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The Accidental Pill: How Chemists Invented Progesterone by Mistake
The Accidental Pill: How Chemists Invented Progesterone by Mistake
Fear and astonishment collide: four Berlin chemists in 1938 set out to make oral testosterone and instead created the first synthetic oral progestin that rewrote hormonal medicine for sixty-one years - yet its original name, ethisterone, is almost forgotten. How did a molecule meant to be an androgen survive digestion only to bind progesterone receptors at 44% potency, and what did that compromise mean for patients?
In this episode, we tell the story of the Schering AG team and the chain of events from lab accident to market…
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