First, they needed a biologist. They found him in Gregory Pincus, head of the Worcester (Mass.) Foundation for Experimental Biology. Pincus was renowned for his breakthrough work fertilizing rabbit eggs in a test tube and he was a man who reveled in meeting a challenge.
McCormick gave Pincus a $40,000 check. (She would be the pill’s chief benefactor, contributing almost $2 million to the research.) Two strokes of good fortune followed quickly. First, chemists working separately in Mexico City and Chicago produced the pill’s key ingredient, an oral form of progesterone. Back in 1928 the hormone, whose name comes from the Latin pro (in favor of) gestare (to bear), had been identified as central to sustaining pregnancy, and researchers thought it could be a critical ingredient in contraception. Later, scientists injected the hormone into rabbits: tricked into thinking they were pregnant, the animals stopped ovulating. But it wasn’t until the early 1950s that chemists learned how to produce progesterone in a synthetic, oral form–just in time for Pincus.
His second lucky break came in 1952, when he bumped into the highly regarded Boston gynecologist Dr. John Rock, who was also studying progesterone. The two were an ideal match. Pincus had tested the hormone on animals, but not yet on women. Rock had the patients.
Massachusetts, where anti-contraception laws were among the staunchest in the nation, was an unlikely birthplace for the pill. Pincus and Rock, who was a prominent Roman Catholic, worked in secrecy. In 1954 Rock undertook the first clinical trial of Pincus’s oral contraceptive on 50 volunteers with spectacular results: not a single ovulation. When larger trials were needed, the two moved their experiments out of the country–to Puerto Rico and Haiti. Both were successful.
The pill, from launch to FDA approval, took less than a decade–a remarkable feat. It has plenty of critics, foremost among them the Catholic Church. Even feminists attacked it as a male creation with harmful side effects, including blood clots and depression; the complications have since been limited by fine-tuning hormonal dosages. In recent years, expensive litigation and other controversies have slowed investment in alternative methods. The pill remains in common use, and it’s hard to think of a pharmaceutical that’s had a greater effect on American life and mores.
