SEMEN AND HEALTH

The Condom Condemned By Herbert Ratner Child & Family 1990

I have always believed in the order of nature and held in great respect both the concept and the evidence of teleology or design, and have believed that one can profoundly dislocate this order only at great peril. It would seem better to try to discover this design rather than override it.

-- Dickenson W. Richardson Drugs in Our Society, Paul Talalay (Ed.)

Nature and the Physician

Nature is a great artist and her works are full of complexities, subtleties and secrecies, which man as a wondering animal, tries to penetrate and fathom. Physicians have a special interest in comprehending nature's ways for the role of the physician is to cooperate with nature, the custodian of health, to make and ensure health. The good physician keeps in mind that nature is the real healer, not the physician whose role is ministerial, who is nature's nurturer not her master. When health is absent, the physician assists nature in restoring health and when necessary, he steps in and does for nature what nature would do for herself if she could, as in necessary surgery. When health is present, he helps her to maintain and perfect health. He also tries to anticipate, offset, and prevent threats to health whenever he can. The essential work of the physician, then, is to work with nature through nature. His work is to acquire, possess and master the knowledge of how nature functions so as to keep nature's highest achievement, man, alive and well, in a state of physiologic and psychologic health.(1)

He works under a handicap, however, because he never gets to know as much as nature knows about herself, all her detailed complex functions and the multiple purposes underlying them. He has to face up to the fact that his ignorance surpasses his knowledge, an ignorance that can be measured by the extent of ongoing research seeking answers involving tens of thousands of research workers, thousands of laboratories and billions of dollars.

The ignorance of doctors as they go to replace a natural process is best exemplified by their belief that cow's milk formulas for infants were just as good as nature's product. By 1947 it was claimed that the superiority of breast milk to formula could be bridged by the addition of vitamin A and D to the formulas. Yet within 11 years it was found that it was necessary to add to the formulas such important ingredients, to name only a few, as essential fatty acids, the bifidus factor, tocopherol and pyridoxine, in order to match the quality of breast milk.(2) Thirty-five years later, the chase to match human milk still continues. In the mean time over a fifty year period infants have been deprived of nature's tailor-made food for them. The basic mistake of the doctors during this period was to lean on the scale as their guide as if weight gain were the chief criterion for good nutrition.

But their ignorance was greater than that. They never considered the possibility that nature, as is customary, had more purposes in mind than simply the nutritive. This is the key question that must be answered when one decides to replace a natural process. Not to consider nature's multiple purposes is a common mistake assistants make when they blithely take over from nature as if nature were the assistant. What physicians largely ignored was the remarkable immunologic function of breast milk, the suckling process as a means of quickly restoring the mother's body to the pre-pregnant state, the suckling stimulation of prolactin and oxytocin which enhances motherliness, the bonding process between mother and infant built into the nursing operation, and the medicinal properties of breast milk as when its th~roxine prevents a myxedematous state in the thyroid deficient infant.

The harm the physician's takeover did to family and society was extensive and perhaps incalculable. There were higher mortality and morbidity rates, greater difficulties in baby rearing, and greater expense. Beyond that, there must be reasons why our society suffers from greater psychiatric problems, high levels of drug misuse, increased suicides, sexual irresponsibility leading to explosive rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and an increase in the killing of the preborn. The physician paved the way for the failure of the mother to be a model of fidelity to the baby, crippling the baby's future relations with persons and institutes of society.(3)

The above shortcoming exemplifies the failure of the teachings of evolution to impress upon the physician that living species, including man, are not only survivors but thrivers with a physiology that is finely tuned to health. Thus, the physician frequently lacks the humility to leave well enough alone. Instead he suffers from the American tradition of activism. Americans like to have things done to them and physicians are ready and eager to oblige. To guard against the temptation to activism, physicians must learn to curb the urge to intervene and intercept natural processes. In obstetrics today, routine episiotomies and excessive cesarian sections are performed as if nature who had given giraffes and elephants functioning perinea lacked the experience to do the same for man and also lost its know-how of delivering babies from below.(4) Pediatrics has a long history of intervening as if nature erred here and there and needed correction. And soin this century they have converted the infant into a tonsilless, foreskinless, bottle feeder.

