The Birth of the Pill

The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution by Jonathan Eig, W. W. Norton & Company, 2015. 

Birth Control

This is a book on the development of birth control pills. Before birth control pills, contraception was often promoted by the rhythm method, which was promoted by Leo J. Latz, a professor at Loyola University in Chicago. 

Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology:

It was founded in 1944 by scientists Gregory Pincus and Hudson Hoagland. The Worcester Foundation supported reproductive research of Gregory Pincus. It was located in Worcester Massachusetts. Hoagland was the leader of the business and fund-raising end of things. 

Katherine Dexter McCormick

The Worchester Foundation was supported by philanthropist Katherine Dexter McCormick. She was the widower of Stanley McCormick, who, in turn, was the son of Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the mechanized reaper. Katherine McCormick was active in women’s suffrage movement.

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was the one who got Katherine McCormick involved with the Worcester Foundation. 

Searle

The G.D. Searle pharmaceutical company also supported the Worchester Foundation. G. D. Searle and Co. (supporter of Pincus); Gideon Daniel Searle (1888) pharmacist; * John G. Searle, grandson of G.D. Searle, hired scientists who developed Metamucil

Pincus

Gregory Goodwin Pincus was born  in 1903 in the Woodbine Jewish Farming Colony in southern New Jersey. The colony was created by Baron Maurice de Hirsch. His mother was Lizzie Pincus née Lipman. The family later moved to the Bronx and joined the Free Synagogue of Rabbi Stephen Wise. 

John Rock

Physician John Rock, a Roman Catholic, was the director of sterility clinic at Free Hospital for Women in Boston. John Rock used progesterone to help his infertile women conceive. Dr. Rock found serendipitously that women taking progesterone hormone to conceive instead stopped menstruating. Already in nature: the progesterone hormone prevents ovulation so that the fertilized egg can grow without competition from other eggs. Pincus followed up on this. Pincus wanted women to stop ovulating, but continue menstruating.

Min Chueh Chang

Min Chueh Chang (张明觉) studied the effect of progesterone on the reproductive cycle of rabbits. Chang worked with Pincus. Chang performed progesterone experiments on rabbits and rats.

Syntex

Synthetic sex hormones from chemical modification of vegetable molecules from Mexico. Russell Earl Marker, a scientist who studied root plant hormones chemically similar to mammalian sex hormones Russell Marker, chemist. Cabeza de negro, a root plant. Marker helped found Syntex.

Carl Djerassi

Carl Djerassi continued his work. Carl Djerassi (Syntax) Searle and Syntex made progesterone-like analogs. Searle: orethynodvel, Syntex: norethindrone. Adding estrogen to progesterone reduced the side-effects of progesterone. Synthetic Hormones: Norethindrone developed by Carl Djerassi of Syntex ; Enovid = norethynodrel

Puerto Rico

The birth control drug was tested in Puerto Rico during 1954-1956. Dr. Abraham Stone supervised the clinical trials in PR. Abraham Stone, infertility treatment doctor, worked for Margaret Sanger. Stone initially helped women overcome infertility. Clarence Gamble, heir of the Procter and Gamble soap company fortune, funded the second trial in Puerto Rico.

FDA

In 1957 FDA application by Searle for Enovid was for infertility and menstrual irregularities such as amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, and menorrhagia, not for contraception. But doctors could prescribe it in an off-label manor for birth control. In Enovid was approved in 1957 for menstrual problems. Off-label use contraception. In 1957 the FDA approved Enovid for the above. 

Contraception

In 1959 Searle asked FDA to approve Enovid for contraception. The 1957 application by Searle to FDA, did not mention contraception, but only to heal menstrual problems. In 1960, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Enovid for birth control. In 1960 approved for contraception by FDA. In England the drug was called Enavid.