Caitlin Kinast couldn't help feeling a bit salty during the 12 months her husband, Seth, was on birth control. "His energy was up through the roof," she says. "He was super happy, like a teenager again." She pauses. "I wish my birth control was like that."
The Kinasts are sitting in a basement fertility lab at the University of Washington in Seattle, one of 15 sites around the world running the first real-life road test of a groundbreaking male contraceptive gel. We've barely exchanged pleasantries when Caitlin, 34, starts recounting the years of frustration that brought them here. She'd tried just about every kind of birth control—one prescription after another—but never found one that didn't cause complications. Seth tried wearing condoms, but they irritated Caitlin's skin. The couple already had one child and agreed they weren't ready for a second. Yet it was always Caitlin's body—and hers alone—that had to deal with the ramifications of trying to have sex while trying not to get pregnant.
Seth, also 34, felt powerless to help. He was nervous that a vasectomy might not be reversible, and wasn't that the only option left to him? Then one day, on Reddit, he saw a post from a guy who claimed to be enrolled in a medical trial for something called NES/T. The drug, this person wrote, was an experimental form of male birth control—a super-goop that goes on the shoulders and suppresses sperm production. Yes, Seth thought.
Caitlin Kinast couldn't help feeling a bit salty during the 12 months her husband, Seth, was on birth control. "His energy was up through the roof," she says. "He was super happy, like a teenager again." She pauses. "I wish my birth control was like that."
The Kinasts are sitting in a basement fertility lab at the University of Washington in Seattle, one of 15 sites around the world running the first real-life road test of a groundbreaking male contraceptive gel. We've barely exchanged pleasantries when Caitlin, 34, starts recounting the years of frustration that brought them here. She'd tried just about every kind of birth control—one prescription after another—but never found one that didn't cause complications. Seth tried wearing condoms, but they irritated Caitlin's skin. The couple already had one child and agreed they weren't ready for a second. Yet it was always Caitlin's body—and hers alone—that had to deal with the ramifications of trying to have sex while trying not to get pregnant.
Seth, also 34, felt powerless to help. He was nervous that a vasectomy might not be reversible, and wasn't that the only option left to him? Then one day, on Reddit, he saw a post from a guy who claimed to be enrolled in a medical trial for something called NES/T. The drug, this person wrote, was an experimental form of male birth control—a super-goop that goes on the shoulders and suppresses sperm production. Yes, Seth thought.
 Caitlin Kinast couldn't help feeling a bit salty during the 12 months her husband, Seth, was on birth control. "His energy was up through the roof," she says. "He was super happy, like a teenager again." She pauses. "I wish my birth control was like that."
The Kinasts are sitting in a basement fertility lab at the University of Washington in Seattle, one of 15 sites around the world running the first real-life road test of a groundbreaking male contraceptive gel. We've barely exchanged pleasantries when Caitlin, 34, starts recounting the years of frustration that brought them here. She'd tried just about every kind of birth control—one prescription after another—but never found one that didn't cause complications. Seth tried wearing condoms, but they irritated Caitlin's skin. The couple already had one child and agreed they weren't ready for a second. Yet it was always Caitlin's body—and hers alone—that had to deal with the ramifications of trying to have sex while trying not to get pregnant.
Seth, also 34, felt powerless to help. He was nervous that a vasectomy might not be reversible, and wasn't that the only option left to him? Then one day, on Reddit, he saw a post from a guy who claimed to be enrolled in a medical trial for something called NES/T. The drug, this person wrote, was an experimental form of male birth control—a super-goop that goes on the shoulders and suppresses sperm production. Yes, Seth thought. |
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