It behooves physicians, then, to recognize that nature has had an enviable lengthy clinical experience with everything she has bequeathed to us, and so to be very careful and circumspect in interventions. By now we should also know that when nature is transgressed she strikes back. She has no alternative. In many instances retaliation is quick and catastrophic as when deaths or severe symptoms occur shortly after a new drug or vaccine has been marketed necessitating a prompt recall. In most instances, however, the retaliation is insidious and not readily detectable yet the harm may be considerable.

Semen's Secret

What has been said so far is by way of introduction to a seemingly extremely minor example of an interference with a natural process, namely, the use of the condom as a contraceptive. The rubber condom has been with us for over a century despite its relative inefficiency in preventing pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. Despite this it has been promoted as the government's principle tool in combatting the spread of the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) viruses in genital sex. But the curious fact is that there are investigators who report that the use of the condom is responsible for the sharp increase in breast cancer as well as in eclampsia, the serious toxic disease of pregnancy.(5) Since nature never intended that semen should be trapped in a condom to be discarded, the discovery that semen has additional purposes other than to facilitate fertilization should not come as a surprise. The fact is that the beneficial effects of semen to the woman has a long intriguing history dating back to at least World War I. Knowledge of this, however, was mostly ignored by physicians and more so by the promoters of contraception. Obviously if the promoters of dangerous modern contraceptives keep insisting that The Pill (oral steroids), whose constituents are powerful synthetic chemicals, is safe and effective,(6) one can hardly expect them to do less for a plain rubber sheath. Actually, the new Pill, though less dangerous, is also less effective.

The fact is that in coitus the condom deprives the woman of the male ejaculate intended by nature to be absorbed by the vagina as part of the total generative process. This absorption is the case with all mammalia. Why should the human female be an excep tion? Unfortunately the doctor thinks of semen in one context only. But the function of semen is not restricted to the sperm as a fertilizing agent. Semen also relates to the well-being of the woman. Semen itself, is largely the product of the prostate gland and the seminal vesicle both of which are glands of external secretions. The prostate is the site of the major production of prostaglandins in the male. In addition it contains numerous other ingredients which are now under investigation.

In a paper entitled "The Intravaginal Absorption of Male Generated Hormones and Their Possible Effect on Female Behavior," (1986)(7) Prof. Ney finds the following constituents in seminal plasma: at least 13 prostaglandins in high concentrations as well as other hormones and other constituents. If we really believed in the evolution of the mammalian body we would view the collection of constituents as a masterful Prescription compounded by mother nature-the great physician with a vast clinical experience. The average amount of an adult ejaculation, about one teaspoonful-a familiar medical dosage, could be viewed as the prescription of a very wise and experienced doctor who knows precisely what she is doing and who has even calculated the proper dosage.

In the adult male, the production of semen is continuous. Spontaneous nocturnal emissions keep the stored amount in balance. A conservative estimate of the total semen produced during a life time is roughly about eight quarts. The amount varies considerably with one's constitution, state of life and the tempo of one's sexual life. Given nature's efficiency, it is understandable that semen, like other bodily secretions, has additional functions other than that of a vehicle for the transport of sperm. The semen directs or indirectly assists sperm toward their goal of fertilization. The ejaculate is highly alkaline and quickly buffers and converts the acidic vagina to the alkaline side so as to further migration of the sperm to the fallopian tube where it meets the egg. Semen also has nutritive and protective qualities that extend the life of the sperm. In general, since infertility is a major gynecologic problem it is understandable that the bulk of research on semen is in direct relationship to the survival and functioning of the sperm. This preoccupation unfortunately has limited research to the exclusion of broader biologic considerations. We forget the principle that whenever possible nature utilizes its products and processes for multiple purposes.

