Malcom Gladwell: John Rock’s Error

Now this was a fascinating story!  I don’t even know what insight to draw from this story. Mostly it’s just fascinating and I think more people should know about this stuff.  It’s the story of the Pill, women’s birth control.  This story has it all – science, fiction, politics, and betrayal.  As with Gladwell’s other articles, this weaves together several plot lines: of the Pill inventor, John Rock, the religious perspective (of the inventor and the Pope), the science of menstruation, and cancer.  Trying to summarize this succinctly will be a challenge, but here it goes.

John Rock was a devout Catholic and wanted to help people utilize the rhythm method, a natural form of birth control condoned by the church.  His solution was a “natural” one, the use of natural hormones in a pill that allowed for predictable periods of fertility.  Somehow he and his coworkers decided on a 4 week cycle.  This is curious because it raises the question of how frequent menstruation is naturally.  An academic spent a few years studying the Dogon people of Mali, in Africa who were determined to be, for all practical purposes, unchanged by the modernization of the rest of the world.  Women from this culture rarely menstruated as they spent most of their time either pregnant or breast feeding (which inhibits menstruation).  To cut to the chase, The Dogon women averaged one period per year until age 35, then four per year until menopause for a lifetime total of about 100 menstruations.  This is roughly 25% of the average contemporary Western women who menstruates some 350 to 400 times per year!

Ok, enough about menstruation.  Why does this matter you ask – cancer.  Every period corresponds to the production of huge numbers of cells.  More cell growth and production means more chances for cells to wrong.  American women are six times more likely to have breast cancer than corresponding Japanese women.  Why?  The fact that Japanese women started menstruation two years later (16 years old rather than 14) accounts for 40% of the difference.  Throw in higher weight at menopause and lower estrogen production (which could be due to their lower fat diet) and there is no difference.  Fortunately researchers are working on other forms of birth control that work to reduce lifetime menstruations. 

To finish the story is the perfect twist, only possible in real life: that John Rock, the devout Catholic, questions his faith as the Church bans all forms of oral contraceptive.  After working so hard to help humanity in a accordance with his Catholic religious beliefs, the rules change and deem what he created against the rules.  Did he leave the Church, or did the Church leave him?  Question the status quo.  Follow your gut.  Make a difference!   

The book:  Malcom Gladwell's What the Dog Saw.