NORFOLK -- Scientists are working on a new birth control pill made just for men.

According to a new report, scientists have developed a hormone therapy for men that’s 98% effective and works similarly to birth control pills for women.

However, researchers at Norfolk State University are taking a different approach to male contraception that, if successful, would not involve taking hormones.

The researchers believe that the safest and most user-friendly way to create a male birth control is to disable the sperm. The theory is that if you make the sperm unable to recognize the egg, you can’t have fertilization.

“Basically, what we’re trying to do, create, is a blind sperm; a sperm that can’t recognize an egg,” explained Dr. Joseph Hall, Ph.D. of the NSU Center for Biotechnology and Biomedical Sciences.

The researchers have come up with a chemical compound of a sugar molecule that could be put in a birth control pill or a patch. It is not a hormone, like some of their colleagues at other institutions are creating, that would stop the production of sperm. Instead, if stops the fertilization.

“We’ve used rats, which is about 92% effective, but in the Petri dish, it’s been about 98% effective.”

For the team at NSU’s Center for Biotechnology, that’s not good enough.

“However, in order to have a viable male contraceptive, you need to reach something like 100%,” said Dr. Hall.

So, it’s back to work, searching for the key to block, or blind, a few more nooks and crannies in the surface of the sperm that will result in that 100% male contraceptive.

It’s taken Dr. Hall 18 years to get to this point, and it could take two or three more years to begin experiments on larger animals.