This publication sets out to look at the development of contraceptive devices from Ancient Egypt, more particularly from the Greeks and Romans, to the present day. By the author’s own admission, the approach is a ‘romp’ through the history of contraception to feature the ‘absurdity’ of the methods and often ‘of the people who use them’. The outcome provides easy reading. However, the limited level of analysis detracts from what could have been a book of greater substance, as much work has clearly been undertaken to cover the quite considerable sequence of events.

The definition of contraception is expressed as preventing conception, although the limitations of the term are explored with the suggestion that guilt over the business of contraception has led to avoidance of the term whenever possible. ‘Immaculate’ is not discussed.

The review of contraceptive means and methods available is considered within the cultural setting of the times with reference to ideas on marriage, sex, conception, birth, contraception, abortion and infanticide. From the outset, the various methods for birth prevention have covered an array of possibilities from spermicides, douching, herbs, cedar gum, the chastity belt (in the Middle Ages), withdrawal, the sponge, the rhythm method, sheaths, condoms and the ‘Dutch’ cap popularised by Dr Aletta Jacobs who set up the world’s first birth control clinic in 1882.

The second half of the book then concentrates, firstly, on the two pioneers from the early 20th century: Marie Stopes (1888-1958) who advocated the use of the cap in Britain and Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) the use of the diaphragm in the United States. Secondly, the work of Gregory Pincus and John Rock, amongst others, then transformed developments with the contraceptive pill whose sales of prescribed contraceptives, despite pill scares, had reached $56.6 million per annum globally by 1962. Across the last twenty years of the 20th century, new preventive approaches included: a male pill; hormonal injectives; contracepetive vaccines; injectable contraceptives; female sterilisation, vasectomy, the super cap; the morning after pill; Femidom; the Intra-Uterine Device (IUD); and Norplant, together with ever increasing hormone and spermicide research.

While informative on contraceptive developments, the recognition of those who, often courageously, furthered the provision of birth control across the 20th century is limited. Credit is rightfully given to the pioneering work of Helen Brook, which led to the Brook Advisory Centres for young people in the 1960s. Welcome quotations appear from Penny Kane, formerly of the Planned Parenthood Federation, Suzie Hayman from the Brook Advisory Centres and contraception expert John Guillebaud. Meanwhile, no mention is made of the Society for the Provision of Birth Control Clinics (1924-1930) which sought, controversially, to expand provision and to press on the government for public services. The immense contribution of the Family Planning Association (FPA) – from the forerunners in 1930/1; the FPA naming in 1939, to the work of the present day – is barely mentioned except for some quotations. Without the FPA work on contraceptive methods which included the crucial role played in trials on the contraceptive pill in the early 1960s, setting up rigorous clinical standards, training courses and a pathway for the pill into Britain, the sequence of historical developments would have been far less effective over time despite certain clinic limitations on provision. The author does raise the question of sex education which still needs much more attention overall but at least the FPA places sex education at the forefront of its work today which outlook would not be gleaned from this present publication. A further problem is that the referencing at the back under ‘Notes” is inadequate wherein dates are often omitted.

One of the best features of the book is the display of photographs and historical advertisements. However, in the collection, neither Professor W C Nixon nor Margaret Pyke are given designations (Professor Nixon was a gynaecologist at University College Hospital, London, who exceptionally instructed medical students in contraceptive methods in the 1950s). Margaret Pyke (1893-1966) was the Secretary of the National Birth Control Council (1930)/Association (1931) and continued to work for the Family Planning Association well into the post-war years. Meanwhile, the picture of Marie Stopes is the best I have ever seen, enhanced by her cat. Looking at the ‘Tea Time Talks’ at Claridges by Marie Stopes (no year date given in the advertisement but whose book Enduring Passion is featured which was published in 1928), the poster does reflect a classist, female aspect of contraceptive issues (camouflaged as ‘sex problems’) in the early days.

Audrey Leathard
Visiting Professor of Interprofessional Studies: South Bank University

_____________

Almost Like a Whale. Jones, Steve. Anchor, London. 2000. Pp xxxvii + 499. £8.99 (Pbk).

Steve Jones says he has never met a biology undergraduate who has read Darwin’s The Origin of Species. I confess that although I started to read it as an undergraduate I did not finish it until some years later. Laziness on my part no doubt but also, I think, because it was rather like reading a whodunit knowing the murderer before opening the book. The key question unanswered in Darwin’s book was how were the traits selected for by natural selection passed down the generations? Genetics had already provided the answer. Jones regards The Origin as the book of the millennium, and he may well be right. What other book before or since has had such a revolutionary impact not only on the life sciences but also on almost every other aspect of human thought and life? Everything is now said to evolve – even, it seems, car designs. What was seen as a static, created universe a mere 5863 years old in which mankind (specially created, of course) alone had the ability to change things was, after Darwin, revealed as a constantly changing system, unimaginably old, in which we humans are very closely related to other animals and, like them, the product of random events.

