Inventor of Male Birth Control Drug Has Yet to Talk to Own Kids About Sex
by This story was inspired by the following article on MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com/news/954083.asp?cp1=1
Dr. Leonard S. Cornbloom of Berkeley University has been working tirelessly on a male birth control drug for the past three years. In recent weeks, it has seemed that his efforts may soon come to fruition, as the drug is now up for FDA consideration. Dr. Cornbloom, father of three, hopes that one day his discovery may benefit his own children, although Dr. Cornbloom maintains that time is yet a long way off.
"I am very excited, please forgive the pun, about my new drug and it's imminent FDA approval. I hope that one day my own children can enjoy the benefits that this drug will bring. Not that they'll have to worry about... all that stuff... you know what I mean... anytime soon."
Supporters of the male birth control drug say that it will be very empowering to the men who use it, especially to high profile men, who are often used by women with "nefarious plans" to get pregnant. Dr. Cornbloom is happy his own two sons will have the option of taking a male birth control pills "when they are older", but he says he doesn't think that time will be any sooner than a good 15 to 20 years from now.
It is ironic that while Dr. Cornbloom has a Ph.D. from Berkeley in Sexual Health, and has received many awards for his studies in the fields of human sexuality, he has yet to talk to any of his own children about "the birds and the bees."
"The topic of sex has always been a touchy subject in the Cornbloom household" Dr. Cornbloom states. "I've tried to broach the subject with my oldest son Kevin (age 16) a few times, but I usually end up just chickening out and telling him to take out the garbage."
"I don't get what Dad's problem is," says Kevin Cornbloom, "There's this girl at school, Kimberly, and I think I really like her. I was asking Dad for advice the other day and he started in with the whole, 'there comes a time in a man's life...' But his face just started turning beet red, after stammering for a few seconds he pretended Mom was calling him and left the room. Maybe he thought I would be better off just reading his book. I guess that's why I found a copy of it on my bed later in the evening."
"The Human Sexuality and YOU" was co-authored by Dr. Abram Thorndike, and was published by Berkeley University in 1998.
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80 Comments
hah Take advice on a topic someone can't even discuss with their own children.
Good story Matt. Thanks a lot. I had a good thing going. Now I have to take the pill.
Actually it's probably a good thing that there is a male birth control pill now, since there's no worries with it that the reason it's working is by preventing impregnated eggs from implanting properly the way there is with the female birth control pills.
hmmmmmm. ok.......
Um, i duno i don't think that's true.. because the pill prevents you from ovulating.. so the egg never gets in the spot where it can be impregnated. And I was reading about this, and in order to use a regular birth control pill as "emergency contraception" (to prevent an impregnated egg from attaching properly) you have to take like 6 of them a day for two or three days. So... regular birth control pills do not kill impregnated eggs.
Ahhh..it's like having sex ed! So..we can still take birth control though..right, because it doesn't kill impregnated eggs?
as far as i know... yes. But there is a chance that I might be wrong, who knows. All I know is that you CAN still get pregnant on the pill, so it DOES NOT kill impregnated eggs. It prevents ovulation. If you forget to take the pill, even one day, you can ovulate, ergo, get pregnant.
I just really doubt that SOOO many sisters around the world would be taking birth control pills if it was a true fact that it was killing impregnated eggs, which is abortion. Right? I duno, I might be wrong.. it's a conscience decision.
Actually, I'm so silly..I know how it works! It tricks your body into thinking it's pregnant so that's why you don't ovulate anymore. For the three days (?? I'm not sure exactly how many it is) that you don't take the pills a month (or you take the fake ones that are sugar pills) then your body isn't tricked anymore and you ovulate..then you go back to tricking your body.
It's seven days that you don't take the pill.
Why do you know more about this then I do!!
Lol. That's a good question. Of course I could turn it around and ask why you don't know more about this than I do.
So? I was under the impression that most girls (even in the truth) start taking the pill long before they get married just to get their bodies acclimated to it.
Seriously? Most likely if they're not in the truth and are taking birth control..even if they say its for another reason..it's because they're having mad relations. But birth control can be used for acne problems and stuff like that..but it can also make you gain weight so I don't know why anyone would take it if they didn't have to/want to. Also, what's there to get acclimated to?
Well, some girls have excruciatingly painful and irregular cycles, and BC regulates them, and makes them like 99% less painful. I've known of girls in the truth who start taking a very low dosage of BC (since they don't actually need the birth control part, but they need the hormones to regulate things) as early as age 14.
it also clears up acne...
OR to use Accutane u have to be using birth contol whether ur *active* or not. They are afraid of pregnacies that will have horrible birth defects, and the lawsuits that came later.
I don't know. I just remember having this discussion with my mom about it when I was 15 or 16 and I found out that my cousin was on the pill. (She's only six months older than me.) It kind of shocked me at the time, but my mom just said that it's normal for girls to start taking the pill even before they start thinking about dating and marriage just to get used to taking it.
Interesting. I'm not sure about this whole getting used to taking it, that's kind of weird. Though, it does making things a bit convenient even if your not married because it regulates everything.
Hey, are you calling my family weird? You wouldn't be the first...
i can understand girls taking it because they have irregularity problems...but for them to take it just to get acclimated to it or to clear up acne, i think that's a bad idea. It's playing around with your hormones, which is never a good idea. It increases your chances of getting cancer and it can cause a lot of other problems. So, I don't know...to each his own, but i'd rather use neutrogena for acne then mess around with my hormones.
yeah, you guys are right. BC is ok because the egg is never fertilized. Emergency Contraceptives that cause a fertilized egg to leave the body/die are basically abortion, because the embryo is alive since it's been fertilized.
