Chapter Seven
Funding the Reproductive Sciences

Money matters, in science as elsewhere. The modern adage that "he who pays the piper calls the tune" also echoes strongly in social studies of science and technology. This is especially the case in studies of disciplinary formation because new knowledge production is usually expensive (e.g., Jasanoff et al. 1995; Shapin 1992). The deeply controversial nature of the reproductive sciences qua sciences makes the analysis of their funding even more salient than for more conventionally accepted research areas. I have therefore devoted a full chapter to an overview of the funding sources of the reproductive sciences since about 1910. Both the stature and the extent of the funding of reproductive research during its formation and coalescence periods were unique and significant in enabling this controversial line of research work to establish itself as a "going concern," a recognized, viable scientific enterprise.

The history of funding for research in science and technology, between 1910 and 1963, is fascinating. This was the era of the key shift from funding by private individuals (usually scientists or personal benefactors) to university departmental research budgets to corporate foundation support and, finally, to governmental support. This shift ultimately transformed the world.

Sociologically, funding is a key basis for linking heterogeneous social worlds and for building new infrastructure across socioeconomic sectors (such as the academy, philanthropy, and corporations). Funding is usually pivotal to legitimacy as well—sometimes more important than the science itself. The modernist era of "Big Science" and external research support began in the decades after World War I (Price 1963; Kohler 1991; Kleinman 1994). "Big Science" funding hit the reproductive sciences immediately via the National Research Council Committee for Research in Problems of Sex,

which is examined in detail in chapter 4. Here I emphasize other sources, including industrial support.

There has been only minimal documentation of reproductive sciences funding.^[1] The only such analysis for the period prior to World War II is that of Roy Greep and his associates, sponsored by the Ford Foundation. They argue that, due to the general illegitimacy of sex and reproduction as both social issues and scientific research foci, "to initiate and sustain serious research in the reproductive sciences has required for more than half a century concerted effort by interested individuals and private organizations, mainly from outside the mainstream of the biomedical research community" (Greep, Koblinsky, and Jaffe 1976:367–71). My analysis both sustains and challenges their views. I attempt to portray the breadth of funding sources, the extent of funding, and types of research funded where possible, along with a historical orientation to each of the major funding sources.^[2]

More specifically, Greep and his associates (1976:370) argued that funding for the reproductive sciences before World War II was both slight and far from the mainstream of the biomedical research community. They also asserted that reproductive research, especially as related to the development of contraception, was relatively underfunded as compared with other biomedical research fields during this period. In contrast, I conclude that considerable funding was provided through prestigious organizations by the major biomedical research—oriented foundations to the "basic" reproductive sciences. However, as Greep and his colleagues asserted, there was little funding of explicitly contraceptive research until the 1950s and 1960s.^[3] The key difference in our analyses is that I have carefully distinguished between loosely "basic" research in the reproductive sciences (in biology, medicine, and agriculture) and explicitly contraceptive research. I make this distinction because American reproductive scientists largely eschewed explicitly contraceptive research and punished those who pursued it at least until the 1950s or 1960s. It was the quid pro quo constructed among reproductive scientists and birth control advocates in the 1940s and 1950s that fused the previously distinctive reproductive and contraceptive research traditions. That quid pro quo also fused the funding patterns and identities of the reproductive sciences more generally. Old boundaries were dissolved, and the applications of the reproductive sciences were more fully acknowledged. For a host of likely reasons, Greep and his colleagues, writing in the 1970s, seem to have blurred reproductive and contraceptive research and funding in their analyses, reflecting the more contemporary intimate relations of these two endeavors following World War II.

This chapter documents the successes of reproductive scientists in gaining prestigious, sustained, and significant support for their work prior to World War II. I examine the major funding sources beginning with the Na-

tional Research Council (sponsor of reproductive research through several subagencies), the National Committee on Maternal Health, direct foundation support, and industrial support. Last, I offer a brief synopsis of funding since 1940 to demonstrate changes in the fiscal "career" of the reproductive sciences enterprise.

Overview Of Reproductive Sciences Funding, 1910–40

Between about 1910 and 1940, most reproductive research was undertaken in university departments. Funding was both internal (from routine departmental research budgets) and external (from sources outside the local institution). While external funding sources (analyzed later in this chapter) were diverse and fairly extensive, I believe a precise fiscal analysis of reproductive research would reveal that routine departmental research budgets were the major source of reproductive sciences funding before World War II. At some institutions, such budgets were supplemented with revenue from patents secured by faculty reproductive scientists for reproductive hormonal extraction, isolation, and production procedures.^[4] Because research costs were comparatively low, reliance on local funding sources was likely typical in many other areas of scientific research as well.

Until after World War I, the primary external research funding sources, although not strong, were major foundations and industry. I suspect that industry played a particularly significant role for the reproductive sciences both initially and more recently because of both the illegitimacy of those sciences and the simultaneous demand for their technoscientific products for clinical and agricultural work. This certainly was the case in Europe (Oudshoorn 1994). After World War I, direct funding of American reproductive research was often provided by private nonprofit agencies committed to science or social change of some kind, but the actual funds such agencies dispersed derived primarily from foundations. Individual benefactors also funded the reproductive sciences. Table 8 presents Greep and his associates' (1976:371) summary of private agency reproductive research expenditures from 1922 to 1940.

Included here are expenditures of the National Research Council Committee for Research in Problems of Sex and Committee on Research in Endocrinology, and the private National Committee on Maternal Health. Startlingly, this total constitutes over 10 percent of foundation contributions to the entire NRC during this era.^[5] This is a very significant proportion and, moreover, was not the only funding the reproductive sciences received.

The United States government did not provide extensive fiscal support to any kind of biomedical research until after World War II. The Hygienic Laboratory, which had been founded in 1897, was enlarged as the National

Institute of Health (NIH) in 1930. But in 1935 the science budget of the Public Health Service, including the NIH research budget and representing almost the total federal health research investment, was only $508,000 for all research (Strickland and Strickland 1976:5). Support was focused on research on acute infectious diseases (Rosen 1965; Swain 1962). The major exception was government funding of agricultural research, which began during the late nineteenth century (Rosenberg 1976). Some proportion of these funds was certainly used to support reproductive research under agricultural auspices by scientists trained in a wide variety of settings.^[6] Amounts are unclear, but the physiology of reproduction in farm/meat animals was not a focus until after 1925 and the area was still relatively minor until after World War II, when it intensified considerably (Byerly 1986).