The enquiry into whether semen has a further role other than to help sperm migrate was brought up 70 years ago by a prominent contraceptionist and was reiterated by her until her death 40 years ago. Investigators are now beginning to concern themselves with its public health importance because of several recent dramatic medical findings. One of these findings relates to the AIDS viruses and the role that semen plays in enhancing the infectious process when it is secreted into the rectum. How it functions to create a diseased condition in a strange environment also helps in understanding its function in a normal environment.

The Condom Condemned

The first intimation that vaginally absorbed semen had a salutary effect on the sexually active woman which appeared in this century's literature is to be found in the writings of Dr. Marie Stopes (1880-1958), the famous British pioneer in the study of and the public promotion of contraception in England and elsewhere. Unlike her well-known counterpart in the United States, Margaret Sanger, Dr. Stopes was a trained scientist with doctorates in science (London) and in philosophy (Munich). She also had excellent academic credentials as a teacher of the natural sciences. In a clinical study of the effect of coitus interruptus on women carried out in the early years of World War I, she concluded that the deprivation of absorbed seminal and prostatic fluid resulted in a loss of well being and a variety of symptoms, to which a number of women gave personal testimony. Her findings were published in 1918 in a book entitled Wise Parenthood.(8) Her findings were accepted and corroborated by several prominent physicians including Prof. Sir William Bayliss, the great English physiologist.

As a consequence of her findings that coitus interruptus robbed women of the beneficial effects of semen, Dr. Stopes took a firm stand against the use of the condom, which equally deprived women of the beneficial qualities of the semen. This prominent worldwide contraceptionist maintained this position throughout her long career as can be seen in the eighth edition (1951) of her major work entitled Contraception: Its Theory, History and Practice.(9) She tolerated the use of the condom for only special circumstances and only on a limited basis. In her authorized biography published in 1962 four years after her death, the author, Keith Briant, summarized her position as follows, The basic reason for Marie Stopes' condemnation of the use of the condom was that it ... deprived the coital act of its full physiological value. It also deprived the woman of the male seminal secretions. An essential part of Marie Stopes' sex teaching on coitus was that both male and female derived benefit in their health by the absorption of each other's secretions during sexual union.(10) When viewed from the perspective of the contemporary birth control movement, Dr. Stopes' stand against the condom was most unusual. What governed her work was her deep concern for the personal good of the individual woman whom she tried to protect from all adverse effects of contraception. Her attitude was in sharp contrast to today's birth control promoters, whose prime interest is social engineering. Their goal is to reduce the birth rate whatever the consequences. They even extend contraception to aborting the preborn human being. Today's contraceptianists haven't hesitated to promote intrinsically dangerous birth control methods such as The Pill (11) and the intrauterine device (IUD)(12) while parroting about their safety and effectiveness. Actually, today's birth control movement views women as expendable. Whereas Dr. Stopes' interest was altruistic, the primary concern of today's birth control advocates is to protect the birth control establishment and their own vested interests.

The Conjugal Fraud

A later chapter in the history of the beneficial effects of semen absorption for the sexually active woman and conversely of the adverse effects when deprived of semen is discussed in a 1931 book entitled "Judgment on Birth Control" by a Belgium physician scholar, R. de Guchteneere.(13) He summarizes findings from medical studies dealing with the issue of semen deprivation that were published between 1923 and They are as follows.

