Tracing trickery

Daughter of a man who faked safety results for an early contraceptive delves into his tangled life of deception.

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At one time, when a woman wondered whether she was pregnant, she could ask a toad.

Testing labs kept female toads, or frogs, ready to go to work as living pregnancy tests. Injected with urine from a pregnant woman, the amphibians would respond by laying eggs. Alternatively, no toad eggs meant no pregnancy (probably).

It sounds archaic compared with today’s DIY tests, but that’s how things were done in many countries, New Zealand included, into the 1960s.

Given the challenge of maintaining a steady supply of toads, German pharmaceutical company Schering AG was on toa winner when it came up with amore convenient test. Called Primodos, it used the same hormonesas the contraceptive pill, in much higher doses. Introduced to the UK in 1959, sales were boosted by this fine example of the slogan writer's art: “A toad is slow to let you know.”

Which brings us to the subject of this book: the title's absent scientist.

In the late 1960s, “Dr” (the quotation marks will be explained) Michael Briggs was a world authority on the pill and research director at Schering’s UK arm. He defended Primodos against claims that it caused birth defects and miscarriages. Though his exact role remains unclear, he was later accused of engineering the collapse ofa court case against the drug company.