So, if today the worldview has changed and evolution applies to almost everything, are books like this necessary? They are, for several reasons. Firstly there are still a surprising number of people who reject Darwin’s theory of organic evolution. Who deny all the evidence for it although most religions have by now managed to accommodate it in their beliefs. A strong desire to be unique, for humans to be quite distinct from the rest of the living world appears to be the main motivation for such attitudes. Secondly among many of those who accept the idea of evolution there is a widespread ignorance of exactly how it happened. All too often we are told, especially in television programmes, that “X evolved in order to avoid Y or to take advantage of a future change in their environment.” A little thought (something rare to absent among some TV producers, it seems) shows that animals and plants cannot adapt to an environmental change which has not yet happened. Nor do they consciously change to avoid predators. What in fact happens is rather more brutal. When an environment changes significantly only those organisms able to survive in the new conditions are able to reproduce. These will often be small in numbers and genetically different from most of their original population, Natural selection in action, or the survival of the luckiest. Which is why most of the living organisms which have ever existed are now extinct. Evolution and progress (however defined) are not synonyms.

An update of The Origin is, therefore, timely as we enter the new millennium. Jones has included many things of which Darwin knew nothing such as AIDS, genes, DNA, and cladistics, as well as a wealth of ecological data, on ants especially, collected since Darwin’s day. The striking thing is that as our knowledge of the living world increases at all levels from molecular biology to ecosystems, evolution, descent with modification, remains the best, really the only, logical explanation of how it all happened. Given that all organisms evolve, including Homo sapiens, what kind of future lies ahead for our own species? How will natural selection affect us and what, if anything, could we do about it?

We are the only animal able to modify our environment consciously and to a considerable extent. This we have been doing for a long time now and the result is that we have been able to prevent natural selection acting fully on ourselves and on many of our domesticated animals and cultivated plants. So we and our favoured organisms have survived in vastly larger numbers than we would have in the wild. Hence the human population explosion and the accelerated extinction of many wild species. However, as Jones points out, for us natural selection is only suspended. Antibiotics, a major current reason for this suspension, may well not be effective for ever. Already bacteria are becoming more and more resistant to them. Evolution may be on hold for humans but not for our disease organisms and it is almost certainly only a matter of time before our present ability to treat infectious diseases so successfully is a thing of the past. Our crops are also under threat as weeds and plant disease organisms evolve and some become resistant to herbicides and pesticides. Having speeded up the extinction of many wild plants we have drastically reduced the gene pool from which all our cultivated crops are derived. Perhaps our knowledge of genetics and the ability to produce genetically modified organisms will enable us to keep natural selection at bay, at least for a time. Or perhaps not. In the very long run it seems almost inevitable that disease and famine will return worldwide and these potent agents of natural selection will usher in a new dark age when only the fit and the fortunate will survive. The human race will evolve again for better or worse.

Today’s biology students may well find The Origin too long, rather boring, and out-of-date in places. I hope, therefore, that instead they will read this book which, I assure them, they will find up-to-date, far from boring, and, unless they have chosen the wrong subject, certainly not too long. If some of them then at least dip into The Origin they will find that reading Jones will have made understanding Darwin easier. It is also an excellent book for the non-biologist who would like to understand what evolution is, how it happened, and what it portends for our own species’ future. Read, and learn what is almost like a whale.

John Timson

_____________

The Seven Daughters of Eve. Sykes, Bryan. Bantam Press. £18.99.

Let’s start with the title. We have to assume only one Eve served as ancestor to every one of us; what therefore is so special about seven of her descendants. The answer is that they all lived in Europe – and presumably the publishers liked the handle, even putting the seven, happily invented names of this matriarchal group upon the jacket. As the book is all about mitochondria, rather than Eve, we can understand why a publisher might flinch from such a word and prefer something more immediately appealing.

With so much current talk about helical DNA, the genome, our 46 chromosomes, the genes linked along them, and our blended inheritance from both parents, it is easy to forget that a section of our make-up comes in unaltered state from our mothers. Very, very occasionally this portion experiences mutation, but the chances are that our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers and on and on did not differ one iota in their mitochondrial DNA. This female consistency therefore presents wonderful possibilities for the unravelling of ancestors.

Bryan Sykes can make us extremely envious if we are not human geneticists (he is Oxford’s professor on the topic). He has plainly had such fun, with frustrations and setbacks, of course, but all adding up to fun. He investigates the ice-man (so conveniently freeze-dried in the Alps). He gets involved with the last Tsar’s family and with Prince Philip. He checks on Cheddar man (from the gorge) and Neanderthals. Then he is off to the Cook Islands working with Polynesians, and to Wales for the Welsh. As we all possess mitochondrial genes we are all grist for his enthusiasm. So too golden hamsters when, with a ‘Eureka’ yell, he remembers that every golden hamster in the western world came from one female who had been resident, until 1930, in north-west Syria.

The book is part detective story (which is easy to read), part popular biology (being a good introduction to the whole topic), and part anthropology (educating us in all sorts of odd corners). Its author is a kind teacher, often making statements two or three times in case we didn’t catch his meaning initially. He is steadfastly jolly, as if desperate to interest the uninterested. And he is plainly delighted that human genetics involves him with human beings. In its funny, discursive, geographical, and wide-ranging fashion the book probably teaches us more about human biology that many a straightforward tome entitled ‘Human Biology’.

As for the seven daughters, he wished to discover if all those hunters and gatherers, so busily hunting and gathering in Europe as the ice retreated, were overrun by the Neolithic agriculturalists who, after domesticating crops and animals, could lead less haphazard lives. The answer, even if this gives the story’s plot away, is that they were not swamped by the invaders. Instead they gave up their former life-style, accepted the novelty, and became – well – modern. If that sounds a bizarre conclusion from a study of mitochondrial genes there is nothing for it but to read the book. It kept me amused right across the Atlantic and, as I say, made me deeply envious of Professor Sykes’s trade.

Anthony Smith