Prof. Laffont in a Report to the 6th Congress of French Speaking Gynecologists and Obstetricians (14) in 1929 writes, It is perfectly well-known and universally admitted that the female organism absorbs the spermatic products after coitus, and that these products act on the female in a favorable manner, whereas the lack of them produces physical and psychic disorders. Dr. Sedillot writing in 1930 "agrees with Laffont that lack of spermatic substance is the real substratum of nervous and mental troubles which are so frequent with voluntary Sterility" and wonders if it "might not be the precursor of nervous disorders in women, through the thyro-ovarian mechanism." He claims that "All these troubles disappear or are modified by the action of spermatic extract together with the suppression, or at least the modification of preventive practices." He concludes that "Every married woman who indulges habitually [in practices that deprive her of semen] becomes abnormal in a physiological sense and lays her self open to disturbances of her health, especially of her nervous and endocrine-sympathetic system."(15) Other investigators referred to the beneficial effects of semen as an "important energizing influence" and that its absorption "makes for psychophysical equilibrium."(16) Ill effects were variously described as "painful anxiety conditions," "nervous and sympathetic affections" and of "physical, psychic, nervous or mental disorders."(17) Several investigators claimed cure by the administration of spermatic extracts.(18) One wonders whether the deprivation of the beneficent tranquillizing effects of semen in sexually active women is responsible in part for the inordinate amount of tranquilizers used by them today. There were other papers that correlated low birth rates with increased female cancer rates and high birth rates with low cancer rates. The underlying assumption in them was that women with high birth rates would not have practiced coitus interruptus or used condoms and would therefore have benefitted from absorbed semen, whereas women with low birth rates would have been deprived of the semen. Thus Professor Roffo of Buenos Aires reported in a paper published in 1930 that in a study of large numbers of cases of uterine and breast cancers observed that married women without children showed a much higher percentage of uterine and breast cancers whereas in women with, for example, nine children, the rates were much lower: for uterine cancer, it was 19.57% vs 6.13% and for breast cancer it was 26.09% vs 4.78%.(19) In de Guchteneere's summary of the literature which he thinks of as establishing a "conjugal fraud," he enunciates a principle which deserves repetition. "A natural function cannot be diverted with impunity from the end to which it is ordained." It will only result in a "retribution which nature exacts from the transgression of her laws."(20) Actually they echo ancient aphorisms. Thus Seneca, the Roman philosopher and statesman states in the first century A.D. that "It is wisdom to not stray from nature and to be formed according to her love and example." For modern ears perhaps Nobel Laureate Dickenson W. Richardson says it more strikingly. At a symposium on "Drugs in Our Society" he stated:

... there is increasing evidence that [man] is not controlling nature at all but only distorting it,. . that nature itself, formerly largely protective... seems to have become largely retaliatory. Let man make the smallest blunder in his farreaching and complex physical or physiological reconstructions and nature, striking from some unforseen direction, exacts a massive retribution.(21) Perhaps there will be a tendency of some present generation medical investigators raised on computers and case controlled and double blind studies to look askance at the clinical findings reported by Drs Stopes and de Guchteneere but this would be an egregious mistake. Current investigators are beginning to di cover with more sophisticated epidemiological techniques and to report on increased incidence of breast cancer and eclampsia with the regular use of condoms as contraceptives. In particular Dr. Arne N. Gjorgov, M.D., Ph.D. formerly of the University of Pennsylvania, University of North Carolina and presently Chairman and Professor of the Department of Community Medicine, Kuwait University, pioneered this field. His first paper was published in Oncology, 35:97-100 in 1978. He has published a comprehensive monograph of the subject in 1980.(22) He holds that the discontinuation of the condom in married life would result in a 50% reduction of the incidence of breast cancer. Needless to say the establishment and governmental and other agencies promoting the condom are antipathetic to his finding.

With the passage of time papers continued to appear on the adverse effects of semen deprivation in marital sex life. These findings, however, were overshadowed by the ever increasing papers on the sterility problems of married women which pre-occupied the minds of gynecologists.

In the late seventies Dr. Arne N. Gjorgov of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania branched off in a different direction from that of earlier investigators of the adverse effect of semen deprivation in married women. Curious of the recent findings of a high incidence of breast cancer in married women, an incidence which matched the high rates of cancer in never married single women, he introduced a new epidemiological method to answer the question as to whether the absence of or reduced exposure to semen was a risk factor. He interviewed 153 women who had a mastectomy for cancer. They were married white women aged 3560 years at the time of the diagnosis. He divided them into two birth control groups: those who used barrier methods of contraception to which were assigned condoms, withdrawal, longterm abstinence and celibacy; and those who used non-barrier methods such as the diaphragm, the pill, intrauterine devices QUD), rhythm, foam, jelly, and female sterilization. He also interviewed 168 women as controls who were free of any cancer history and were carefully matched by age and education. The study concluded that if barrier methods of contraception were discontinued it would result in a 50% reduction of breast cancer. In the U.S. this would annually prevent 60,000 new cases and 17,000 deaths. He published his final results in 1980 in a comprehensive monograph on breast cancer.(23)