National Research Council Sponsorship

The National Research Council (NRC) is a suborganization of the National Academy of Science (NAS). The NRC itself was founded in 1916 as an agency to inventory research toward enhanced military preparedness; it focused primarily on the natural and physical sciences. After World War I, it was quickly transformed into a science sponsorship forum with a variety of committees and subcommittees funded (along with the Academy) by a grant of $5 million from the Carnegie Corporation (Tobey 1971:35, 53). The Rockefeller Foundation was also an early and extensive supporter of the NRC.^[7] Nearly $12 million of foundation support was provided to the NRC from 1916 to 1940; 98 percent of these funds came from Rockefeller and Carnegie boards (Kohler 1991:104).

The NRC was a prestigious organization from its inception, thanks to its early association with the NAS, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Kohler (1991:109) has argued that the NRC essentially served as an intermediary between the foundations and scientists in the

interwar years: "Biology, which was a congeries of competing and contentious subspecialties or subcultures, with varied relations with medicine, agriculture, psychology, natural resource management, all of which offered attractive but competing opportunities for discipline," posed particular problems for funders. The proto—peer review mechanisms offered through the NRC provided useful insulation for the foundations as they moved into what Kohler has called "partnerships" with the sciences qua research institutions. Even if one takes a more critical perspective and views the foundations as shaping or engineering the future by shaping the directions of sciences toward their own interests, the peer review mechanisms were useful in improving foundation understanding and access to information.

Committees of the NRC could be initiated from within or without the agency, but they required agency approval. Before World War II, two such committees sponsored reproductive research: the Committee for Research in Problems of Sex and the Committee on Endocrinology. The reproductive sciences were also funded through the NRC Grants-in-Aid Program. Two other post—World War II NRC committees, the Committee on Human Reproduction and the Committee on Contraceptive Technology, also became involved later.

The NRC Committee for Research in Problems of Sex

My commentary on the NRC Committee for Research in Problems of Sex (NRC/CRPS) here is brief; its founding and the redirection of its mission from sexology to basic research in reproductive biology is analyzed in considerable depth in chapter 4. The NRC/CRPS, which existed from 1921 to 1962 (National Academy of Sciences 1979:v) in the Medical Sciences Division of the NRC, was the major external funding source for reproductive research prior to World War II. One historian has asserted: "The committee virtually paid for the development in American universities of [reproductive] endocrinology" (Reed 1983:283). From 1921 to 1940, the NRC/CRPS sponsored reproductive research by means of grants totaling $1,087,322; from 1940 to 1947, an additional $368,934 was expended (Aberle and Corner 1953:113).

The NRC/CRPS itself was funded almost exclusively by Rockefeller monies, initially through the Bureau of Social Hygiene and, after 1931, through the Rockefeller Foundation (Aberle and Corner 1953). In later years it also received funding from the Ford Foundation (National Academy of Sciences 1979:v). Rather than provide grants to individuals at many institutions, the NRC/CRPS primarily funded established and emerging centers of reproductive sciences staffed by multiple investigators under the leadership of a prominent scientist. From 1921 to 1947, "104 cooperating investigators received approximately 470 grants, under which 585 individu-

als took part in the researches" (Aberle and Corner 1953:70). Directing investigators thus received an average of 4.5 grants. This innovative means of organizing scientific research sponsorship promoted what would today be termed "project-oriented" research, drawing together investigators from several salient disciplines to address a related set of problems.^[8]

As Table 10 demonstrates, research sponsored through the NRC/CRPS was largely, though far from exclusively, endocrinological in nature. During the years before World War II, most sponsored research utilized animal rather than human materials. The status and prestige of the NRC affiliation lent stature to the CRPS specifically and to the reproductive sciences enterprise generally. It seems unlikely that well over $1 million would have been provided to the committee by Rockefeller philanthropies had it not found an institutional "home" with the NRC.

The NRC Committee on Endocrinology

The NRC Committee on Endocrinology was founded in 1936 and remained active until 1950 (Greep, Koblinsky, and Jaffe 1976:370). I have argued in chapter 5 that the reproductive sciences coalesced around the core activity of reproductive endocrinology as a means of gaining legitimacy for the enterprise by riding on the coattails of general endocrinology. It is thus both ironic and anomalous, as I will attempt to explain, that the major NRC committee addressing the reproductive sciences (the NRC/CRPS) existed for fifteen years prior to the establishment of the NRC Committee on Endocrinology.

By 1933, there was extensive discussion of the need for an NRC committee on endocrinology both within the Rockefeller Foundation and with NRC representatives. As one report noted, "The other [non-sex] hormones are not of lesser importance."^[9] Meanwhile, the Markle Foundation (founded in 1927), which was undergoing a major program review in 1934 and 1935, decided to focus its sponsorship afresh on medical research, as many other foundations were doing at the time (Strickland and Strickland 1976:6). Officers of the Markle Foundation then approached Robert Yerkes (Chairman of the NRC/CRPS and a former NRC officer) for advice. Yerkes arranged a conference with Frank Lillie, who suggested that research in endocrinology needed assistance. A report assessing the field was supplied by Roy Hoskins, editor of Endocrinology (Cannon 1942:844). The NRC/CRPS could not support nonreproductive endocrinological research, as it was increasingly being asked to do. The Markle Foundation offered funds for such a committee.^[10]

During its fourteen years of existence, the NRC Committee on Endocrinology expended $561,000 on grants in aid of research. According to Greep and his associates (1976:370), $71,000 of this amount was devoted

directly or indirectly to reproductive endocrinological research. Walter Cannon, a professor of physiology at Harvard, was the first chairman of the committee.^[11] There was concern from the outset regarding the boundaries between these two NRC committees, as Yerkes wrote to Warren Weaver of the Rockefeller Foundation: "The rumor is abroad that support of endocrinological studies is being lessened [by the NRC/CRPS]. Actually there is every reason to suppose the [NRC/CRPS] will continue to support such studies. ... Obviously it is essential that the overlap of interest between [the two committees] ... be carefully scrutinized, and the two committees so conducted with reference to promotion of endocrinological studies of sex that maximal assistance shall be rendered without undesirable duplication ... or oversight."^[12]

