Nand Peeters

Ferdinand "Nand" Peeters (born October 13, 1918 in Mechelen ; † December 27, 1998 in Turnhout ) was a Belgian ( Flemish ) gynecologist and scientist who played a key role in the development of "Anovlar". Anovlar was the first birth control pill marketed outside the United States (1961) that had acceptable side effects and was used worldwide.

In the original composition recommended by him, Anovlar was produced by Schering AG from its introduction until 1986 , although from 1964 variants with lower hormone levels came onto the market - some of them under the name "Anovlar".

In addition, Nand Peeters made an important contribution to the treatment of Rhesus incompatibility .

Life

Nand Peeters was born the son of Désiré Peeters, a surgeon who had founded his own clinic in Mechelen. Nand attended the Sint-Rombouts-Mittelschule there and then studied medicine at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven . However, he completed his training as a specialist in gynecology in a maternity hospital in Bruges .

In 1945 he married Paula Langbeen, with whom he had six children, and who was his accountant all his life - Peeters himself detested any administrative work.

In 1946 he established himself as a gynecologist in Turnhout. Until then, Turnhout had no gynecologist, although it was the largest city in the northern Kempen with 32,000 inhabitants . Before he started his practice, the perinatal death rate in Turnhout was about 10 to 12 percent; in his first year he managed to reduce it to two cases of about 500 deliveries.

In 1951 he was appointed director of the Maria Gabriël maternity hospital and the gynecological department of the Sankt Elisabeth hospital. Under his leadership, this department became one of the best in the whole country, as demonstrated by the statistical results he presented at a conference at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven . He acquired the most advanced technology, conducted innovative research, stimulated young and promising doctors he hired to research, and introduced new techniques such as sonography . In 1952, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven hired him as a teacher of trainee doctors. This position was terminated in 1963 for reasons that have not yet been clarified. As recently as 2011, the university claimed that his files, which could explain these reasons, were "difficult to find".

Also in Turnhout, he founded the Sankt Elisabeth Nursing School in 1953, where he taught on a voluntary basis. He was a demanding lecturer and examiner, but gave the nurses he trained a lot of responsibility.

In 1986 he retired. A cerebral hemorrhage in 1988 ended his professional life because he was no longer able to communicate. He lived another ten years until December 27, 1998.

gynecologist

Professionally, Peeters was primarily a gynecologist who has accompanied a large number of births. So he did not count the deliveries he had accompanied any longer than they exceeded 30,000. His goal has always been to ensure the well-being of his patients, whose stories about him express their respect for and trust in Peeters.

He devoted himself to research in this area, taught, but also gave non-academic lectures and published for both the professional world and the general public. He did this because he hoped to improve the well-being of his patients as well as pregnant and marriageable women. Significantly, the first problem he dealt with during his training in Bruges was the management of pain during delivery.

The development of Anovlar

In the 1950s, Peeters paid close attention to the development of various hormones and their uses. He was familiar with Gregory Pincus ' work and the dubious side effects of his drug "Enovid", which was originally prescribed as a medicine for menstrual cramps from 1957 . He also knew that Schering AG had developed a number of hormones. When Jean Frenay, a representative at Schering, told him that his company had combined two of them into the experimental preparation SH-513 (2 mg noresthisterone acetate and 0.01 mg ethinylestradiol ), Peeters asked him for a sufficient amount of SH-513 to include the preparation to test his patients. In a letter to Schering, Frenay wrote that Peeters “ thinks primarily of ovulation inhibition in terms of contraception ”. This means that the idea of ​​developing SH-513 as a birth control pill came from Peeters and not from Schering AG. The chief gynecologist at Schering AG initially wanted Peeters to develop SH-513 as a drug for menstrual cramps. In the end, however, Schering AG allowed Peeters to develop the SH-513 as a birth control pill.

For his examination, Peeters chose patients for whom childbirth would have been life-threatening or who were in danger of giving birth to a dead child, for example because of Rhesus incompatibility . He specifically told them that he was in the process of developing a new drug and got their consent to look into it on them. The results of his very limited study, in which only 50 married and fertile women participated, showed that a dose of 3 to 4 mg noresthisterone acetate and “at least” 0.05 mg ethinylestradiol was effective and had few side effects. Following his recommendation, Schering AG produced its SH-639 preparation with precisely this dose and initiated large-scale studies in Germany, Australia, Japan and the United States, in which 14,038 menstrual cycles were observed in 2,433 women. The results were clear and led to the recommendation SH-639 as a hormonal contraceptive.

