1951

The Pill

Katherine McCormick (1875–1967), Gregory Goodwin Pincus (1903–1967), Min Chueh Chang (1908–1991), George Rosenkranz (b. 1916), Carl Djerassi (1923–2015), Frank Benjamin Colton (1923–2003), Luis Ernesto Miramontes Cárdenas (1925–2004)

One of the most important targets for the early steroid researchers was finding a compound that worked like progesterone but could be taken as a pill (oral progesterone itself was broken down too quickly in the body). The hormone was known to prevent ovulation, and an orally active mimic might work as a human birth-control pill. Mexican pharmaceutical company Syntex’s expertise in steroid chemistry made it a major force in this endeavor, but its founder, Russell Marker, had left the company, taking his Mexican yam methods with him. That left Hungarian-born chemist George Rosenkranz to try to reverse-engineer the chemistry (which he did).

Austrian-born chemist Carl Djerassi and his group at Syntex, including Mexican chemist Luis Ernesto Miramontes Cárdenas, made norethindrone (only a few months after the Syntex cortisone synthesis had been revealed), and American chemist Frank Benjamin Colton, at pharmaceutical firm G. D. Searle, synthesized the similar norethynodrel. Clinical trials of norethynodrel were conducted with funding from Katherine McCormick, who was both a biologist and a wealthy heiress, and the drug proved highly effective. Both compounds were used as components of competing first-generation birth-control pills.

The subject of birth control was (and is) controversial. Some drug companies stayed out of the field altogether, or refused to explicitly work on birth control even if they did do steroid research. But the demand was certainly there, and during the early 1960s the first oral contraceptive pills were approved by the FDA.

The world has never been the same. “The pill,” whose first iteration was co-invented by American biologist Gregory Goodwin Pincus and Chinese-born American biologist Min Chueh Chang, was not widely available as a contraceptive at first, and its distribution was regulated by the courts. But for the first time in human history, a medicine had made pregnancy optional, allowing women to have control over their fertility and thus the rest of their lives.

It’s a wonder that such small pills (steroid derivatives can be very potent) can create such widespread changes in our world.