L. H. Weed, chairman of the Medical Sciences Division of the NRC, sought to facilitate the cooperation of the two committees structurally, arranging for their chairs to sit ex officio on the other committee with planned successive meetings. Weed reported to the Rockefeller Foundation that the NRC/CRPS was "allowing most of the proposals in the endocrine field to be taken by the Endocrine Committee."^[13] This freed NRC/CRPS funds for other purposes, largely human sexuality studies after 1940. By the late 1940s, the glamour of nonreproductive endocrinology had apparently worn thin as well. As Maienschein (1994) puts it, "Cutting edges cut both ways." The Markle Foundation, with a new president, refocused its giving on the Markle Scholars program to enable medical schools to retain promising graduates and prepare them for careers in academic medicine and research, a program it then supported for over twenty years (Strickland and Strickland 1976:18).

The anomaly of the NRC/CRPS preceding the NRC Committee on Endocrinology by fifteen years, despite the greater legitimacy of general endoctrinology and its consequently greater apparent "fundability," cannot be overlooked. The main explanation is that the original mission of the NRC/CRPS was not, in fact, support of reproductive biological or endocrinological research but support for research on sexual problems in humans to prevent and alleviate social problems. The Bureau of Social Hygiene was its original institutional sponsor. However, this mission was redirected by the members of the NRC/CRPS toward reproductive biological research, especially reproductive endocrinology, from its earliest days, a contingency that could not have been anticipated by its founders.

Second, despite its redirected mission, the research sponsored by the NRC/CRPS included endocrinological problems that were not solely reproductive. Both physiologically and in funding practice, the boundaries between reproductive and general endocrinology were blurred, as were the boundaries among enzymes, vitamins, and hormones.^[14] This blurring was well recognized in a 1933 Rockefeller Foundation report, which proposed

"three separate committees dealing with the fields of enzymes, vitamins and hormones. ... The three committee point of view is suggested for, ... in general, there are three rather distinct groups of workers. ... A Committee on endocrinology ... seems almost certain ... to shed much light on the chemical aspect of life and the control of certain diseases; with also some probability of leading into the fields of psychobiology and personality problems."^[15]

The NRC Committee on Infectious Abortion

The NRC Committee on Infectious Abortion was jointly sponsored by the Division of Medical Sciences and the Division of Biology and Agriculture of the NRC. Infectious abortion in animals, especially beef cattle and dairy cows, was of considerable concern to agricultural breeders and scientists. It is caused by the genus Brucella , which also causes undulant fever in humans. The Committee on Infectious Abortion established a research station at Lansing, Michigan (supported by the Commonwealth Fund of New York), and sponsored a variety of researches, including studies of reproductive problems, in aid of furthering understanding of the physiological processes of infectious abortion. These researches were jointly funded by the American Medical Association, the Certified Milk Producers' Association, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Animal Husbandry, and the Michigan State College of Agriculture through the NRC.^[16] This group, then, was another minor sponsor of mammalian reproductive research.

The NRC Grants-in-Aid Program

In addition to its standing committees, during the 1930s the NRC also administered an individual Grants-in-Aid Program, which served as another, if relatively minor, funding source for reproductive scientists. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, from 1929 to 1935 it made 267 grants in the medical and biological sciences for a total of $132,511; the average grant in all fields was $532 (Bowman 1935:339). Kohler (1991:105–13) provides a vivid account of the entrepreneurship and stewardship of Frank Lillie in developing these grants. Lillie drew strongly on his successes in the early 1920s with the NRC/CRPS. A review of archival materials demonstrates that a number of reproductive scientists, including Doisy, Backman, Bissonette, Lillie, Turner, Allee, Long, Guthrie, Geiling, and Rasmussen, received funds from the Grants-in-Aid Program for work on a wide variety of reproductive research problems Their studies addressed the histology of lactation, the effects of x-rays on ovarian and uterine tissue, ovarian hormones, vertebrate oocytes, reproductive endocrinology in the whale, and comparative histology of the human hypophysis in pregnant and non-

pregnant women.^[17] These data confirm my contention that funding was not at all minor, and certainly came from reputable, mainstream sources.

The NRC Committee on Human Reproduction

The NRC Committee on Human Reproduction was established in 1947 and existed only until 1951 (National Academy of Sciences 1979:v). Originated through efforts of activists in the lay and medical birth control movements, an agreement was constructed whereby the NRC would sponsor this committee while the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the National Committee on Maternal Health (another reproductive and contraceptive research funding source discussed later in this chapter) would raise the funds to support it. However, only $40,000 was raised by these groups for this committee, despite the direct involvement of John D. Rocke-feller III, who was instead committing himself to the Population Council (discussed later).^[18]

Howard Taylor Jr., a physician on the faculty of the Columbia University medical school and a longtime activist in the National Committee on Maternal Health, served as chairman of the Committee on Human Reproduction (Reed 1983:271). Plans were laid for funding a wide range of reproductive researches within a budget of about $220,000 per year. A fourteen-member committee was recruited that strongly represented both reproductive biology and medicine, with other members from public health, psychology, and sociology (Taylor 1948:3). During its four-year existence, this committee funded only nine projects and held four conferences, expending a total of $112,000 (Greep, Koblinsky, and Jaffe 1976:374). Of this amount, $7,500 went to Gregory Pincus of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology for studies of the fertilization and development of the mammalian egg; $5,400 went to John Rock of the Free Hospital for Women in Boston for infertility research. Both studies were concerned with the hormonal control of ovulation and later contributed to the development of the birth control pill. Margaret Sanger had also attempted to gain the ear and support of Katherine McCormick to fund the NRC Committee on Human Reproduction, but McCormick's funds were tied up at the time and the committee died for lack of support. McCormick later put nearly $2 million into Pincus's work on the birth control pill at the Worcester Foundation.^[19]

The NRC Committee on Contraceptive Technology

Almost a quarter century elapsed between the failure of the first NRC Committee on Human Reproduction, which was interested in both reproductive and contraceptive research, and the establishment of a second such effort. The Assembly of the Life Sciences of the NRC established the Com-

mittee on Contraceptive Technology in 1977 within the Division of Medical Sciences (National Academy of Sciences 1979:vii). Such a committee was sought on the basis of population issues raised by the Committee on Science and Public Policy since 1963. The goal of the group, which continues today, is to serve as an intersectional organization among the reproductive sciences, population/demography research and fertility control research worlds, to assess current research status and needs, and to plan coordinated efforts. The full integration of the reproductive sciences enterprise with those of population and contraceptive research worlds in the years after World War II is reflected in the existence, structure, and mission of this NRC committee.

