This article is from WeChat public account:Lee’s Human Museum (museumofus), author: plum plum SMS, title figure from: vision China
Speaking of short-acting contraceptives, various popular science media have been very popular in recent years, and many sisters around me are eating. Since its inception in the 1960s, it has benefited more than 30% of young women of childbearing age worldwide, freeing them from unwanted pregnancies, being more free to be close to their partners, and enjoying the freedom of work, travel and study.
However, when I was preparing lessons for the birth control pills, I found such a past. In the general information, it will not even appear, or at most one footnote.
However, it is a very dazzling epitome of modern pharmaceuticals.
The story begins with a plant.
Figure | Time
In the tropical rainforest of southern Mexico, a species called Mexican yam (Dioscorea mexicana) plants.
It has a heart-shaped blade, a curved and slender stem; the most conspicuous is the massive, massive, massive root of the football. It is a close relative of yam, but it is not good at all.
This plant used to be an important cash crop in Mexico. Because of the long distances in the mountains, mining depends almost on the farmers in the local mountains. What they have to do is to enter the poisonous, sultry and humid jungle every day, and carefully dig the roots out and cut them into pieces. (Otherwise it will soon be bad), and in the hands of the middlemen before the sun sets, in exchange for meager income.
1kg of dried yam, in the 1960s, was able to sell 0.5 Mexican pesos (about 2 cents).
Dip in the ground | TopTropical
Mexican yam is the raw material for the short-acting contraceptive (eg, Youssing, Marvelon). This close relative of the yam family and yam from the tropical rain forest constitutes the daily life of many women of childbearing age in the world.
In the 1950s, American scientist Russell Marker discovered that diosgenin(norethynodrel, norgestrel); then, Gregory Pincus proves that progesterone is effective for contraception. This is a hugeBusiness opportunities, after all, progesterone can only be extracted from animals before the synthesis method was invented, which is very expensive. The emergence of Mexican yam has reduced the price of progesterone to one-thousandth of the original, and the commercialization of contraceptives has become possible.
Mexico farmers are carrying huge yams | References 3
In fact, many other steroid drugs produced by (eg cortisone) also depend on this plant. In the 1960s, Mexico produced 80% of the world’s yam. For farmers in Oaxaca, this is almost their only source of income.
250kg of yam can purify 1kg of steroids, while just 1 gram of progesterone can bring a $40 profit to the drugmaker.
From the farmers who dig the yam to the birth control pills, the difference is 8,000 times.
Farmers take huge yam roots | References 3
The huge profits were partly taken by local Mexican middlemen. These people are almost in control of the yam trade in specific areas, and most farmers must rely on them. There are even some farmers who can’t get the money from the middlemen and can only get some basic daily necessities.