Birth Control Pill: Research and Development

Résumé du document

Technology innovations are not neutral; instead they embody the values of their inventors. Those who hold power exercise their influence over technological preference and contraceptive technology is no exception. Active members of the Birth control movement in the West began to
press for the development of new contraceptive methods mainly because they were searching for a quick solution to rising birth rates. As a result, hormonal contraceptive, "The Pill" was presented to millions of women as liberating technology in the West. Additionally this was a
solution to the unwanted pregnancies and high birth rates in the Third World (Hartman, 1996). Initially, it appears that the pill relieved the women from the hoary fear of pregnancy, and altered their ideas about health and reproduction. However, from another perspective, the early research
and development of the pill opened up a new window for the commodification process. The use of hormones becomes a means of "designing‟ commodities from what once Mother Nature produced and widely used by numerous pharmaceutical companies for capital accumulation.
However, this internalization of nature is not problem-free (Castree, 2003).

Extraits

[...] Moreover, it is mainly women who endure the aftermath by sacrificing their health, and their lives for the research and development of the pill. This will be analyzed and elaborated by presenting the history and creation of the pill, human trials, safety issues, and the circumstances surrounding its release on the market. THE CREATION OF THE PILL There are two separate movements combined that created the first contraceptive pill. One was the rapid series of advances in organic chemistry, which took place over a period of thirty five years. [...]

[...] However, these discoveries penetrated the development of the process of commodification of hormones, with its reckless interference in a vital process of nature for the sake of profit maximization. This in fact, caused a new trend of nature commodification, as more and more hormones started being regarded by pharmaceutical companies as an effective accumulation strategy for capital. Particularly in developing countries, people started being regarded as subjects for drug research. Consequently so, the pill was born mainly due to social, economic, and political injustices which allowed most of the research and development to be conducted . [...]

[...] Gradually, the possibilities of chemical control of conception were unlocking. This is where Margaret Sanger‟s involvement ascends in the aid of the creation of the pill. It was the enthusiasm and drive of this 68 year old heroine of the American Birth Control movement which became a critical imperative to the development of the first marketable pill. From early 1912, Sanger had expressed the hope of finding magic pill” for contraception. It was absolutely essential for Sanger to find a contraceptive technique that would grant women full control over their fertility, without the cooperation of the male, as was necessitated by the barrier contraceptive methods. [...]

[...] Bibliography: Asbell, Bernard The Pill: A Biography of the Drug That Changed the World. New York: Random House. Castree, Noel Commodifying what nature?. Progress in Human Geography. [Online] pp Available at: http://phg.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/3/273 [Accessed 19 March, 2010]. Connell, Elizabeth B Contraception in the prepill era. Contraception. [Online] pp. 7S-10S. Available at: http://journals2.scholarsportal.info/details.xqy?uri=/00107824/v59i0001_s1/7s_citpe.xml. [Accessed 10 March 2010]. ETC Group Extreme Genetic Engineering: An Introduction to Synthetic Biology. [...]

[...] Birth Control Pill: Research and Development INTRODUCTION Technology innovations are not neutral; instead they embody the values of their inventors. Those who hold power exercise their influence over technological preference and contraceptive technology is no exception. Active members of the Birth control movement in the West began to press for the development of new contraceptive methods mainly because they were searching for a quick solution to rising birth rates. As a result, hormonal contraceptive, Pill” was presented to millions of women as liberating technology in the West. [...]