In 1990, the renamed Committee on Contraceptive Development published the results of the latest major assessment of the international reproductive biology and contraceptive research situation (Mastroianni, Donaldson, and Kane 1990), the first since that of Greep and his colleagues (1976, 1977) sponsored by the Ford Foundation. It focuses on the present status and future of contraceptive research in the United States and internationally, arguing that funding for such endeavors has been deemed inadequate; specific problems are examined in detail. This book project as a whole was sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The committee is now jointly staffed and administered by the NRC Committee on Population and the Institute of Medicine's Division of International Health.

The National Committee On Maternal Health

The private National Committee on Maternal Health (NCMH) was founded in 1925 as a birth control advocacy and research organization and lasted until 1967. It was intended by and for practicing physicians, but eventually it included both medical and biological reproductive scientists.^[20] The NCMH developed out of gynecologist Robert Latou Dickinson's work with the Bureau of Social Hygiene and was supported by the Bureau and major foundations.^[21] The NCMH had several major programs during its forty-four-year history, and it was the site of a number of internal struggles regarding the direction and sponsorship of different activities.

The initial focus of the NCMH, from about 1923 to 1928, was on both "clinical" contraceptive and some "basic" reproductive research. The basic scientists who received support undertook the following projects:

The last study, Moench's work on the cytology of sperm, was considered the most successful. It resulted in a monograph in German and a wide variety of English publications.^[23] Robert T. Frank, Robert Latou Dickinson, and Herbert McLean Evans reviewed the manuscript. "Dr. Frank, our Chairman of Research, considers Moench's study the best in its field, and we see constant references to it in medical articles."^[24]

The major NCMH goals during this early period were establishing and raising standards for clinical contraceptive research.^[25] By 1928, however, it became clear to Dickinson and others involved that the basic scientists they had supported in hopes of generating new and/or improved means of contraception were not responding as desired. Several of the reproductive scientists would not even send reports of their progress.^[26] Reed's (1983:181–84) analysis here is that "the committee lacked both the personnel to supervise such projects and the money required to back research from which no immediate results could be demonstrated to donors." I would argue further that reproductive scientists were likely asserting their autonomy over their work in response to unwanted demands from birth control advocates. Even if they happily took money from this agency, basic reproductive scientists were unlikely to pursue contraceptive research at this historical moment, although "raiding the larder" of the NCMH seems to have been acceptable. Further, there was an increasing array of potential sponsors for noncontraceptive research. Regardless, the NCMH temporarily left the field of basic research sponsorship to the NRC/CRPS and other groups around 1928.

Dickinson next guided the NCMH into a new role as medical birth control publicist (ca. 1928–35). Some of the rationales for this organizational strategy emerged through both legal decisions and birth control movement strategies promoting medical control over the practice of many kinds of contraception through medicine's exclusive authority to prescribe drugs and certain devices (Chesler 1992; McCann 1994). To both expand

and consolidate medical authority in the birth control arena, during the NCMH's medical publicist era, several NCMH-sponsored monographs were produced to serve as contraceptive handbooks for doctors. These works provided information used to justify shifts in their clinical and personal opinions on contraception for which many medical men were ready—as long as the information came from physicians. Dr. Dickinson's strategy for the publications noted that "contraception alone will carry less difficulty if bracketed with sterility when it comes to enlisting professional interest." The NCMH-sponsored monographs included Dickinson and Louise Bryant's book Control of Conception (1931), his Human Sex Anatomy (1933), Norman Himes's Medical History of Contraception (1936), Cecil Voge's Chemistry and Physics of Contraception (1933), Carl Hartman's The Time of Ovulation in Women (1936), several studies of human sexuality, and works on abortion and sterility. Dickinson and the NCMH were much more successful as professors to the medical guild than as organizers of basic research (Reed 1983:182–85, 409).

Internal organizational struggles occurred in the NCMH in the years after 1929 between Dickinson and Clarence Gamble, a member of the NCMH, a philanthropist, and a physician who advocated simple means of contraception with nonmedical delivery. Gamble wanted the NCMH to invest in simple contraceptive research and delivery, including clinics. With some concessions to Gamble, Dickinson prevailed and further pushed the NCMH to broaden its audience to include nonmedical scientific and professional societies, both to raise money and to provide information to lay groups. Apparently, there was also some debate about whether the NCMH should focus on birth control or population control (Reed 1983:185).

Yet another shift in direction of the NCMH occurred ca. 1935 with a new generation of leadership. Carl Hartman at Johns Hopkins had been the long-distance research director. Now Earl Engle of Columbia University's medical school, handily in New York City, took that position.^[27] Engle also had considered becoming executive director of the NCMH but instead remained in teaching and reproductive research.^[28] The NCMH now became less interested in legal aspects of sex and contraception and eugenics,^[29] and its program again became increasingly biological and "fundamental" over the years 1935-42.^[30] This shift may well have been an attempt by basic scientists active within the NCMH to "redirect" the mission of the NCMH as other scientists had succeeded in doing within the NRC/CRPS. The goals of the NCMH were explicitly framed afresh in 1939 along such lines: "The function of the Committee is to select, plan, and supervise research projects conducted by qualified experts in hospitals and university departments where their status makes the prosecution of research effective. The Committee furthermore solicits funds for such research projects and acts as a coordinating, educative and critical agency in the planning of re-

search work and human sex phenomena."^[31] Probably because of these new goals, in 1939 the Rockefeller Foundation gave the NCMH $12,000 for research in aspects of human fertility that were not being covered by the NRC/CRPS. The NCMH then sponsored research in sperm morphology, spermatoxins, and other studies of sex cells at Yale, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Rochester, and the University of Pennsylvania (Reed 1983:269). Also in 1939, there was a "Conference of Investigators Working on Various Problems Relating to Sperm Biology Under the Auspices of the NCMH." And, in 1940, the NCMH considered changing its name to the Research Council on Human Reproduction.^[32]

