Today (April 9, 1903) is the birthday of Gregory Goodwin Pincus, an American biologist who played a key role in the discovery of birth control pills.
Dr Gregory Pincus was born on April 9, 1903, in Goodwin, New Jersey.
His parents were Russian Jews. He received his doctorate in 1927 from Colonel
University. He then did research at several institutions, including Harvard
and the University of Cambridge. For many years Clark served as a professor at
the University. In 1944 he helped establish the Orchester Experimental
Biological Institute. He also served for a long time as the director of its
laboratories. Safe and reliable contraceptive methods were known even before
the invention of the contraceptive pill. The device most doctors recommended
for contraception that day was the diaphragm. Although it is actually a safe
and reliable device, women are reluctant to use it in practice.
Although many people have tried to find an oral contraceptive pill, no
one knows what kind of chemical is put in such pills. The major invention of
the birth control pill was made in 1937. AW Macbeth, G.L. Weinstein, M.H. The
Friedman trio demonstrated that injecting progesterone, one of the female
hormones, inhibits fertility in laboratory animals. However, the hypodermic injection
was not considered a viable method of contraception and progesterone was very
expensive at the time, so contraceptives were not developed until the 1950s.
Pincus was the director of a research laboratory at the Orchester
Experimental Biological Institute in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. He specializes
in steroid metabolism and mammalian reproductive physiology. So Gregory Pincus
started the initiative in 1950 at the insistence of Margaret Sanger, who had
long insisted on family planning. The experiments were carried out with the
help of Dr Din-soo-sang, a researcher in Orchester, and Dr John Rock, a
gynaecologist. He proved that women can control conception if they take
progesterone orally. However, it restricted fertility to only 85% of the time.
And very high doses were required to control it.
Undeterred, Pincus asked various chemical companies in 1953 to send him
samples of chemicals that were similar to progesterone. Pincus examined
everything that came to him. Among them, he found that the substance 'Norethynodrel',
manufactured by GT Cheerleader & Co., had a special effect. The substance
norepinephrine was discovered in 1951 by Dr Frank B., who worked at the Searle
Laboratory. Goldtone, a chemist, had artificially created and licensed it in his
own name. But neither he nor his supervisors attempted to administer the
contraceptive orally. Little did they know at the time that they had discovered
such a drug. Pincus and his research team conducted further experiments and
found that adding a small amount of another substance called mestranol to
norepinephrine would have a beneficial effect. It is this link that makes up
the contraceptive pill "Enovid", which is a G.T. Sold by Searle
Company.
After various experiments from 1955, it was approved by the Food and
Drug Administration in 1960 under the name 'Enovid'. In today's world where
population growth is even more threatening, the importance of the contraceptive
pill as a means of controlling population growth is enormous. This led to a
revolution in sexual attitudes in the United States over the past 15 years. The
contraceptive pill plays a major role in preventing unwanted conception and
preventing women from having premarital and post-marital sex. The pill thus
provided an opportunity to engage in sexual intercourse without fear of
conception. This led to a change in circumstances and changes in attitudes and
behaviours.
She is proud to be the only scientist who has devoted her entire time
and effort to intensive research to find an oral contraceptive pill. Gregory Pincus
has written 250 scientific research articles. He also authored a book, The
Conquest of Fertility, which was published in 1965. Pincus won numerous
scientific awards during his lifetime, but he was not awarded the Nobel Prize
for his role in the development of the birth control pill. American biologist
Gregory Goodwin Pincus passed away in Boston on August 22, 1967, at the age of
64.
Source By: Wikipedia.
Information: Ramesh, Assistant Professor of Physics, Nehru Memorial
College, Puthanampatti, Trichy.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment