need to stop sterilizing and mutilating children under the age of 18. This bill is not about the adults or adult trans community at all; it is about children. [...]
If we do not allow minors to get tattoos, smoke cigarettes, and drink alcohol or sign legal contracts why would we allow them to make decisions to cut away organs based on their feelings during puberty time? [...] That's wrong, they're not ready for that.
To be clear, the bill doesn't only ban the scary surgery Skaug enjoys describing so much, but also the prescription of puberty blockers and of hormone therapy, which are much more commonly used for patients under the age of 18. The bill wouldn't only send doctors to prison for life, it would also impose life sentences on parents who give permission for gender affirming treatment, and — just to be sure no one sneaks out of Idaho to get puberty blockers or hormone therapy — would impose the same penalty for permitting a minor to travel outside Idaho for the treatment.
Those are already the penalties for FGM, you see, aimed at preventing immigrant parents from taking their daughters back to their home country for the mutilating surgery. Isn't it fascinating to see what was originally a feminist law turned against trans kids? That may also be part of the point.
During debate on the bill, Skaug went even further, claiming — against the vast consensus in the medical community — that if the state simply bans any treatment of trans adolescents, they would simply "go through puberty, outgrow their problem and accept their bodies over time.”
This is, of course, bullshit, as state Rep. Ilana Rubel (D-Boise) argued. Rubel noted that she'd asked a friend whose teen underwent gender-affirming treatment whether they were "really really sure" about beginning hormone therapy, and her friend made clear that "This is obviously not a step that a family takes lightly. This is a step that comes after literally thousands of hours of agonizing."
Rubel said the bill represents
the heaviest imaginable hand of government overriding family decisions on the most critical and frankly in many cases life-threatening questions.
By forcing people to wait until after puberty to begin a transition, she said, in many cases the transition becomes much more difficult because gender characteristics become so much more pronounced, including things like stature. "You are really messing with their lives until their dying day," she said.
Rubel
offered some specifics to KTVB:
Say you are doing a male-to-female transition whether you do that transition when you're 5-foot-7 or whether you do it when you are 6-foot-3 with giant shoulders and an Adam's apple, it's really going to impact you for the next 70 years of your life in how successful that transition is.
That's also the consensus view among medical professionals, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, which supports gender-affirming treatment — not that mere medical experts should be listened to, according to bigots, because maybe it's all just a fad.
If you haven't done so already, give a listen to
this interview about gender-affirming care with Dr. Izzy Lowell, who provides gender-affirming care to trans teens in 10 southern states — half of which already have various laws against providing gender-affirming medical care, although none of them impose a life goddamn sentence for doing so.
As Dr. Lowell, who is herself trans, makes clear, these laws criminalizing gender affirming treatment are all based in the deeply flawed notion that people simply decide capriciously that they're transgender, and so, since kids may change their minds later, the state must prevent them from making a terrible decision they'll regret later. In reality, says Lowell, the main effect for trans teens whose parents help them get the treatment they need is just plain relief — they begin going through puberty with the gender that's right for them — and they're every bit as comparatively happy as anyone else in a late capitalist society where everybody's alienated and neurotic (Lowell isn't too fond of the term "normal," and thinks no crazier than anyone else better fits reality).
But if you really want to harm trans kids, Lowell says, go ahead and pass laws like these:
These kids are 15, 16, 17 and their state is saying that they're wrong, their existence is wrong. I don't know what that does to the psyche of a 16 year old to have your state basically say that who you are and what you're doing is illegal.
Lowell also pointed out that if a legislature actually managed to make it utterly impossible for trans teens to get treatment, those who had already begun puberty blockers or hormone therapy would have severe medical reactions:
it would be devastating. So if someone has been taking estrogen for several years and then they stop it, they would go through like instantaneous menopause symptoms. Menopause takes a year or two to go through and they would go through menopause overnight, basically, as a teenager.
They would have hot flashes, irritability, night sweats, incredible mood swings. They would no longer continue developing breast tissue. That wouldn't regress exactly, but their estrogen level would drop and they would have basically no sex hormones in their body until their body started reproducing testosterone. [...]
At that point, they would start to transition into a man. They would start growing hair in all sorts of places they didn't want it. They would become more muscular. They might even grow taller at that point and basically go onward with male puberty, which they had never wanted in the first place.
Similar changes would hit someone who'd begun transitioning with male hormones. Isn't it a wonderful thing that Idaho Republicans want to protect the children this way? To say nothing of the very well-documented research showing trans kids are far more likely to attempt suicide than their peers.
HB 675 passed the Idaho House 55-13 Tuesday, with all 12 Democrats voting against it. They were joined by just one Republican, Dr. Fred Wood of Burley. We'll just note he's the only physician in the state House. Maybe his colleagues should give that some thought.
The bill now goes to the state Senate, where one can only hope it will be killed in committee, but who knows? It's freaking Idaho.
[ Idaho HB 675 / KTVB-TV / Idaho Press / Why is This Happening (transcript)]
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