This Man Wants To Be On Birth Control

Inside the race to develop a better male contraceptive

- Alexandra Sifferlin

DANIEL DUDLEY, 28, IS A BUSY MAN. The medical resident at Valley Medical Center in Washington is an active hiker, an amateur chef—he’s currently learning how to cook Indian cuisine—and a proud “father” to two dwarf rabbits, whose antics he chronicles under the Instagram handle @bunnyzaddy. He’s also at least partly responsible for the creation of a new male contraceptive.

Over the past five years, Dudley has volunteered for three separate clinical trials of three male contraceptive methods. He’s taken a daily pill, rubbed a hormonal gel on his chest and received an injection of hormones into his left butt cheek. If all the methods were available today, he says, he would “totally use” the injection for its longlasting convenience.

Dudley, who is in a long-distance relationship with his partner Adrienne Ton, wants to do his part to increase contraception options for men and take the burden of pregnancy prevention off women, “which is an injustice,” he says. “There’s been much less money and effort put into safely and effectively lowering men’s fertility.”

Women today bear the greatest responsibility for preventing pregnancy, with nearly a dozen options for birth control, including longer-term solutions like the IUD implant and short-term strategies like the diaphragm and vaginal ring. For a century, men have had only two: the condom (with a failure rate of close to 20%) and the vasectomy, which is considered largely irreversible and involves minor surgery. There has not been a new commercial contraceptive for men in several decades.