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.