But Schering AG hesitated to introduce the drug in Germany because it feared it would evoke memories of the eugenics of National Socialism . During the Nazi era, Schering AG did not stop its examinations and, for example, made sex hormones available to Carl Clauberg , who, as an SS doctor, carried out forced sterilization of hundreds of female concentration camp inmates .

The pill was first introduced in Australia under the name "Anovlar"; the name, invented by the Australian representative of Schering AG Alexander Hart, should mean 'without ovulation'. The following list shows the dates of its introduction in some countries:

• Australia: February 1961
• Germany: June 1961
• Switzerland: October 1961
• Austria: June 1962
• France: February 1964
• Spain: June 1964
• Belgium: March 1965
• Italy: late 1960s
• Japan: early 1970s, only on “medical indication”; June 1999 approved as a contraceptive

Peeters' morals on the pill

Peeters took pride in his contribution to the development of the birth control pill and never agreed with the Catholic Church to which he belonged and their radical opposition to contraception on this point. When asked for a contribution about him in a Dutch version of Who's Who , he cited only one of his publications: Peeters 1970. It was his Dutch adaptation of a German work on hormone treatment and intended for doctors. He wanted doctors to keep using hormones, including Anovlar, which he discussed in his book without mentioning his role in its development. He continued his research, not only with Anovlar, but also with other drugs such as Eugynon ( see also Aconcen ) and Sequilar. He only published his research results in specialist journals.

What is more important is that he prescribed the pill unreservedly if he saw his patient's health as threatened. This could be due to too many pregnancies, which were often life-threatening (ten or twelve children were not uncommon in the Kempen in the 1960s), a late pregnancy or a stillbirth, for example due to Rh incompatibility. He also clearly defended the right of a married couple to decide for themselves how many children they would like to have: “You and your husband decide how many children you want,” he said to a patient, “and the Pope has nothing to do with it. "

Even so, Peeters remained a basically conservative Catholic who firmly opposed the loose morals (largely attributable to the pill) of the sexual revolution . One of his sons claims that this rejection was also a reason why Peeters remained silent about Anovlar because it was his indirect contribution to the sexual revolution. Like his church, he was of the opinion that sexual intercourse should only take place within marriage.

Reputation in public

The results of Peeters' research were published as Peeters F., M. Van Roy & R. Oeyen in 1960. Van Roy was Peeters' clinical biologist, Oeyen his assistant. There were more than 50,000 requests for offprints from around the world, especially after the introduction of Anovlar.

Peeters spoke at the “Third World Congress of Gynecology and Obstetrics” in Vienna in September 1961 and at the 60th Congress of the Northwest German Society for Gynecology and Obstetrics (Kiel 1961). He was one of the speakers at the “Second Fertility Congress” in Brussels, where he met with Eleanor Mears, who co-authored a very positive report in the prestigious British Medical Journal .

His reputation was very important in the early 1960s.

But in his own country, Peeters ran into problems: until 1973, publications on contraception ran the risk of violating Belgian legislation, which they considered "obscene". In Belgium, Peeters therefore had to remain silent about his work. For example, a meeting of the Flemish Society for Gynecology and Obstetrics in Turnhout, to which Peeters invited in May 1960, was dedicated to "ovulation suppressors". In the minutes, however, the words birth control and contraception are missing , which would probably have led to the conference being considered obscene.

In addition, Belgium was a very Catholic country, and at that time the encyclical Casti connubii , which conveyed the Church's position on hormonal contraception, was very clear: the latter was forbidden. Peeters' job was in the hands of the Turnhout City Council, which was completely ruled by the Christian People's Party. As long as the church prohibited artificial contraception, Peeters was in danger of losing his job.

Since October 1958, John XXIII. Pope and aggiornamento (adaptation to modern conditions) seemed possible, even from the point of view of the Church on contraception. Or so Nand Peeters thought. On May 1, 1963, he had a short private audience with John XXIII. He later stated that he had the impression "that the Pope gave props to the pill". In any case, in 1963 he set up a “Pontifical Study Commission on Issues of Population Growth and Birth Control”, which carried out its work during the pontificate of Paul VI. continued, albeit in a greatly expanded composition. In 1964 Paul VI appointed the 1st European Congress of Catholic Doctors (Malta, 1964), which was almost exclusively devoted to birth control. One of the speakers was Ferdinand Peeters.

