An Outspoken Developer of the Pill Takes On Any Who Criticize It
In the years following World War II, when a young chemist named Carl Djerassi became involved in research that would eventually result in an oral contraceptive, a.k.a. “the pill,” most progressive-minded people agreed that the right way to deal with the problems of overpopulation was to control the number of births rather than wait, in Malthusian fashion, for food shortages, starvation, diseases and wars to take their ghastly toll on human life.
In recent decades, however, the pill has come under attack from a variety of sources, including religious fundamentalists, who see it as the catalyst for the sexual revolution, and some feminists, who have branded it part of a male conspiracy to control women’s bodies. In his outspoken yet judicious examination of the impact of the pill over the last 50 years, Djerassi makes no bones about what he thinks of such criticisms. He believes that the sexual revolution would have happened anyway, thanks to a variety of cultural factors, pill or no pill--but with no pill there would have been more abortions. Most of the world’s women who use the pill, he reminds us, do so not to engage in indiscriminate sexual activity, but to limit the size of their families. As for the charge that the pill involves messing with women’s bodies instead of men’s, he rightly points out that had men developed a male contraceptive pill, women would probably--and justifiably--have complained that this left women in the uneasy position of having to rely on men to avoid pregnancy.
In “This Man’s Pill,” Djerassi takes on anyone who has ever criticized the pill, for any reason, including some feminists who he thinks have shut their eyes to reality. As recently as 1992, he tells us, the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective categorically stated: “We do not believe that overpopulation is a primary source of the world’s problems.” He finds this astonishing: “For a person like me, who has seen the world’s population triple within his current lifetime and may yet live to see it quadruple, it is the height of hubris for highly educated women in one of the richest countries in the world to make such an unqualified claim, pretending to speak, for instance, for women in the poorest countries....” How, he demands, would these affluent women propose to improve the quality of life in Africa, “whose current population of 770 million is estimated to grow to 1.3 billion by the year 2025, while per capita food production has dropped consistently since the 1960s? Let them eat Maine lobster? In ignoring such questions, are we tacitly counting on the AIDS explosion to solve the equally scary problems of demographics?”
Djerassi addresses the question of the medical risks of taking the pill (much smaller than alarmists have claimed, he believes), and in doing so, he offers a fascinating look at the complicated relationship between government regulators and pharmaceutical companies. He also draws important attention to the inadequacy of the current market-driven system for inventing and supplying drugs and medical care, needed by the poorest and sickest people.
Djerassi has packed an astonishing amount of material into this relatively small book. He goes into the history of research on the pill and the other scientists whose work made it possible. He offers some reflections on recent developments in fertility drugs, artificial wombs and genome mapping. The long-term consequences of enabling people to reproduce without having sex, he suggests, may turn out to be much more problematic than the consequences of enabling people to enjoy sex without the fear of unwanted children.
In addition to offering his perspective on a wide range of public issues relating to the pill, this book is also a personal memoir: a kind of self-portrait. Although by no means a full-scale autobiography, it deals with some challenging times in the author’s private life, including his relationship with his current wife, Stanford English professor Diane Middlebrook. Djerassi’s interest in the social ramifications of his scientific discovery led him in new directions, personally and professionally. “Until then, I had taught only chemistry courses, primarily advanced ones.... But if politics starts to have a negative impact on a technical field, and especially on one so important to society, then it seemed to me that the most constructive action I could take was to educate the decision-makers and politicians of the future....”
To this end, he not only came up with innovative courses in areas such as biosociology and bioethics, but he also launched a new career as a novelist and playwright writing what he calls “science-in-fiction”: stories and plays about scientists and their professional and ethical dilemmas.
Despite Djerassi’s gift for clear exposition, some nonscientists may still get a little lost in the early section where he describes the molecular structures of steroids and hormones. And a later, rather tangential excursion in which he elaborates on the details of acquiring artwork for his collection may also have a somewhat limited appeal.
But on the whole, this is a thoughtful, forthright and accessible book. Djerassi writes with humor and aplomb: If at times he can’t help sounding a trifle boastful, his accomplishments are indeed considerable.