This infusion of Rockefeller Foundation funds strengthened the hand of those in the NCMH who wanted to leave actual contraceptive testing—the major early activity of the NCMH—to other organizations. In 1940, Kenneth Rose of the Birth Control Federation (the predecessor of Planned Parenthood) worked out an arrangement with the NCMH by which the federation would be responsible for all laboratory and field trials of contraceptives except where special technical problems were involved. In turn, the federation was to raise $25,000 per year to support the NCMH in its role as sponsor of basic reproductive research. In early 1941, Dickinson's dream of hiring a medical scientist to head the NCMH came true. Clair E. Folsome, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, became executive secretary of the NCMH. However, research funds dried up during World War II, and Folsome left the NCMH to become research director for Ortho Pharmaceuticals (Reed 1983:270).

In 1948, there was an attempt to revitalize the NCMH as a fund-raising organization for the newly established NRC Committee on Human Reproduction, but the effort failed (Reed 1983:271). Instead of Gamble being forced out of a revitalized basic reproductive research organization, the NCMH became a paper corporation, leaving Gamble free to use it as a sponsor for his mostly "applied" contraceptive research projects from 1949 to 1957. His projects consisted primarily of contraceptive standards research and delivery work, with the assistance for some years of Christopher Tietze, a medical statistician and evaluator of family planning programs (Reed 1983:272). In 1957, Gamble and his family established the Pathfinder Fund, a population control research organization, and he turned the NCMH over to Tietze. At this point, Teitze's work under NCMH auspices became wholly sponsored by the Population Council as its "favorite child," in Tietze's words. Ten years later, the NCMH was wholly absorbed into the Population Council's Bio-Medical Division.^[33] Thus the NCMH ended up in an appropriately modern home within the reproductive/contraceptive/population research establishment of the late twentieth century. Its early history, reflecting these heterogeneous commitments, made the NCMH an exemplary funding organization of the American reproductive sciences.

Direct Foundation Support Of Reproductive Sciences

In addition to large grants to scientific and social action agencies for distribution as reproductive sciences research grants, several major American foundations also directly funded reproductive scientists and centers during the years before World War II. Full documentation of such funding remains to be undertaken. My intent here is merely to sketch the range and extent of such direct funding.^[34]

The longest-lived example of direct foundation funding of a center of reproductive research is the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Embryology, established at the Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1913 (Sabin 1934:303). Before 1940, this department had varied reproductive research foci, but after about 1923 it was an institution at the heart of reproductive physiological and endocrinological research. It also published a major journal in the field, Carnegie Contributions to Embryology , which was not limited in content by its title. The following description is found in a report by James Ebert (1975-76:7): "The Department was for five decades the world's leading center for the study of the human embryo. It pioneered in the development of primates for research, having the earliest successful American monkey breeding colony. Using these animals, large strides were made toward understanding menstruation and cyclic changes in the ovaries and uterus, laying much of the groundwork for recent advances in family planning." Many of the medically oriented reproductive scientists working in the decades up to 1955 spent some parts of their careers there or worked closely with the department's faculty (e.g., Corner 1981). In 1955, the department's focus shifted away from reproductive to molecular topics.

In 1932, the Josiah Macy, Jr., Foundation began to make a series of grants in reproductive science (Osborn 1967:367), including, for example, a grant to Gregory Pincus at Harvard for studies of ovulation (published as The Eggs of Mammals in 1936) and a grant to George E. Coghill of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia for investigations in embryonic development and behavior correlations (Josiah Macy, Jr., Foundation 1950:26). In 1936, the Macy Foundation funded Dr. Ephraim Schorr's research at Cornell Medical School for studies on the correlation of the menstrual cycle with changes in the vaginal epithelium. Schorr was also working with George Papanicolaou at the time. Additional grants were made to C. C. Little at the Jackson Memorial Laboratory for investigations of the relations between the adrenal cortex and the gonads (Josiah Macy, Jr., Foundation 1955: 118–22).

The Markle Foundation, in addition to supporting the NRC Committee on Endocrinology, also provided some direct grants to reproductive scientists, among others (Strickland and Strickland 1976). In 1938, for example, it granted $9,000 over three years to Dr. George W. Corner of the Department of Anatomy of the University of Rochester.^[35] (Although Corner was

a major reproductive scientist of the interwar years, he was not a recipient of NRC/CRPS support.)

The Milbank Memorial Fund, which was then broadly focused on population research, provided partial support of Raymond Pearl's (e.g., 1932) studies of actual contraceptive practices in Baltimore, studies that were especially significant for their statistical innovations. Pearl was a biologist, initially based in agriculture and later moving to public health, who pursued an array of reproductive investigations that demonstrated the shift from eugenics to population control as eugenics in its own name waned during the 1930s (Allen 1991). Pearl's previous population research studies had been funded by the Rockefeller Foundation as part of the Biological Institute at Johns Hopkins ca. 1925–1930 (Allen 1991:252). After this project, Pearl shifted from a biological interpretation of class differences in fertility to a contraceptive usage interpretation, an important shift in the development of population research with clear implications for contraceptive research and development (Osborn 1967:366).

The most extensive direct foundation support of reproductive scientists and centers prior to World War II seems to have come from the Rockefeller Foundation.^[36] There were two main avenues to direct Rockefeller Foundation funding: direct application or recommendation by foundation staff; and direct foundation sponsorship offered to centers of reproductive research initially supported by the NRC/CRPS for some years. The Rockefeller Foundation operated its own programs of support for life sciences research and recruited investigators for such support. Reproductive scientists who were directly funded as individuals by the Rockefeller Foundation included the following.

