Word: menstrual
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Females of many animal species are fertile for only a short time at comparatively long intervals. The female human animal is an outstanding exception, with a fertile period of three to six days out of every 28. The cycle begins with the start of menstrual bleeding. For the first four or five days, her uterus sloughs off part of its lining (endometrium). This accomplished, her complex hormonal system sends a messenger chemical to her ovaries, telling them to ripen one of the 50,000 or more potential egg cells with which she was born. Usually, only one ovary responds...
...Rock were working together to find a way of helping subfertile women ovulate, and thus conceive. They first had to regularize the woman's cycle, and they hit upon a synthetic progestin chemically akin to another female sex hormone, progesterone. The progestin, taken for 20 days in mid-menstrual cycle, suppressed ovulation by simulating pregnancy. Taken off the medicine, the women had a more normal cycle, with surer ovulation. After Pincus and Rock had produced a gratifying number of conceptions, a new idea struck them: Why not use the progestin deliberately to suppress ovulation every month-in other words...
...first the drug worked well. Several days after a woman stopped taking it, she had what seemed like a normal but mild menstrual period. There were few side effects. But as the drug was further purified, Dr. Rock began to hear patients complain of too much "breakthrough bleeding" in mid-cycle. Analysis showed that the purified drug contained no detectable estrogen. Apparently estrogen, even in the most minute quantity, prevented some side effects, including unwanted bleeding. So when Chicago's G. D. Searle & Co., which had worked closely with Pincus and Rock, began making "the Pincus pills" as Enovid...
...program's planners set back the whole campaign. Indian experts now laugh at the Nehru government's drive to control births through the rhythm method. Even then it was known that peasant women, because of their exhausting chores and lack of nourishment, usually have irregular menstrual cycles. Moreover, the colored beads that the government distributed to the peasants for keeping track of the days-green for "go" and red for "stop"-failed for the astonishing reason that many women never looked at them until the lights were out, and then the colors were indistinguishable...
...Gregory G. Pincus '21, of the Worcester Foundation and Dr. David D. Rutstein '30, head of the Medical School's Department of Preventive Medicine, will use Ford Foundation Grants totalling $367,000 to investigate the effects of oral contraceptives on liver and blood conditions and the menstrual cycle...