This past year, using an epidemiological method modeled after Qjorgov's, other investigators found that among women who developed preeclampsia, those that had used barrier methods had a 2.37-fold increased risk of preeclampsia over those who were not deprived of semen. This finding was important since preeclampsia was the third leading cause of maternal morbidity and a major cause of perinatal morbidity and mortality. The study concluded that barrier methods of birth control may contribute to as much as 60% of preeclamptic cases. (24)

The preferred hypothesis of the preeclampsia investigators, however, was to attribute the protection against preeclampsia to the woman's continued antigenic exposure to the sperm rather than to other components of the semen. In each study, however, the association of the two diseases was with the barrier methods of contraception as such.(25) In an editorial comment on the preeclampsia study, the writer, while siding with the antigen-antibody interpretation of the authors, still believed that the seminal prostaglandins may play an important role in preeclampsia.(26) This echoes Qjorgov's belief that the seminal prostaglandins play a role in protectiig the mammary gland from cancer in married women. Other clinical investigators also recently reported that prostaglandins have a positive effect on bladder function (27) and are useful in ripening an unfavorable cervix in labor.(28)

Perhaps this confirmation of the association of barrier methods of birth control with disease in married women and the knowledge of the physiologic action of semen type prostaglandins will stimulate family planning personnel, public health physicians and obstetric ian-gynecologists to take Gjorgov's study on breast cancer more seriously. If confirmed, American medicine will again be reminded that medical intervention without due respect for nature's long established normative processes may result in more disease than it prevents. Such iatrogenic disease setbacks have been reported in the medical literature throughout the years, decades and centuries.(29) They have been seen in the use of powerful synthetic drugs in lieu of changes in regimen, as in the misuse of stimulants, tranquilizers, diuretics, hypertensive drugs and psychotropic drugs, also oral steroids for birth control purposes. In addition, non-vital organs have been the targets of unnecessary operations such as cholecystectomies, hysterectomies, routine episiotomies, circumcisions and tonsillectomies. The latest technological encroachment of a natural process is the disruption of the mammalian mother-infant bonding and attachment process. It began with routine bottle feeding, which then led to the mass nursery for the newborn and is now ending in the all day child care centers for infants and the very young. Such day care centers have been indicted by a child expert as the "thalidomide of the 80's [and 90's]."(30)

An additional concern is whether the condomized society, extending to the very young, promoted by the USPHS, enthusiastically embraced by the family planning establishment and praised by politicians, is going to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the ills of society.(31) By now it should be realized that rather than stopping AIDS virus infections. the condom, by increasing promiscuity in the young, will increase those infections as it has increased sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. Furthermore, the promiscuity it fosters is hardly a preparation for stable family life, our country's greatest need. Of further interest concerning the salutary effect of absorbed semen in married coital life is a remarkable study published in 1942.(32) This study explored the etiology of the 12-14% primary sterility found in women. In a clinical study that started with the onset of marriage and lasted for two years, the author concluded that absor bed semen had the ability to mature the undeveloped uterus which characterized some sterility cases. He studied two groups of women, numbering twenty each, through the first two years of married life. One group was 11 persuaded to live an absolutely normal sex life." In this group the uteri of nine of fifteen women whose uteri were "palpably small and immature" grew to normal size in four-and-a-half to six months, and conception occurred on an average of seven-and- a-half months of married life. The other group, from "the very beginning of married life, made use of chemical douches or caps with medicated pessaries" or had "husbands who used condoms or practiced coitus interruptus." In this group 15 had "palpably small and hypoplastic uteri," 10 of which were still immature when observed two years later. He concluded from these findings that "semen possesses a hormone of tremendous importance to the virginal genital tract, particularly to that tract in the early months, or even years, of matrimony. He further deduced that "any thing or any method which prevents, retards or alters the normal degree of physiological absorption of human semen from the vagina carries with it during the early months and years of marriage a risk of future sterility from failure of uterine development and endocrinal asynchronization" (i.e. a proper sequence of uterine secretion).(33)

