Djerassi sees shift in
reproductive roles
BY DAWN LEVY
On Oct. 15, 1951, Carl
Djerassi led a small team of Syntex researchers in Mexico
City in the first synthesis of a steroid oral
contraceptive, an achievement that earned him the 1973
National Medal of Science. Now, as the Pill nears age 50,
the Stanford chemist turns his gaze from the achievement
that spawned the sexual revolution and casts a wary eye
toward futuristic technologies that promise a
reproductive revolution.
"With continuous
improvements in assisted reproductive technologies, we
are seeing a gradual separation of sex and fertilization,
with sex taking place 'in bed' and fertilization under
the microscope," Djerassi told an audience Feb. 19
at the meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. "This
separation is shifting the balance of reproductive power
into the domain of women."
In a talk titled
"Contraception vs. Conception -- A Millennial
Prognosis," Djerassi discussed reproductive options
for women who delay childbearing until their late 30s or
early 40s. By the time a woman reaches age 35, 90 percent
of her eggs are gone. Chances of conception also drop if
the father of the child-to-be has a low sperm count.
Fertilization via normal intercourse requires tens of
millions of sperm, so even a man ejaculating 3 million
sperm may be functionally infertile.
Whereas in vitro
fertilization has been used since 1977 to expose a
woman's egg to millions of sperm under the microscope, a
1992 technique addresses sex and the single sperm.
Practitioners of the technique, called intracytoplasmic
sperm injection (ICSI) and first developed in Belgium,
inject a single sperm into an egg to force its
fertilization. Djerassi called ICSI "arguably the
most important development in reproductive biology during
the past 10 years."
In the future, Djerassi
says, young women may have their eggs removed and stored,
undergo voluntary sterilization to enjoy sex without fear
of pregnancy, and have their eggs thawed out when they
are ready for motherhood.
Sounds like science
fiction? It's not, Djerassi says. Assisted reproductive
technologies like ICSI are raising thorny regulatory
issues. For now, the contraceptive industry is the domain
of small businesses. "These are largely high-tech
(reproductively speaking) mom and pop shops -- garage
companies if you will -- that are not subject to
regulatory controls," Djerassi said. "They
don't sell drugs. They sell the application of
technologies. So they're willing to take risks that a
pharmaceutical company wouldn't be willing to take."
And of course there are
ethical dilemmas: Is donor consent required for the
single sperm required for the ICSI procedure? Will the
technology open the door for individuals to exercise
their own personal form of eugenics? How will technology
affect male-female relations?
"In the long run,
these technologies open up the roles of both men and
women," said Djerassi, who described nontraditional
family units made possible by assisted reproduction. Two
women may want to be parents of a child, for instance.
"In the short term, however, these technologies are
threatening to both men and women."
Historically, men have
initiated sex and been in charge of reproduction. Now,
with technology reducing the measure of a man to his
seed, "the pendulum of power that swings back and
forth between Amazons and harem keepers -- two extremes
-- is swinging toward female power," Djerassi said.
"Power rests on equality of social function. But
before we reach that I think we're going to go through a
lot of turmoil."
This was the subject of a
Feb. 11 symposium called "Sex Wars," in which
he was one of the principal speakers at the Institute for
Contemporary Arts in London.
Conception involves
extremely individual decisions, he said. "But these
should be decisions made by informed individuals."
In recent years, Djerassi
has taken a somewhat sneaky approach to informing the
public about science, including assisted reproductive
technologies. Writing novels and plays in a genre he
calls "science-in-fiction" -- not to be
confused with the often unrealistic portrayal of science
and scientists in science fiction -- Djerassi has been
doing his part to bridge the gap between scientific and
nonscientific cultures posited by C.P. Snow.
"I want to use the
stage for teaching, smuggling in basic science concepts
to which an ascientific or even antiscientific audience
would otherwise refuse to pay attention," Djerassi
said. "I take the information and say, 'Let me tell
you a story.'"
At the AAAS talk, Djerassi
read an excerpt from his first science-in-fiction play, An
Immaculate Misconception, which premiered in August
1998 in abbreviated form at the Edinburgh Fringe
Festival. The full version opened in 1999 in London, San
Francisco and Vienna, and the BBC is about to record a
radio adaptation for broadcast on its world service. The
play, which dramatizes the ethical implications of ICSI
to a nonscientific, theater-going public, features film
footage demonstrating the ICSI technique. Imperial
College Press of London will release An Immaculate
Misconception in spring, and a German translation is
forthcoming later this month.
How successful is
Djerassi's scientific smuggling? His science-in-fiction
novels now number five: Cantor's Dilemma, The Bourbaki
Gambit, Menachem's Seed, NO, and Marx, Deceased. His
most recent science-in-fiction play, Oxygen (by
Djerassi and Nobel Prize winner Roald Hoffmann), was
excerpted by New Scientist magazine in October
1999. A recent staged reading of the play by Djerassi and
Hoffmann at the Tricycle Theatre in London had such an
overflow audience that it attracted the attention of the
fire marshal.
Djerassi also uses
science-in-fiction to teach biomedical ethics at Stanford
University Medical School. Djerassi designed a
science-in-fiction exercise to assure anonymity in
exploring issues that are frequently not raised in an
academic environment due to embarrassment or fear of
retribution. Using a Japanese literary form called a
renga -- linked verse that is composed by two or more
poets in alternating sequence -- he asked 14 graduate
students to compose a collaborative short story dealing
with an ethical dilemma. Nature published the
"science renga" -- the first piece of fiction
the journal had ever published -- on June 11, 1998. But
who scored the coveted first-author position? Djerassi
listed his 14 students alphabetically but made up a 15th,
listed in the footnotes as "deceased": Alfred
N. Aldston, Jr. -- an anagram for Leland Stanford, Jr.,
the namesake of Stanford University. "I felt it
appropriate to make him the senior author because he was
dead and he made it possible for so many people to
publish," Djerassi said. SR
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