L. J. Cole, Department of Animal Genetics, University of Wisconsin. Physiology and endocrinology of reproduction in farm animals. Funded for about $6,800 for 1934–36.^[37]

George W. Corner, Department of Anatomy, University of Rochester Medical School. Physiology of reproduction in rhesus monkeys. Funded for a total of $13,200 between 1935 and 1938.^[38]

William W. Greulich, Department of Anatomy, Yale University School of Medicine. Endocrinological changes in human adolescence. Funded for $36,000 from 1939 to 1941.^[39]

Ross G. Harrison, Department of Zoology, Yale University Experimental embryological investigations. Funded for $22,000 from 1936 to 1938.^[40]

Charles B. Stockard, Department of Anatomy, Cornell Medical School (Peekskill Farm). Heredity and development interactions in mammals (dogs). Funded 1925–40 at $25,000 per year, for a total of about $375,000.^[41]

As noted previously, the NRC/CRPS had a policy of supporting major centers of reproductive research with key researchers as leaders. After about a decade, the NRC/CRPS membership realized that its ongoing commitments to a limited number of centers were preventing the agency from branching out in new directions. However, the committee did not want to abandon those centers that had more than fulfilled their goals. Negotiations between NRC/CRPS members, Rockefeller Foundation staff, and reproductive scientists resulted in several such centers being transferred from NRC/CRPS sponsorship to direct Rockefeller Foundation sponsorship (discussed in chapter 4), including the following.

Herbert M. Evans, Institute of Experimental Biology, University of California, Berkeley. Reproductive endocrinology and nutritional aspects of reproduction. Transferred from NRC/CRPS to the Rockefeller Foundation in 1929; initial direct grant of $10,000 per year for five years, renewable for five years.^[42]

F. L. Hisaw, Biological Laboratories, Harvard University. Reproductive endocrinology. Received NRC/CRPS funds while at the University of Wisconsin; transferred to the Rockefeller Foundation in 1937, with a grant of $18,000 for 1937–41.^[43]

Frank L. Lillie/Carl R. Moore, Department of Zoology, University of Chicago. Reproductive endocrinology and physiology. Joint sponsorship by both the Rockefeller Foundation and the NRC/CRPS for 1929–34 through a blanket grant to the University of Chicago for biological sciences research. Complete transfer to direct Rockefeller Foundation support in 1934.^[44]

P. E. Smith and E. E. Engle, Department of Anatomy, Columbia University. Reproductive endocrinology. Joint Rockefeller Foundation and NRC/CRPS sponsorship for 1934–38; fully transferred to the Rockefeller Foundation in 1938; annual funding in 1938 was $21,000. From 1934 to 1940, a total of $52,950 was provided to this center.^[45]

The Rockefeller Foundation also provided a grant of $2 million to Robert Yerkes and the Yale Laboratory of Primate Biology in Orange Park, Florida, in 1929; some of these funds supported reproductive research (Yerkes 1935; Haraway 1989). There was also a prolonged but ultimately unsuccessful effort on the part of Edwin Embree of the Rockefeller Foundation to start a program in human biology from around 1925 to 1928 (Kohler 1991:125–28). In 1928 Embree himself became president of the Rosenwald Foundation, where he supported the reproduction-related work of E. E. Just on fertilization (Manning 1983). To my knowledge, Just was the only African-American reproductive scientist until after World War II. Rockefeller Foundation patronage during these decades shows a shift from support

from wealthy individual patrons to a more bureaucratic and corporate management of funding and programs by scientifically trained experts.^[46]

Direct foundation funding of reproductive research prior to World War II was considerable, definitely exceeding $1 million and probably approaching $2 million. The foundations providing such support were certainly in the mainstream of the biomedical research community. Despite the illegitimacy of the reproductive sciences and contraception, research funding was clearly and powerfully forthcoming.

Industrial Sponsorship Of Reproductive Research

The most elusive funding source and sponsor of the reproductive sciences is industry. These sources are both historically and contemporarily difficult to ferret out of the historical record, due in some part to the proprietary interests of the companies but also to the controversies attached to sex hormones and other technoscience products of reproductive research.^[47] Yet a wide variety of industries contributed funds and materials to university-based reproductive research efforts. The pharmaceutical industry in the United States and Europe also sponsored some reproductive research.

Industry funding and contributions of materials were generally arranged directly with universities or with reproductive scientists themselves, making systematic documentation scant, if not impossible to unearth. For example, Swift and Company, the Chicago meatpacking company, contributed a considerable amount of fresh materials to Frank Lillie's reproductive sciences center at the University of Chicago (Lillie 1917a,b). Mr. Swift himself was a member of the board of directors of the university.^[48] Similarly, George Corner's autobiography contains multiple accounts of obtaining sow uteri and ovaries from slaughterhouses, but payment is not mentioned unless the entire sow was purchased. Corner also returned some of his grant funds to the Rockefeller Foundation because "the contribution by various industries of materials" made purchase unnecessary.^[49]

The American Meat Packers Association (founded in 1906) transformed itself into the Institute of American Meat Packers (IAMP) in 1919, with a focus on industrial research and the development of new products and by-products. Interestingly, this led to the establishment of a research laboratory by the IAMP at the University of Chicago, not usually a very applied research site.^[50] The by-products of mutual interest to the packing industry, pharmaceutical companies, and reproductive scientists were, of course, glandular materials for hormone extraction. The meatpacking industry became the major supplier of such materials both to pharmaceutical houses for use in making organotherapeutic products and to reproductive and other scientists for research purposes (School of Commerce and IAMP

1924:285–88). IAMP research laboratory workers were in contact with reproductive scientists on campus, and members of the IAMP research staff held appointments in university departments, including F. C. Koch's Department of Biochemistry, enabling graduate students to work in the IAMP laboratory. Koch's department worked regularly with Lillie and Moore's center (Clarke 1993). Upon his retirement from the university, Koch himself became director of biochemical research for Armour and Company (American Foundation 1955:1:310–13).

In sharp contrast to the case in the Netherlands, where Organon was founded in 1923 to pursue intensive endocrinological research (Oudshoorn 1994:69), the pharmaceutical industry in the United States seems not to have sponsored much reproductive research prior to World War II, despite the fact that by the 1920s forty-six drug companies had established their own research laboratories (Shryock 1947:132). Moreover, beginning in World War I and continuing in the 1920s and 1930s, the NRC actively fostered cooperative research between universities and industry (Swann 1988:18). In contrast, Shering AG of Berlin, Germany, spent approximately $5 million on endocrinological research during the 1930s, and CIBA of Basel, Switzerland, committed a total of about $1 million (Greep, Koblinsky, and Jaffe 1976:371), though how much of this was for reproductive endocrinology is unclear.

