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Male Pill
The Male Pill: A Biography of Technology in the Making
by Nelly Oudshoorn (Science and Cultural Theory), 292 pp, $74.95, ISBN 0-8223-3158-6, paper, $21.95, ISBN 0-8223-3195-0, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2003.
JAMA. 2005;293:2940-2941.
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Near the center of Nelly Oudshoorn’s The Male Pill is a reproduced poster used by researchers in Edinburgh in the 1990s to recruit young men for a clinical trial of a male contraceptive pill. It shows an astronaut planting a flag emblazoned with a large X on the moon, which resembles a gigantic human ovum, with the caption "First Man on the Pill" (p 187). The poster suggests the catchphrase, "If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we . . . ," in this case, "develop a male contraceptive pill?" Oudshoorn, professor of gender and technology in the Netherlands, argues that cultural barriers, not technological barriers, have prevented the development of a male contraceptive pill. She presents a fascinating "biography of the male Pill" (p 225) from the 1970s through the 1990s.
Oudshoorn notes that "in the past century, no new male methods [of contraception] have been developed, except for . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Cynthia R. Daniels, PhD, Reviewer
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ
crd@rci.rutgers.edu
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