Yeah, that would be the "day after" pill. Can't these stupid people just remember to take a pill the day of..how dumb are they. If you're really that stupid you shouldn't be having relations.
think how many people have had kids by accident...i think quite a lot of people forget...and the pills have a certain amount of error, dont they?
I'm not extremely worried about it. It's just that a few years ago I was reading up on the pill and I found a question from readers in the 6/15/1989 watchtower that troubled me somewhat. After reading that I looked one of the more popular pills (Ortho-Novum) up in my dad's copy of PDR and under the clinical pharmacology section it says the following:
"Combination oral contraceptives act by suppresion of gonadotropins. Although the primary mechanism of this action is inhibition of ovulation, other alterations include changes in the cervical mucus (which increase the difficulty of sperm entry into the uterus) and the endometrium (which reduce the likelyhood of implantation)."
That last sentence has worried me since I first read it, but, like that question from readers says, it is only a secondary action and it does not actually *prevent* implantation from occuring.
yeah... i gotta look into that I guess. All I know is I do not want a kid. Heh.
i heard something on the radio about this drug they're working on that decreases the amount of cycles women have to like 3 or 4 per year... anybody else hear about that?
yeah! But technically women can do that already.. like if they skip the "sugar pills" week and just go straight to the next pack of pills, they can entirely skip their cycle. Some women do this and NEVER get their monthly fun time. I duno if this is healthy tho.
yeah sounds a little scary. actually i know someone who was doing the shot thing. it lasted like 3 or 4 months.
healthy or not, it sounds good to me
hahaha i know right.
It's not a new drug. It's been known for a long time (at least since the early '70's) that if you increase the dosage on standard birth control pills that you can entirely eliminate periods. What they're working on is getting FDA approval for this new regimen that allows women to take a higher dosage of the pill for a while so that their periods completely stop for a few months, then cycle once and repeat.
so you just get your period every 6 months then?
More like every 3 or 4 months. It's not thought to be healthy to avoid it more often than that.
hmm, and they do think its healthy to avoid it that often? It sounds like a reaaaaaaaal good idea, but it seems like it would be very unsafe
There's arguments on both sides as to whether it's more or less healthy. Personally, I think it's a real bad idea since if it fails, then you'll end up taking the pill for a long time before you notice that you're pregnant, and that would be very bad for the baby. (Of course, I do understand why women like the idea of fewer periods.)
Yay! Now men don't have to get pregnant and drop off the football team and out of high school and become young mothers.
I know. It's so sad when teenage guys have to drop out of school and get a job because they got pregnant.
i don't know if a lot of women would trust their husbands not to forget to take the pill. I don't think it'll sell as well.
ummm I think if they mixed some Viagra in it that would be a good idea.
ick
hahaha...i used to work in a pharmacy and dispense viagra...talk about funny prescription labels.
just curious, which pharmacy? please dont tell me CVS.
Remember: The best form of birth control is abstinence! So all you married people worried about having kids: Just don't do *it*.
this sounds like a certain paragraph 16
hahaha the paragraph that everyone was afraid to raise their hand on
yeah, i was like..."is this talking about what i THINK it's talking about"
our conducter...every time someone mentioned the word sex he's like--OKAY in the next paragraph...
haha, i had to bite my tounge so hard, on the paragraph on "rendering the marriage due" there was the question, then like 45 seconds of silence. finally somebody answered. so funny
well the elders in my cong were trying so hard not to say the word sex they were like "the PHYSICAL needs may differ"
we had a joke in among some people in my hall: "DO the DUE!" and "are you due the due?" and "i don't think you're due the due." additionally, "we know brother so-and-so is due the due." it was funny at the time.
guess you gotta be there
shut up. you love it.
it IS funny! good one.
So, my dad was doing the reading this Sunday, and he decided to comment on this paragraph. I think he started his comment by saying something like "As all of us who are married know, men's and women's sexual cycles have different frequencies..." Everyone was laughing after he said that.
yeah well i had a guy who was on the mary jane in his earlier days comment on how everything is geared sexually towards the males nowadays and not the homosexuals like you'd think. MAN, that was funny...
can i ask what the expression "on the mary jane" means?
You seriously don't know? Mary jane is slang for marijuana.
marijuana, the dutchie, the wacky weed, the stash, the blunt, grass, pot, herb, whackytabacky, chronic, cryptonite, Maui-wowie, smoke, Texas tea, hash....
OOO! i knew that... i learned it from a movie that will remain nameless... haha
I really think we all should watch what we say around mel.. we are teaching her the wrong things....
YEA! stop ruining my virgin mind!
i just made sure i answered before and after that section... lol.. .poor Dave G... he did a good job readng though.
haha, toby was sitting by me, i wrote to him on my WT "i am soooo glad i'm not reading"
haha, seriously... as soon as i saw dave walk up there, im like.. aww pooor dave, lol.
funny, our conductor was the opposite...he's my bookstudy conductor too, and for the part about youths last week...he said, whats something youths like to do that begins with a "s"? I just put my head down and pretended i wasn't in the room
haha...no you should have raised your hand as high as possible, wave it around, sitting on the edge of your seat saying "ooh ooh i know, pick me pick me!"
then after the concluding prayer time how long it takes for the elders to ask you to meet with them in the B-school cuz they have some issues to discuss with you.
hahahha, that would have been really funny
i would have raised my hand and said "shopping"
EXCEPT a 9 y.o. girl in my cong...SHE answered it!!!
i never having sex. i hate it.ewwww
That was about me!!!!!
I was visiting a friend's hall a while back, and this brother was commenting and somehow it turned from something about human nature to the human desire for sexuality and he was like "and well Jehovah gives us the desire for relations and makes these sexual relations pleasurable, and we thank him very much for this, and, uh.." realizing what he had said, he trailed off about this time.
how does any comment just "turn into" that kind of comment?