​Despite decades of promising research, the many men who want their own contraceptive pill still have nothing. One of them, Andy Extance, looks at the obstacles — practical, political, economic — and meets the people hoping to make male birth control a reality.

Had there been a male contraceptive pill in 1976, I probably wouldn't be here to write this. That was the year when, after my mum – may she rest in peace – had been on the pill for 12 years, health worries made her doctor tell her to come off it. "She said to the doctor, 'I'll get pregnant'," my dad recalls. "And within a very short while, she was." He explains, much to my discomfort, that although my parents switched to condoms, I was conceivedcommitment to contraceptives has always been tentative, particularly when it comes to products for men – and today, the whole contraceptive industry is struggling. Now, the multimillion-dollar question seems to be: Who is actually going to make the male pill happen?

In the 1970s, when my dad might have used a contraceptive pill, prospects seemed better in some ways. Male fertility control was an active research field, with governments backing various ideas to limit overcrowding on Earth. One product he might have been interested in – a non-hormonal drug called gossypol – was being tested on a scale that has never been matched since. At the UN's 1974 World Population Conference, Elsimar Coutinho, today a famous sex and fertility doctor in Brazil, was promoting the drug, which he was