Abstract
This article examines the West German controversy over Duogynon, a ‘hormone pregnancy test’ and the drug at the centre of the first major, international debate over iatrogenic birth defects in the post-thalidomide era. It recovers an asymmetrical power struggle over the uneven distribution of biomedical knowledge and ignorance (about teratogenic risk) that pitted parent-activists, whistleblowers and investigative journalists against industrialists, scientific experts and government officials. It sheds new light on the nexus of reproduction, disability, epidemiology and health activism in West Germany. In addition, it begins to recover an internationally influential discourse that, in the post-thalidomide world, seems to have resuscitated antenatal drug use as safe until proven harmful.
Highlights
Schering was one of a handful of large companies with in-house research laboratories that, in the interwar period, carved out a gynaecological market for industrial sex hormones (Gaudillière, 2018)
The fact that Duogynon and Anovlar differed in dosage, regimen and indication but contained the same ingredients would link HPTs and oral contraception in the first major international debate over iatrogenic birth defects of the post-thalidomide era
We know that in 1978, at a crucial juncture in the British debate, the UK Minister of Health used the negative results of a large West German study to block British calls for a public inquiry into the teratogenicity of HPTs (Olszynko-Gryn et al, 2018: 40)
Summary
Schering was one of a handful of large companies with in-house research laboratories that, in the interwar period, carved out a gynaecological market for industrial sex hormones (Gaudillière, 2018). We know that in 1978, at a crucial juncture in the British debate, the UK Minister of Health used the negative results of a large West German study to block British calls for a public inquiry into the teratogenicity of HPTs (Olszynko-Gryn et al, 2018: 40).
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