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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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One of the projects I supported which did not turn out particularly successfully was one which Dr. Gregory Pincus suggested. He is the co-director of the Worcester Institute for Experimental Biology in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. He was extremely interested in schizophrenia and thought possibly ACTH might bring schizophrenics out of their schizophrenic state. I supplied him with some funds in 1950, when ACTH was extremely scarce and expensive, and he tested it to see what affect ACTH would have on schizophrenia. It was not effective enough to be any solution. Dr. Pincus, who is a leading endocrinologist and biochemist, feels that the real solution for schizophrenia is certainly tied up with the adrenal-pituitary axix and that as yet we do not know enough about the number of hormones produced by these glands or do we have sufficient quantities of those we do know about, such as growth hormone or, for example, to test on human beings.

Now, Dr. Pincus, although he was unsuccessful on this particular idea in 1950, has, in the meantime, devised a pill called Enovid and manufactured by G.D. Searle, which he started to work on at the suggestion of Margaret Sanger and he got funds from Mrs. McCormick of California. And I must say it's one of the research projects that I would have liked very much to have something to do with but had nothing to do with.

This is the first pill which is an oral contraceptive,





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