Birth control pill approved 50 years ago

On 9 May 1960 the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the world's first birth control pill, a drug that has reshaped the cultural landscape in much of the world. The Pill allowed women to explore sexuality for the first time without fear of unwanted pregnancy. The anniversary invites a look at the questions surrounding oral contraception. One question for the anniversary is why, 50 years on, science has come up with a potency pill for men but not a male birth control pill.

Debate continues to rage on the Pill's health effects. In addition to worrisome side effects such as weight gain and nausea, the use of the Pill has been linked to a greater incidence of blood-clotting disorders. Researchers are also exploring possible links between hormonal contraceptives and cancer, infertility and sexual dysfunction.

Though health risks remain, the Pill has been widely accepted as the most satisfactory method of contraception, in part because of ease of use. By 2002, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 11.6 million American women were on the Pill, making it the nation's leading method of contraception. Research published in January in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology says that oral contraceptives have been used by about 80 percent of women in the United States at some point in their lives.

Development of impotence drugs, such as Cialis, Viagra and Levitra, have delivered blockbuster profits to the world's big drug companies. The absence of a birth control pill for men suggests the drugmakers have decided it would be a bad investment risk. China has come the closest to a Pill for men with a birth control injection that is producing promising test results.

Conditions were not propitious in the United States for the development of the Pill. In In 1873, the US Congress passed the Comstock Law, which forbade all forms of contraception. Margaret Sanger's advocacy of birth control helped, indirectly to bring funding to the researcher credited with the development of the oral contraceptive, Gregory Pincus in 1951. Nine years later, Enovid - the first Pill was approved. Four years after the FDA approved the Pill, the US Supreme Court struck down the Comstock law.

Original link: http://www.newsahead.com/preview/2010/05/09/united-states-9-may-2010-birth-control-pill-approved-50-years-ago/index.php