Risky hormones, pregnant patients and the contested science of birth defects: the rise and fall of hormone pregnancy tests in the FRG and UK, 1950-81

• Applicant: Dr. Birgit Nemec
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 429045347

This project examines, for the first time, the history of hormonepregnancy tests (HPTs) to reconsider broader issues in the history ofpostwar biomedicine, health policy and reproduction. Today it may bedifficult to believe that doctors ever prescribed pills as pregnancytests. However, prior to the advent of modern home pregnancy testsin the 1980s, millions of women worldwide were given HPTs:diagnostic drugs that ruled out gestation by inducing menstrual-likebleeding. Innovatively combining estrogen and progestin, HPTsprefigured oral contraception (OC) by about a decade and, in thewake of the thalidomide tragedy, they became embroiled in aprotracted international debate over the teratogenicity of synthetic sexhormones that still resonates today. OC and thalidomide have foundtheir historians and are today generally regarded as central to anyhistorical understanding of postwar medicine and health. Yet, althoughHPTs provide a key to understanding the subtle and complexrelationships between OC and thalidomide, very little is known abouttheir history. We draw on a range of published/unpublished sources,oral-history interviews, and extensive and largely unused corporate,state and privately-held archives to reconstruct a single integratedhistory of HPTs in the FRG/UK. In doing so we contextualise OC andthalidomide to offer a fresh interpretation of key aspects of sex,gender, medicine, regulation, and risk in the eventful decades afterWorld War II. Our project strategically advances four mainmethodological innovations. (1) Although regulated at the nationallevel, HPTs were marketed globally and challenged by whistle-blower scientists and patient-activists who forged alliances across borders.They originated in the FRG, so why were they first warned against inthe UK? Moving beyond national comparison, we propose anintegrated analysis of HPTs in the UK/FRG as a single entangled andglobally framed history. (2) To broaden our analytical perspective, weplace the lived experiences of patient-activists front and centre.Building on already established working-relationship with patient-ledgroups in Britain/Germany, our collaboration will co-produce oralhistoryrepositories. (3) Reproduction is an exciting growth area in thehumanities and social sciences. Our project facilitates internationalknowledge exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration by promoting‘reproduction and risk’ as a theme in mainstream historical research.(4) Starting with the successful conference organised by JOG inCambridge in 2017 and to which BN contributed a paper, we haveestablished an exciting and unusually interdisciplinary network ofhistorians, social scientists, patient-activists, lawyers, MPs,journalists, and developmental biologists who all share an interest inHPTs. Moving forward, our project will lay foundations for a worldleadingpool of expertise that we anticipate will thrive and impactpolicy beyond the lifecycle of the grant.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Jesse Olszynko-Gryn