American pharmaceutical companies began to jump on the endocrinological bandwagon in the mid-1930s. For example, by 1940 Abbott Laboratories offered as specialty drugs "the increasingly important gland products, topped by the synthetic hormones Estrone, Estiol, and Progestin," which were marketed directly to physicians by "detail men." In 1940, about five hundred gallons of urine from pregnant mares were used to obtain one ounce of Estrone (Abbott Laboratories 1940:104, 62). Abbot Laboratories, located near Chicago, was the employer of choice for many life sciences graduates of the University of Chicago. Merck, too, entered the fray, instigating research at Rahway, New Jersey, and linking up with chemists at Princeton (Swann 1988:84). Their focus was on the production of "female" hormones for medical treatment of menopause and menstrual problems, Foucault's (1978) "hysterical woman."

Indirectly, however, pharmaceutical companies did contribute to the research budgets of university scientists, often providing research materials. For example, the Wisconsin group, including Hisaw and Fevold, acknowledged that Parke, Davis and Company, E. R. Squibb and Sons, and the Wilson Laboratories had provided dessicated anterior lobe powder for use in research (Long 1990:458). Another practice was the sale of a reproductive scientist's patent by a university to a pharmaceutical company. Such patents were generally secured for development of hormonal isolation, purification, and production procedures. Funds so generated were sometimes returned

to the campus research budgets of the scientists who had obtained the patents.^[51] The third major pattern of industrial support of university-based scientists was through consultancies. Finally, reproductive scientists often headed up pharmaceutical research departments late in their careers, as was true of Carl Hartman at Ortho and Fred Koch at Armour.

Beginning in 1939, funds for awards with honoraria were provided by pharmaceutical companies to honor outstanding reproductive and other scientists selected by the Endocrine Society. Lisser (1967:24–26) notes that recipients of the thousand-dollar E. R. Squibb and Sons Award (given 1940–53) included George Corner, Phillip Smith, Fred Koch, Edward Doisy, Carl Hartman, Herbert Evans, and C. N. Long. The Ciba Award was established in 1942 to recognize exceptional junior scientists. The Ayerst, McKenna, and Harrison Fellowship began in 1947, the Squibb Fellowship in 1956, the Schering Scholarship began in 1949, and the Upjohn Scholarship in 1955. Postgraduate Assemblies in Endocrinology, also sponsored by the Endocrine Society starting in 1948, held parties using a fund jointly created for the purpose by E. R. Squibb and Sons, Ciba Pharmaceutical Products, Schering Corporation, and Ayerst, McKenna and Harrison (Lisser 1967:20–26).

Standing in direct contrast to such sponsorship was the reluctance of several major American pharmaceutical companies as late as 1950 to become involved in contraceptive research, a reluctance widely noted in the literature. Companies typically feared that negative opinion among Roman Catholics might affect sales or lead to boycotts of all products. The illegitimacy of reproductive and contraceptive research thus extended to the marketplace.^[52]

The total value of industrial contributions and payments toward the reproductive research effort is probably indeterminable. But it clearly was significant and must be acknowledged in analyzing funding of the reproductive sciences.

Reproductive Sciences Funding Since World War II

With the increasing social legitimacy of reproductive and contraceptive research after World War II, funding increased. With the creation of overpopulation as a social problem in the mid-1950s, increases skyrocketed. Greep and his associates (1976:378, 383, 402–3) provided the estimates in Table 9, which include contraceptive research and development as well as reproductive sciences.^[53]

There were also some major changes in private sponsorship of the reproductive sciences after World War II. The decline of Rockefeller Foundation support continued as the foundation's investments in molecular biol-

ogy expanded and as other private resources appeared on the horizon. The Rockefeller Foundation seemed to be investing less in earlier hopes for rational control over human behavior (Morawski 1986:239–40), to which Weaver wrote his mid-1930s paean that began this book, and more in genetic control over "life itself." Two important new funding entities entered the reproductive arena during the 1940s and 1950s, both of which were key to the realignment of the reproductive sciences with (rather than in opposition to) contraceptive research.

Instead of sponsoring another NRC committee as his father had done, John D. Rockefeller III founded the Population Council in 1952. He apparently was frustrated in his efforts to lead the Rockefeller Foundation into more extensive, programmatic, and applied effort in reproduction, population, and contraception. The "philanthropoid" managers of the foundation were loath to have it directly involved in anything as controversial as birth control—particularly during the McCarthy era, when the foundation was already under scrutiny by conservatives. A new autonomous organization, the Population Council, was funded initially for about $500,000 per year (Reed 1983:271, 287). Most of its subsequent funding has come from Rockefeller sources and the Ford Foundation. The internationally oriented Population Council became the locus of development of contraceptives requiring medical rather than user initiative such as the IUD and long-acting hormonal implants such as Norplant. It has emphasized the cultivation of elite international connections and "quietly identified itself as a neutral, scientific organization" as part of its strategy to avoid controversy (Onorato 1991:1). By 1957, it had established a research laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, where studies focused on stopping sperm development, immunological methods of fertility control, implants, and IUDs. The Population Council has become one of a handful of major actors in the international reproduction/population domain. Rockefeller "lent

the weight of his family's name to give credibility to a cause which could engender considerable controversy."^[54]

A second new actor on the scene was the Ford Foundation, which funded reproductive studies extensively from 1959 to 1983 (Hertz 1984). The Ford Foundation's program, situated in its International Division, included both basic reproductive sciences and contraceptive development. Since World War II, this new combination of basic and applied interests has been characteristic of most funding sources. Ford funding ranged from $1.5 million in its first year to a high of about $15 million for 1969, leveling off at about $3 million per year toward the end of its commitment. In addition to research support, the Ford Foundation funded the ambitious Greep reports (1976, 1977) and a series of Karolinska Symposia on Methods in Reproductive Endocrinology in collaboration with the Karolinska Institute of Stockholm and the World Health Organization. Like the NRC/CRPS, the Ford Foundation tended to support major centers of research rather than individual scientists. Its centers have included many that are recognizable from earlier eras of the reproductive sciences, along with new ones.

University of Wisconsin, 1963–82, $2,843,000. Funded in part explicitly because of its intersectional collaborations. Focus was on fertility control through use of ovarian hormones. Directed by R. K. Meyer, Department of Zoology.