When Paul VI. In 1968, in his encyclical Humanae Vitae, the Church confirmed the radical rejection of any form of contraception using "artificial means", Peeters was very disappointed. Alluding to the last encyclical of Pope John XXIII, Pacem in terris , he once said angrily, “We go to the Pope and tell him to write an encyclical Pacem in utero (peace in the womb).” But as a staunch Catholic he could he is not responsible to his conscience to publicly distance himself from the teaching of the church.

The Catholic Church, as well as the political situation in Turnhout, left him no choice: he had to remain silent about the development of Anovlar. He did it so successfully that his children knew only vaguely that he had something to do with it. They only found out in 1995 that he was the one who had developed Anovlar. In that year, ignorant of Peeters' health, asked him for help with a contribution to the catalog (Staupe & Vieth 1996) of the exhibition Die Pille: From lust and love , organized by the German Hygiene Museum .

As a result, his name was forgotten. When he died, only the Turnhout press reported of his death.

Other research

In 1964, Ortho Pharmaceutical (now Johnson & Johnson ) asked Peeters to participate in a study of a variant of RhoGAM, the company's anti-D immunoglobulin. Peeters agreed, and took the lead of a small group of doctors and a large group of midwives whom he advised of the problem of rhesus incompatibility. The preparation was tested on more than 700 women and the result was extremely good: not a single case of RH disease was reported, which led one of his employees to say that thanks to this study, the Kempen were the first to be rid of RH disease Region of the world. When presenting this result at a Berlin conference attended by more than 2,500 gynecologists and paediatricians, Peeters attributed this success to the midwives, maternity homes, and gynecological departments involved in the examination and failed to publish the result. His lectures and refresher courses for doctors kept him too busy.

Non-medical activities

When he was still a student, and for some time afterwards, Peeters was a prominent leader in a Catholic youth movement, the "Katholieke Studenten Actie" (KSA). In 1944 he wrote a brochure for the KSA, Het groot avontuur in KSA-Jong-Vlaanderen , and in the time before his wedding he could not be reached until the day before the ceremony because he was on an inspection tour of the KSA camps, along with another head of KSA, Pieter De Somer , who also became a noted medical researcher.

After Jozef Simons' death in 1948, Peeters succeeded him as chairman of the Turnhout department of a Flemish cultural association, the “Davidsfonds”, and remained so until 1965, and in 1967 he was a co-founder of the Kempen department of the “Orde van den Prince” other cultural association.

Varia

• In 1970, then Minister of Culture Frans Van Mechelen sent one of his employees to Peeters with the request to apply for the office of Mayor of Turnhouts as a candidate for the Christian People's Party. Peeters refused, because in his opinion a doctor should be available to everyone and not be committed to any party.
• On October 23, 1985, Pope John Paul II awarded him the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Cross of Honor for his services to education.
• On March 31, 2014, the Turnhout city council decided to name a planned street “Dokter Nand Peetersstraat”. The road was completed in 2016; the first residents moved in on May 31st.
• In early 2014, Radio 1 (Flanders) organized an opinion poll to find out which Belgian invention listeners thought was the best of all time. As soon as "Doctor Peeters' Pill" was nominated, it received massive support, almost exclusively from women. In the last broadcast, on April 4, 2014, the pill got 38% of the vote and left the saxophone , the Mercator projection , the Belgian praline and JPEG far behind.
• On June 12, 2017, the Belgian Post bpost published a first day paper entitled “Medische doorbraken / Avancées médicales” (Medical Breakthroughs), which contained a stamp in honor of Nand Peeters. It shows his picture and a picture of the original pack of Anovlar.

literature

Unless otherwise stated, specifically in individual references, the information in this article is based on Van den Broeck 2014. German sources are Albach 1993 [especially pp. 922–999, "Case F: The development of the" pill "(Oral Contraceptives)"] and Win 1996; English sources are Van den Broeck, Janssens & Defoort 2012 (in a peer-reviewed journal) and Hope 2010.

