Word: norethynodrel
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...since 1951, laboratory experts have been making chemically related substances, now known as progestins, from such unlikely raw materials as the root of the Mexican giant yam. Some of these synthetics are far more potent than natural progesterone-at least for preventing ovulation. The two best known are norethynodrel, the main ingredient in Enovid, and norethindrone, used in the other contraceptive pills now marketed in the U.S. and by various manufacturers around the world...
...CONTRACEPTION. The million or so women who have been using the new pills to avoid conception were victims of frightening reports from Britain and Norway. Several women in the U.S. and Britain have suffered from thrombophlebitis while taking norethynodrel,*and a few have died, said the British Medical Journal. In Norway, health authorities read the British report and hastily yanked the drug off the market...
...When dollar-conscious Britain decided to try out oral contraceptives developed in the U.S., doctors in Birmingham thought they might cut the cost by cutting the dose. U.S. authorities had just approved a cut from 10 mg. per pill (taken 20 days a month) of norethynodrel (trade-named Enovid in the U.S., Conovid in Britain by G. D. Searle & Co.) to 5 mg. The British cut it to 2.5 mg. The policy proved to be penny-wise and pound-foolish: of the first 48 women who took the half-dose pills, 14 became pregnant. Later trials switched...
...pills are Enovid, trade name of Chicago's G. D. Searle & Co. for norethynodrel, and Norlutin, trade name of Detroit's Parke, Davis & Co. for norethindrone (also called norethisterone).* These two chemicals, both extracted from the root of the barbasco (Mexican yam), are as alike as tweedledum and tweedledee. They are almost but not quite the same chemically as a natural female hormone that controls much of the menstrual cycle and helps to prevent ovulation-release of an egg from the ovary to the Fallopian tube, where a sperm can fertilize...
Natural progesterone is too costly and must be given in such massive doses as to be unsuited for wide use. Then Pincus and colleagues found that norethynodrel worked better and in far smaller doses. Pincus and Rock teamed with Puerto Rico's Dr. Edris Rice-Wray in a big-scale test of the drug as a contraceptive among San Juan slum dwellers. While "on the pills" only 16 out of 838 women in four study areas became pregnant and all 16 had skipped their pills occasionally. Equally important, among the 174 women who dropped out of the test because...