Marshall Laboratory, Department of Physiology, Cambridge University, 1963–81, $928,000. Directed initially by Sir Alan Parkes and then by C. R. Austin, with a special readership held by R. G. Edwards. Focus on in vitro fertilization leading to the birth of the world's first "test-tube baby," Louise Brown, in 1978.

Karolinska Institute of Stockholm, 1962–82, $2,277,000. Directed by Egon Diczfalusy, focus was on the physiological role of the fetoplacental unit, and on means for monitoring the course of pregnancy. Became the first Research and Training Center of the World Health Organization Programme in Human Reproduction.

Laboratory of Human Reproduction and Reproductive Biology, Harvard Medical School, 1965–83, initial grant of $3 million for a new building. Directed (in sequence) by Roy Greep, Kenneth Ryan, and John Biggers. Focus on hormonal factors controlling ovulation, implanation, tubal transport, spermatogenesis, and male contraception.

Weitzman Institute, Israel, 1962–83. $3,442,500. Directed by M. C. Shelesnyak and H. R. Lindner. Focus was on the role of histamines in nidation, radioimmunoassays of steroids and other hormones, and ovulation processes.

International Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction, Columbia

University, 1962–83. Initial funding of $6,738,000. This became the Center for Reproductive Sciences, the Center for Human Male Infertility, and the Center for Population and Family Health. Directed by Howard C. Taylor.

The Ford Foundation also ran regional and nationwide programs, such as one in India that focused on primate research and one in Egypt that focused on contraception. One in Chile and Brazil became the Latin American Association for Research in Human Reproduction. The foundation supported the research and training efforts of the World Health Organization and also sponsored an extensive fellowship program and an array of international programmatic efforts (Hertz 1984:107–26).

After 1960, the U.S. federal government also became a major funder of the reproductive sciences. Federal expenditures on reproductive and contraceptive research skyrocketed from a 1961–65 total of about $19 million to a 1970–74 total of over $183 million (Greep, Koblinsky, and Jaffe 1976:402–3). Within the National Institutes of Health, funding was provided especially through the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHHD), founded in 1963, the year after the NRC/CRPS was terminated. A Center for Population Research was then developed within NICHHD in 1968. Federal funding for contraceptive research was also channeled through the Office of Population of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) (Mastroianni, Donaldson, and Kane 1990:75).

Mastroianni and his associates (1990:80) provide an update on funding from 1973 to 1987, helpfully distinguishing between reproductive biology and contraceptive research in Table 10.^[55] This is essentially a continuation of the earlier chart by Greep and his colleagues, starting just after World War II. It shows a trend of expanding support both for basic reproductive sciences and for contraceptive research: "In current dollars, spending for reproductive biology research more than quadrupled, from $30 million in 1973 to $135 million in 1987; spending for contraceptive development grew from $7 million in 1973 to $36 million in 1987" (Mastroianni, Donaldson, and Kane 1990:79).

After about 1960, once it was clear that it was both relatively safe and profitable for pharmaceutical companies to produce contraceptives, industry expenditures on research grew dramatically. Between 1965 and 1974, the annual industry expenditure on reproductive and contraceptive research was about $12 million. Interestingly, over these same years, the industry proportion dropped from about 39 percent of the funding to 19 percent, while the government proportion rose from 38 to 61 percent (Greep, Koblinsky, and Jaffe 1976:402–3). Around 1970, at least half a dozen major American pharmaceutical companies were each spending sev-

eral million dollars per year on contraceptive research and development. Since that time, however, most have dropped out of research and development participation, others have ceased or been forced to cease distribution of their contraceptive products because of safety problems (discussed in chapter 8), and only one major company (Ortho Pharmaceutical Corporation) still has an active research and development program.^[56] Thus the post–World War II era has seen a shift in sponsorship of reproductive and contraceptive research from almost solely private and corporate philanthropy to include both governmental and industrial sponsorship. These new sources were then and remain problematic and unstable.

Conclusions

Contra Greep and his colleagues (1976), I found that a variety of funding sources were available for the reproductive sciences, most of them highly prestigious and well within the mainstream of the biomedical research community. Given that most external support for all types of research was ob-

tained through private philanthropic organizations during this era, the reproductive sciences enterprise was fairly typically funded. It was the stature of such private organizations (including three NRC committees), as well as the stature of the ultimate donors (the Rockefeller, Macy, and Markle Foundations, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington), that were particularly significant. This can perhaps be better appreciated if one recalls that even mainstream feminist organizations were not mentioning, much less supporting, birth control as an issue during the 1920s. Yet during these same years the Rockefeller-funded NRC/CRPS gleaned about 10 percent of all the funding of the NRC itself.^[57] Both the funds and the prestige lent crucial legitimacy to the enterprise in the decades before World War II.^[58] While the reproductive sciences did not share in initial federal largesse in terms of research support immediately following World War II, by the 1960s federal support had begun expanding to impressive levels. In addition, powerful new foundation support was forthcoming, which helped to consolidate the new alliance among the reproductive sciences, birth control, and population control worlds.

How such funding sources helped to shape research agendas on reproductive topics was addressed in more detail in chapters 4 and 6. We can also take note here of what was, by and large, either not funded or else funded less generously: simply means of contraception (which Margaret Sanger and other feminists had begun requesting from reproductive scientists in 1915); other women's health issues articulated through organizations concerned with women's health (such as the American Medical Women's Association and the Children's Bureau); and more physiological and comparative studies of reproductive phenomena. Instead, focus was on scientific means of contraception to be directed at what Foucault (1978:105) called "the Malthusian couple," with women as the configured users, and on reproductive endocrinological research for hormonal interventions directed almost exclusively at "the hysterical woman."

This entire chapter raises the broader issue of why such extensive funding was provided to the reproductive sciences by such prestigious sources despite the illegitimacy of this research. Clearly there were deep commitments among the major foundations to the development of improved means of control over reproduction—including birth control, population control, eugenics, and family planning. Interestingly, explicit discussion of why these commitments are important is rare in the archival materials, which tend to focus instead on how funding should be spent. The discussion of the illegitimacy of the reproductive sciences to which we next turn should heighten amazement at the existence of any such funding, much less funding of this scale and scope.