Synthesising revolution

摘要

Of all the things that irritated him, and a good many did, Carl Djerassi most disliked being called "the father" of the contraceptive pill. True, he had been there at its conception, on October 15th 1951, in a laboratory in Mexico: a short, eager figure with a lame leg, aged 27. But, if anything, he had been the mother, producing-by nifty replacement of a carbon atom with a hydrogen one-the synthetic progesterone that, for the first time, made a pill that was easily taken orally. This was the basic substance, the "egg", that was then adopted by Gregory Pincus and steered through human trials by John Rock. Both men were jubilant when the Pill was approved in 1960: at last, women could control their own fertility. Mr Djerassi, however, had misgivings, which grew as the years passed.