BEIJING - "Are you on the pill?"

It's a question men often ask before taking intimacy to the next level, but in the future it might be women doing the asking.

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City have tested a drug on mice that can quickly and reversibly stop sperm production.

Unlike birth control pills for females, the BMS-189453 pill is not hormone-based. By studying mice, researchers found low doses of the drug stopped sperm production and did not have significant side effects. Fertility was restored shortly after the mice stopped treatment.

Related readings:  Hormone could restore fertility in lean women  New egg bank will address women's fertility problems  Fertility drugs may pose some uterine cancer risk

Developed more than 10 years ago as a possible treatment for skin and inflammatory diseases, the drug's sperm-stunting potential was originally considered a toxic side effect.

Actually, China once developed and tested a male-hormone-based birth control pill on a small group of male volunteers but it failed to enter the market due to its side effects, said Cheng Linan, chairperson of the Chinese Society of Family Planning at the Chinese Medical Association.

"As a side effect of the daily pill, men it was tested on experienced weight gain, although the pill did help to turn off the production of sperm," said Cheng.

Female contraceptives use hormones, estrogens and progestins, to shut off the release of eggs to prevent pregnancy. Male hormonal contraceptives work pretty much the same way: hormones such as testosterone and progestins are used to turn off sperm production.

Such birth control pills were welcomed by some Chinese men, Cheng added. "Some even asked to stay on it even after the experiment stopped."

Cheng said she believes a male birth control pill has great potential in China because they could have another choice in contraception. "Some men just don't like to use condoms or consider surgery. With the pill they could have another way to take their own initiative."

But are men willing to take a contraceptive pill, every single day, if it's offered to them?

"How could the pill control millions of sperms? What if a handful of them survived?" said Wang Xin whose wife is now on the pill. The 30-year-old IT consultant in Beijing added that he has no patience to take the pill every day.

On the other hand, Gu Xinguo, 35, welcomes the pill. "I will take it as long as the pill is not hormone-based. I heard hormone therapy for women has many side effects so I really don't want my wife to take it," said the restaurant owner who admitted that he doesn't like wearing condoms at all.

"I'm not going to trust any man who claims he is on the pill. I have to protect myself because I don't want any accident to happen," said Hu Jie, a 22-year-old university student in Beijing.