The pill. Loved and hated in equal measure by women the world over. Some of the 3.5 million British women who take it would argue that the only reason it has stopped them getting pregnant is because they are now so fat that no one wants to have sex with them. Others would blame the associated mood swings which turn them into a bunny boiler once a month.

Oral contraceptives are frequently hailed as the most significant medical advance of the 20th century, but the question one in three women of reproductive age are asking themselves today is: why are researchers spending their budgets conducting T-shirt sniffing contests in Liverpool when 100 million women worldwide have been waiting nearly 50 years for the male pill?

Ever since the Pill was introduced to the UK in 1961, pharmaceutical companies have been threatening to have a male pill on the market in “about five years”. If we had held our breath we would all be dead.

A number of hormone-based male contraceptives have been developed but haven’t got anywhere because men would never settle for a pill which debilitated them in any way. Any men out there fancy putting up with: weight gain; nausea; breast tenderness; headaches; mood swings; blood clots; varicose veins; thrombosis; cancer; death? Nope, didn’t think so.

British scientists are now developing a non-hormone based male contraceptive which can be taken in tablet form before a man goes out on a date. How great is that? But where is the female equivalent? Yes, yes, we love the pill because it liberated us from the perils of unplanned pregnancy, but we hate the fact that pills, patches, implants and injections are all just delivery methods for the same old hormones.

To learn that our daily cocktail of bloat-inducing chemicals turns off an innate instinct to choose the right partner would add insult to injury if it had any credibility. Pheromones and hormones might have had some pulling power in the Stone Age, but surrounded, as we are, with the scents and smells of the recently showered, coffee drinking, cologne wearing, 21st century, I’m afraid those genes don’t have a prayer.

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