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Speaker 1: Jack Team nineteen past five. Researchers in the US say

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Speaker 1: that male birth control is on the way. Yep, they're

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Speaker 1: making progress on a birth control for men that is

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Speaker 1: long acting and reversible. The product under development is a

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Speaker 1: hormonal gel that men rub on their shoulders. Doctor Brian

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Speaker 1: Newan is an obstection obstetrician gynecologist at the University of

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Speaker 1: Southern California who worked on trials for the gel.

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Speaker 2: Good to be talking with you, Thanks for having me.

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Speaker 1: How does the gel work?

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Speaker 2: You know, start from the top. Basically, it's very similar

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Speaker 2: to female hormonal contraceptive methods, and one of the best

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Speaker 2: things about that is that we have so much experience

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Speaker 2: with female hormonal contraceptives that we're very confident about the

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Speaker 2: safety universibility of male contraceptions. So essentially, the hormones give

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Speaker 2: a signal up to the brain, telling the brain to

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Speaker 2: send signals down to the test is to stop production

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Speaker 2: of UH sperm, and what that means is that the

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Speaker 2: entire factory is left intact. You're just telling the factory

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Speaker 2: to stop the production, and that's basically it. So UH

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Speaker 2: these hormones over the course of several weeks in this case,

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Speaker 2: about you know, four to eight weeks are able to

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Speaker 2: suppress sperm down to you know, in many cases zero

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Speaker 2: or what we call our criteria for male interceptions, which

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Speaker 2: is at a million.

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Speaker 1: How does the application work? Why do why do mean

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Speaker 1: rub the gel on these shoulders of all places?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? You know, in thinking about you know, places to

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Speaker 2: apply the gel, we're really thinking about how to avoid

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Speaker 2: transference of the gel to uh, you know, a child

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Speaker 2: or sexual partner. And so the shoulder seems to a

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Speaker 2: really easy to access but also low transference risk area.

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Speaker 1: And in terms of effectiveness, how does it compare to say,

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Speaker 1: a female contraceptive pill.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good question right there. Our trial is

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Speaker 2: not necessarily like a head to head trial at this point,

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Speaker 2: and we can't necessarily release the results of the prenancy

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Speaker 2: prevention aspect of the trial, but we are very encouraged.

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Speaker 2: We actually think that there are many aspects that are

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Speaker 2: going to make this better than female homorical contraceptives.

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Speaker 1: Are there any side effects?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, with all hormonal methods, we do expect side effects,

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Speaker 2: and in this case we are thinking about acne, weight gain,

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Speaker 2: mood changes, libido changes. But again when I say libido changes, right,

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Speaker 2: that means it can go up or down. Yeah, and

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Speaker 2: we've had you know, very you know, positive you know

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Speaker 2: feedback from our participants.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. How likely is it then, that you know, we

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Speaker 1: might see this on the market sometime soon?

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Speaker 2: You know, people always talk about this whole five to

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Speaker 2: ten years timeline. But if anything that has that COVID

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Speaker 2: has taught me is that, you know, with enough will

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Speaker 2: of the people and enough need, you can speed things

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Speaker 2: up quite fast. So I'm relying on folks like you

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Speaker 2: to spread the word.

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Speaker 1: Do you reckon guys are going to be into it?

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Speaker 1: You know, like I don't want to cast dispersions over

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Speaker 1: forty nine point nine seven percent of our population. But

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Speaker 1: you know, something just tells me that from a kind

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Speaker 1: of attitude perspective, men might be slightly less responsible on

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Speaker 1: this front.

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Speaker 2: You know. It's interesting, you know, for female contraception, we

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Speaker 2: don't necessarily expect all women to want to use it either,

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Speaker 2: and so to expect that a large swath of men

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Speaker 2: are going to want to use it, it's kind of

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Speaker 2: sitting in the bar a bit too high. But what

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Speaker 2: does matter, though, right, is that there are men who

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Speaker 2: are in committed relationships who have seen their female partners

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Speaker 2: in dure side effects or just various access issues with contraception,

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Speaker 2: and therefore they want to step in and not to

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Speaker 2: mention that there are men who you know, are more

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Speaker 2: and more concerned about their own assets and want to

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Speaker 2: be able to avoid the risk of unplanned pregnancy as well.

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Speaker 2: You just don't hear about it very much until it's

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Speaker 2: too late.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, hey, thank you so much, Brian. We will watch

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Speaker 1: this space with keen interest, no doubt. We appreciate your time.

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Speaker 1: That is doctor Brian new here. Thanks Brian. There's doctor

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Speaker 1: Brian Newan, who's one of the researchers at the University

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Speaker 1: of Southern California behind this new gel. For more from

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