Subsequently, Green-Armytage et al. found confirmation of this maturing power of semen by testing the effects of seminal injections into immature rats and guinea pigs which brought about considerable growth in the reproductive systems of about half of those animals.(34)

These dramatic biological findings, however, have been more or less ignored by gynecologists. They seem to be more interested in technological solutions to sterility than in preventing the causes of sterility. They also ignore what wise physicians know, namely, that newly married couples should first establish their fertility before they adopt birth control. Many cases of sterility are concealed by the use of birth control in newly married couples, giving "deceptive" contraceptives credit for an effectiveness they don't deserve. In the process, unfortunately, the couple loses valuable time, perhaps years, in confronting their sterility problem. To be learned is that neither couples nor physicians should take babies for granted, for unlike abortions they are not available on demand. Numerous women and men discover this later in life to their deep sorrow. In Chicago c. 50 years ago, when Planned Parenthood was more concerned with the welfare of couples than with population control, they refused to dispense contraception until the couple first established their fertility. This is a principle that deserves reintroduction, for most couples look forward to eventually having children and it would be better to know earlier rather than later that there might be difficulties.

From the preceding section we can see that semen is not simply an inert secretion with a function limited to the transport of sperm, but it is also tailored to the care of the caretaker and serves the sexually active woman's well being whether pregnant or not pregnant. Semen plasma (semen without the sperm) is a highly active secretion, rich in male generated hormones including hormones characteristic of male and female. Included among the hormones are at least 13 different members of the prostaglandin family, some of which are present in effective physiological concentrations. The total ingredients present in the plasma number over 23.(35) Semen should, then, be viewed as a tried and tested, finely tuned, built in prescription formulated by mother nature, an experienced, wise physician, and it should be part of the married woman's script for high level wellness. Accordingly, we must have circumspection and certainly more knowledge before we intervene, tamper with, or intercept nature's physiological sequences. We should not simplistically let nature's simplicities hide her functional intricacies.

The above article was extracted from two articles written by Dr. H.

Ratner M.D. for "Child and Family". Vol. 20:275-282, 1988 (Semen and

AIDS; Part I) and Vol. 21:90-96, 1990 (Semen and AIDS; Part 2).

References & Notes

1. a) Ratner, Herbert. The physician: A normative artist. Listening,

18:181-184, 1983. Re printed in Child and Family, 20:285-289, 1988.

b) Ratner, H. Hippocrates has vital meaning for physicians. GP, 8:93-99,

1953. Reprinted in Child and Family, 12:34035 1.

c) Ratner, H. Medicine: An interview by Donald MeDonald. One of a Series

of Interviews on the American Character, Center for the Study of

Democratic Institutions, The Fund for the Republic, Inc., 1962.

Reprinted in Child and Family, 11:4-14,100-110,276-286,363376; 1972.

2. Ratner, H. The public health aspects of breastfeeding. Child and

Family, 18: 164-173, 1979.

3. Ratner, H. The nursing couplet V: Fidelity. Child and Family,

19:242-244, 1980.

4. Ramer, H. The history of the dehumanization of American obstetrical

practice. 21st Century Obstetrics Now! NAPSAC, Inc., Chapel Hill, N.C.,

1977, Ch. 13, pp. 115-46. Reprinted in Child and Family, 16:4-37, 1977.

5. a) Gjorgov, A. Barrier contraception and breast cancer. Contributions

Gynecol Obstet. Basel; New York: Karger, 1980; 8X+ 1 - 164.

b) Klanofff-Cohen, H. et all. An epiderniologic study of contraception

and preeclampsia. JAMA, 262:3143-3147,1989.

