Over 100 million women around the world use the female contraceptive pill. But why isn’t there a male alternative? And are the barriers to its creation scientific or social?

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On June 23rd 1960, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the world’s first combined oral contraceptive pill – or COCP - known as Enovid. And whilst there have been many developments in COCPs for women in the six decades that have followed, effective counterparts for men have yet to appear on to the market. Why has it taken so long? How close are we to a male contraceptive pill?

This week, Hannah Devlin hears from the University of Edinburgh’s Professor Richard Anderson, who was part of a recent World Health Organisation funded trial into a male contraceptive jab. We also talk to Dr Diana Blithe of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Male Contraceptive Development Program, about the progress being made Stateside using gels instead of jabs. And finally, we hear about non-hormonal alternatives in development from Aaron Hamlin, executive director of the Male Contraception Initiative.