induced abortion. Sanger was prompted to work for the birth control movement on witnessing the plight o f this mother to whom the only contraceptive advice the doctor provided was to tell the husband to 'sleep on the roof.
The postwar popularisation of eugenicist ideas of racial improvement and social control helped legitimise and endorse contraceptive measures. This was no easy task since opposition to birth control was deeply entrenched and eugenicists' claims were now deeply tinged with the crimes of the Nazis (see Blacker 1952). Fears over the diminishing fertility of 'intelligent and efficient classes' provoked deeply ambivalent attitudes towards birth control. On the one hand, contraception was an indispensable aid in limiting the fertility of the 'undesirables', but on the other hand, any propaganda about the availability of such measures was held to be detrimental to public health and morality. As I show in later chapters these concerns were frequently aired whenever the issue of contraception arose.
It was not just the world of politics that censored any discussion of contraception, but the scientific laboratory, the supposed haven of apolitical neutrality, also vetoed work on contraception. John Baker, for example, who was later to be awarded the Oliver Bird Medal for his contributions to birth control, was hounded out of his laboratory in Cambridge, UK in the 1930s when the nature of his work on spermicides was discovered (Gunn 1987: 20, Peel 1964: 142). He was rescued, however, by Howard Florey, later famous for his work on penicillin. John Baker was attempting to find the ideal contraceptive method on behalf of VOLPAR (the Voluntary Parenthood Association). Goldzieher (1993: 364) also notes that in 1943 contraception was not mentioned, it remained a 'subject that was simply not discussed in proper academic circles'.
In the United States of America, projects were sponsored under the auspices of The National Research Council's Committee for Research on Problems of Sex (established 1916-1962), which itself was funded almost exclusively by Rockefeller monies initially channelled through the Bureau of Social Hygiene (set up in 1911) (Clarke 1991) until 1931 when the Rockefeller Foundation assumed financial responsibility (Creep, Koblinsky and Jacobs 1976: 361). The committee sponsored much of the research that was intimately tied up with what we now call hormones (Bullough 1988: 87). The committee also aimed to show that the study of sex and reproduction could be undertaken scientifically, thereby hoping to foster public acceptance and enlightenment (Creep, Koblinsky and Jacobs 1976: 369).
Kennedy (1970: 209) mentions that Sanger funded a project in the department of animal genetics in Edinburgh University in the 1930s. It is not clear, however, if
this is the same project that McLaren (1990: 239) cites. McLaren describes a project initiated in the 1920s using American funding to support the word of Dr B.P. Wiesner at Edinburgh. When Wiesner and his colleagues reported their work in Zurich, they emphasised the primitive nature of their findings and warned that: 'it is doubtful ... whether we shall ever wish to obtain a point where these dangerous weapons will be at the disposal of man' (Wiesner et al cited in Taylor 1931: 104). Peel (1963: 113) also cites the work of Professor Crew also in the same laboratory in Edinburgh, funded by the US birth control movement, who was searching for an 'effective, easily available chemical in a form that should keep in good condition over a long period of time and in all climates, and be so easy to use that the most ignorant women in the Orient, the tropics, the rural outposts or the city slums might be protected'.
Contraception continued to be a controversial field. Johnson (1977: 66) suggests that Sanger saw 'several benefits from scientific research beyond the possibility of lending prestige and legitimacy to birth control'. Her pursuit of a scientific contraceptive that was removed from the sex act was an early goal that continued to structure the scientific research process. It is clear however, that contraception was clearly infused with dysgenic concerns and in the US, for example, eugenic sterilization acts were on the books in 30 states in 1940. Although they were never mobilized within key medical groups, over 36,000 individuals were sterilized under the authority of these laws (Reed 1985: 387). Work on hormonal contraceptives was neither a legitimate nor an identifiable research topic during the middle of the twentieth century. It was not until the 'discovery' of the pill that things began to change. Nevertheless, research on hormones proceeded at a quickening pace.
Hormones and the Pill
The pill is made up of two synthetic hormones that replicate the action of oestrogen and progesterone, both of which are found 'naturally' in the sexed female body. The pill helped to facilitate an acceptance of extra hormone substances, but as the previous sections illustrated, the notion of the hormonal body had already been initiated.
Oestradiol was isolated and described in 1938 (Dodds et al 1938, Goldzieher 1993): a culmination of more than a decade of work. Subsequently, diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic analogue of oestradiol, was found to prevent
the implantation of fertilized ova and although it was predicted from animal experiments that the conclusions should be applicable to women, it was felt that such applications were better not pursued. Parkes (1985: 229) provides an alternative version of the story. Commenting on the jointly authored report by Dodds, Parkes and Noble in 1938 in British Medical Journal (BMJ) on oral administration of ethinyl oestradiol or stilboestrol to rats or rabbits, Parkes (1985: 229) notes that the original draft of this paper included a paragraph pointing out the possibilities of this observation for the control of human fertility. This paragraph was, however, struck out of the published version at the request of the Medical Research Council. Not only was it considered an impropriety to mention birth control in a scientific paper in those days (Goldzieher 1993: 364), but oestrogens were then thought to be rather dangerous substances which should not be used without therapeutic Justification. A sentiment confirmed by Dutton (1988: 34) who contends that Dodds, one of the scientists involved, apparently wanted no part in developing a contraceptive pill because he was concerned that women would get breast cancer. Parkes ( 1985: 229) continues to explain that although 'the possibilities which have been obvious in spite of the deletion of the relevant paragraph' his clinical colleagues remained indifferent, consolidated by the idea that 'to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg could be held, by those sufficiently pre-conditioned, to constitute the destruction of human life'.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of DES for post menopausal complaints in 1941. In 1948 Drs Olive and George Smith initiated the use of DES for the prevention of miscarriage and spontaneous abortion and it was administered to millions of women in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. It has subsequently been used as a post-coital contraceptive, in the suppression of breast milk after delivery, in the treatment of breast cancer and prostate cancer, and in sex pills, growth stimulator in cattle field and hair growth tonic (Direcks and Hoen 1986: 44). Seaman and Seaman (1978: 38) note somewhat cynically how flexible population ethics are. Commenting on the DES trial in which it was hoped that women with problem pregnancies would achieve motherhood, they point out that 'it was all right to give women a potentially dangerous drug in the hope of preserving their pregnancies, but not for birth control. In those days it was a woman's duty, her purpose in life, to reproduce'.