6. Ratner, H. Pill safety: False assurances. Child and Family,

15:98-100, 1976.

7. Ney, P.G. The intravaginal absorption of male generated hormones and

their possible effect on female behavior. Medical Hypotheses,

20:221-231, 1986.

8. Stopes, M. Wise Parenthood. London: Putnam & Co., Ltd., 1918.

9. Stopes, M. Contraception.. Its Theory, History and Practice. London:

Putnam & Co, Ltd, 7th Edition, 1949, pp. 7686; 155-161.

10. Briant, K. Passionate Paradox: The Life of Marie Stopes. New York:

W.W Norton &Co., 1962,p.140.

11. a) Neinstein, L.S. & Katz, B. Contraception and Chronic Diseases: A

Clinician's Source Book. Atlanta, Georgia: American Health Consultant

Books, 1986.

b) Grant, E. The Bitter Pill: How Safe is the 'Perfect Contraception?'

Great Britain: Elm Tree Books/Harnish Hamilton Ltd., 1985.

c) Ratner, H. The MedicalHazards oftheBirth ControlPill. Oak Park, IL:

Child and Family Reprint Booklets, 1968.

d) Ramer, H. The Nelson Hearings on oral contraceptives --- Testimony.

Child and Family, 9:349-376.

12. The Advisory Committee on Obstetrics and Gynecology, Drug and

Device, FDA. Second Reporton Intrauterine Contraceptive Devices. U.S.

Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare, Washington, D.C., 1978.

13. Guchteneere, R. Judgment on Birth Control. London: Sheed&Ward, 1934,

Ch.V, pp. 113173.

14. Laffont,A. Report to the Sixth Congress of French Speaking

Gynecologists and Obstetricians. Gyn. et Obs., No. 3, September, 1929.

Supra 13, p. 159.

15. Sedillot, J. Nouvelles Therapeutiques, April, 1929. Supra 13, p.

160.

16. Drowain. Nouvelles Therapeutiques, April, 1929. Supra 13, pp

159-160.

17. Hesnard. L'hygiene mental, Feb. 1930. Supra 13, p. 153.

18. Aragon. Journ. de therap, July, 1923. Supra 13, p. 158.

19. Ruffo. Revue Belge des'sciences medicales, March, 1930. Supra 13,

pp. 164-163.

20. Supra 13, p. 137.

21. Richardson, D.W. Drugs in Our Society (Ed. Paul Talalay)

22. Supra 5a.

23. Ibid.

24. Supra 5b.

25. Ibid.

26. Beer,A. Immunology, contraception, and preeclampsia. Journal of

theAmerican Medical Association, 262:3184, 1989.

27. Koonings, R; Bergman,A. and Ballard, C. Prostaglandins forenhancing

detrusor function after surgery for stress incontinence in women. The

Journal of Reproductive Medicine, 35:1-5, 1990.

28. Smith,C. andEglinton,G. Cervical ripening: Aretrospective experience

with prostaglandin E, "chips". The Journal of Reproductive Medicine,

35:398-390, 1990.

29. Supra lc.

30. Amiel, B. Is child care 'the thalidomide of the 1980s'? The Times,

July 1, 1988, London, England, p. 19.

31. Ratner, H. Condoms and AIDS. Child and Family, 20:83-86, 1988.

32. Green-Armytage, V.13. et al. Discussion on new developments in the

investigation and treatment of sterility. Proc. Royal Society of

Medicine, 36:105-112, 1943.

33. Ibid, p. 106.

34. Green-Armytage, V.13.; Silberstein, F. and Wachtel, G.E. The

influence of semen on the female reproductive organs. J. Obstet.

Gynecol., 54:324-339, 1947.

35. a) Ney, P.G. The intravaginal absorption of male generated hormones

and their possible effect on female behaviour. Medical Hypotheses,

20:221-231, 1986.

b) Yarnarnoto, N; Harada, S. and Nakashima, H. Substances affecting the

infection and replication of human immunodef iciency virus (HIV). AIDS

Research, 2:S 183-S 189,1986.