Pharmacy is everywhere...including school homework

When my fiancés younger sister asked me to help her with her science homework, I expected to be riddled with questions I had long ago forgot answers to. I did not expect any questions on drugs. How very wrong I was. To my surprise, I even ended up learning something myself.

The question had the statement ‘Read the information about the trialling of the first contraceptive pill’. As I read on, I discovered that a man by the name of Gregory Pincus led a team of scientists who developed the contraceptive pill and needed to carry out large-scale trials in humans. So here is a little history lesson…

Pincus visited Puerto Rico in the summer of 1955. He decided that this would be the best place to carry out the trials as it was one of the most densely populated areas in the world and officials supported birth control in order to control the population. He thought that if he could teach the poor, uneducated women of Puerto Rico to use the pill in the correct regimen, then women all over the world would also be able to use it in the correct way. Pincus and his team selected a pill with a high dose of hormones to ensure there would not be any pregnancies while the test subjects were taking the drug. The trial discovered that the pill was 100 % successful when taken properly, with 17% of women experiencing side effects. However, Pincus decided to ignore the side effects (which would never happen in our days!). The women had also only been told that they were taking a drug that prevented pregnancy, not that the pill was experimental or may have potential side effects (this would also never happen now due to informed consent regulations). The main question was to then describe what was wrong with this trial, and I could definitely see quite a few!

It just so happened that that week, UEA pharmacy students had to learn 100 drugs for a ‘top drugs’ exam with one of the drugs being the combined contraceptive pill. Another question in this piece of homework, to my delight, was to explain how the contraceptive pill worked. The answer? It prevents ovulation by suppressing the release of gonadotropins and inhibits follicular development. Although I did not give the answer away to my sister in law, I was pleased to see that she knew the answer herself. It seems as though pharmacy is everywhere, including school homework!