Progesterone, the other 'female' sex hormone, was isolated in 1934 (Corner 1958: 48) and by 1934 its structure had been determined (Rock 1963: 93). In 1936, MacCorquodale, Thayer and Doisy extracted 25mg of pure crystaline 176-
oestradiol from 4 tons of sows' ovaries (Peel and Potts 1969: 89) and Parkes (1985: 123) humorously details the laborious process of obtaining the hormone from pregnant mares, giving us some idea of the urgent feeling for the need of a synthetic hormone. In 1937, in a project conducted by Makepeace, Weinstein and Friedman at Pennsylvania University, rabbits were injected with progesterone. Progesterone was shown to inhibit ovulation (Pincus 1955). Doctors are also known to have experimented with hormone treatments to delay the menstrual period following the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics (Lenskyj 1986: 44).
The pharmaceutical industry played an important role in 'the decade of the sex hormones' (Djerassi 1979: 233), supplying large quantities of compounds to researchers (Oudshoom 1990: 255). Focussing on the marketing of female sex hormones by the Dutch pharmaceutical company. Organon, Oudshoom (1993: 11) shows how the new drugs quickly adapted to a wide range of 'women's diseases'. Schizophrenia, diabetes, epilepsy, as well as menopausal complaints and sterility were among the many complaints that were believed to be reducible to the dysfunction of the ovaries. Her study disrupts conventional understanding of technological and dmg 'development', illustrating the gendered undercurrents mnning alongside the production of any dmg. Unlike female preparations, male sex hormones were marketed in 1931, only when clinical therapeutic effects were known in advance. Initially promoted as treatment for hypertrophy of the prostate, male sex hormone preparations were used by urologists not gynaecologists. Oudshoom suggests that any emphasis on sexual impotence in advertising male sex hormones was felt to be far too risky because of negative associations with the earlier rejuvenation claims of Brown-Sequard. T h e importance of consolidating a position that was seen to be scientific and removed from the quacks was integral to the development of the sex hormones, and female sex hormones in particular. Parkes' (1985: 219) assertion that endocrinological research had become respectable as early as 1936 thus seems somewhat premature.
By the early 1940s, the medical usefulness of sex steroids was no longer in question (Maisel 1965: 43). And yet, the development of the pill was not simply a logical extension of the linear progress of scientific research on steroids. There are no natural trajectories which steer the course of technological development. The idea of a product life cycle, in which an artefact moves from development, to production, to marketing and then to maturity, is a post-hoc rationalization. It did not simply 'happen' that endocrinology entered a 'golden era' in the 1940s.
Side-effects of Cortisone
The production of progestin (a synthetic analogue of progesterone) can be seen as a spin-off from the remarkable surge of interest in research in chemical steroids, and in particular cortisone. In the US, in 1940, research into the application of hormones was enhanced and legitimised by the pressures of World War II. Not only were steroids associated with the reduction of stress and battle fatigue (Gunn 1987: 25), but Djerassi (1979: 238) also notes that rumours about cortisone, enabling German aviators to fly at altitudes over 40,000 feet, stimulated research on steroids. Birch (1992: 364) confirms that research was stimulated by a rumour from the Polish Underground that Luftwaffe pilots were being dosed with cortical hormones. But, before I elaborate on the importance of cortisone to the development of the pill, another factor involving the second world war is important.
Frequently omitted from steroid histories are the experiments done at Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Seaman and Seaman (1978: 103) have asserted that both men and women were given daily doses of liquid oestrogen which caused women to stop menstruating and men to lose their sex drive. It is difficult to evaluate such claims, but it appears highly probable that prisoners were fed hormones of some kind. Revealed at the Nuremberg Trials, the Nazis used drugs in the search for a new effective method of cheap, mass sterilization. Experiments at Auschwitz, under the direction of Dr Clauberg, were part of this search and included injections of formalin as well as injections of hormonal preparations of substances called Progynon and Proluton. These were substances that had first been developed to treat infertility and were tested with the aid of Dr Johannes Goebel, the chief chemist at the pharmaceutical firm Schering (Lifton 1986: 272). The bodies of Jews and the disabled were used for experimentation and the promotion of what was then called scientific advance.
I have been unable to verify the scientific validity of these substances or the connection between these human experiments and the ones for the pill. Nor have I been able to find any mention in scientists' work of the contribution or stimulus of this research to their own thinking^^. Nevertheless, the similarities between a letter written by Porkony, a defendant at the Nuremberg Trial, to Himmler in 1941 and the statements made by chemists and birth controllers, with the advent of the oral contraceptive pill, are striking. Porkony wrote: 'If, on the basis of this
28. Blacker (1952) notes the work of Pockomy(sic) and his sterilization experiments with caladium