the Female Body GOVERNING

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Service, thought of overpopulation, he mentioned “such countries as
China or India (or Java or Puerto Rico)” (T. Parran to R. Fosdick,
personal communication, October 28, 1946). Where most researchers
had been deterred in developing a steroidal contraceptive by concerns
over dangers associated with its systemic effects, the “threat” of overpopulation
was a factor that overrode such concerns. Medical researchers
were accustomed to cost-benefi t thinking: the risks of a drug ought to
be less signifi cant than the danger posed by the disease it was used to
treat. The cost-benefi t ratio of contraceptives was harder to fi gure within
this calculus; no side effects were worth the risk if the people taking
the drug were healthy. However, “overpopulation” shifted this equation:
the dangers of overpopulation were construed as life-threatening and
hence worth a great deal of risk.
Another reason exists to think of Pill research as overdetermined
by the colonial context. Very early trials of an oral contraceptive were
actually proposed for Puerto Rico. In 1941, the pharmaceutical company
Hoffman-Laroche, apparently in collaboration with Sanger and Gamble
tried to test an oral contraceptive—designed in Africa 8 —in Puerto
Rico. Sanger proposed it to José Belaval, a Puerto Rican ob/gyn active
in Gamble’s projects, on a trip to the island, and he readily accepted
(J. Belaval to M. Sanger, personal communication, January 21, 1941;
M. Sanger to J. Belaval, personal communication, February 8, 1941;
C. Gamble to J. Belaval, personal communication, April 4, 1941;
C. Gamble to C. Gould, personal communication, January 25, 1941).
Belaval even arranged for facilities with Presbyterian Hospital (C. Gould
to Presbyterian Hospital, San Juan, personal communication, July 17,
1941), but he found no takers for the drug, a problem Gamble attributed
to his “working too high on the social scale” (C. Gamble to C. Gould,
personal communication, August 12, 1941).
Mainland Use and Debates
Between 1957 and 1962, millions of mainland women began to use
this miraculous new drug that was reported to be 100% effective in
preventing pregnancy and, because it was an analog of the body’s
own hormones, completely safe. The FDA cleared Searle’s Enovid as a
contraceptive for general use in 1960 after many physicians had begun
prescribing it as an “off-label” use of a drug approved for menstrual
irregularities. 9 Its popularity was built informally—through word-ofmouth
and articles in women’s magazines 10 —and caught Searle by
surprise. When Pincus and Searle had overlooked and obscured reports
of side effects—in Rice-Wray’s series was that 50% of the women had