All of the websites mentioned in this article were accessed in the second half of 2014.

• Albach, Horst 1993 Culture and Technical Innovation: A Cross-Cultural Analysis and Policy Recommendations Research Report 9 / Academy of Sciences in Berlin (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter) ISBN 3-11-013947-2
• Bastian, Till 1995 Terrible Doctors: Medical Crimes in the Third Reich . (Munich: CH Beck, Beck'-sche Reihe 1113; 3rd edition 2001, ISBN 3-406-44800-3 )
• Hope, Alan 2010 "The little pill that could" in Flanders Today May 24, 2010 (also available here )
• Mears, Eleanor & Ellen CG Grant 1962 "" Anovlar "as an Oral Contraceptive" in British Medical Journal , July 14: 75-79
• Peeters, Nand 1944 Het groot avontuur in KSA-Jong-Vlaanderen (sine loco: [KSA] Dienst voor Openluchtleven: Afdeeling Spelen)
• Peeters, Nand 1970 Oestrogens en gestagenen: De treatment met oestrogenen en gestagenen in de dagelijkse Praktijk (Antwerp: Standaard)
• Peeters F., M. Van Roy & R. Oeyen 1960 "Ovulation Suppression by Progestagens" in Obstetrics and Gynecology 20 (12): 1306-1314
• Sieg, Sabine 1996 “« Anovlar »- the first European pill: On the history of a drug” in Staupe & Vieth 1996: 131–144
• Staupe, Gisela, & Lisa Vieth, ed. 1996 The pill: From lust and from love (Berlin: Rowohlt) ISBN 3-87134-257-2
• Van den Broeck, Karl 2014 The real vader van de pil: Het verhaal van de man die de vrouw bevrijdde (Antwerp: Bezige Bij) ISBN 978-90-8542-626-4 [Now (October 2018) also in English: Doctor Ferdinand Peeters: The Real Father of the Pill Oud-Turnhout (Belgium) & 's-Hertogenbosch (Netherlands): Gompel & Svacina bvba. ( ISBN 978 94 6371 054 1 )]
• Van den Broeck, K., D. Janssens & P. ​​Defoort 2012 "A forgotten founding father of the Pill: Ferdinand Peeters, MD" in The European Journal of Contraception & Reproductive Health Care 17: 321–328 (October 2018 also available here )
• Wlasich, Gert J. 2011 Schering AG in the time of National Socialism: Contributions to corporate culture in a Berlin corporation (Berlin: Kalwang & Eis) ISBN 978-3-9814203-1-9

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Albach 1997: 939.
2. ↑ Verslag over het Bestuur en de Toestand der Zaken van de Stad Turnhout… June 7, 1948 in the Turnhouter Stadtarchiv, here  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. retrievable.  
3. ↑ Van den Broeck 2014: 61.
4. ↑ In quotation marks “moeilijk te vinden” in the original Dutch text in Van den Broeck 2014: 157.
5. ↑ Van den Broeck 2014: 65.
6. ↑ In De pil van dokter Peeters , a documentary broadcast by Canvas on March 8, 2012 , and in Van den Broeck 2014: 131-145. (Van den Broeck (2014: 130) describes his interviews with the first patients who volunteered for Peeters' research that would lead to the development of Anovlar as the most profound of his entire 25-year journalism career).
7. ^ Letter of May 5, 1959, quoted in Van den Broeck, Janssens & Defoort 2012: 322.
8. ^ Van den Broeck, Janssens & Defoort 2012: 323.
9. ↑ Bastian 1995: 86. - On the relationship between Schering AG and National Socialism, cf. Wlasich 2001.
10. ^ Van den Broeck, Janssen & Defoort 2012: 324.
11. ↑ From Albach 1997: 939.
12. ↑ In the Dutch original text (in Van den Broeck 2014: 144-145): "Het zijn u en uw man die beslissen over het aantal kinderen en daar heeft de paus niets mee te maken."
13. ↑ Van den Broeck 2014: 103.
14. ↑ Van den Broeck 2014: 91.
15. ↑ From the abstract (translated): “It looks like this is a very acceptable form of contraception. The preparation was tolerated well and there were few side effects. ... The mastery of the monthly cycle was exceptionally good. As a result of this, the Council for the Investigation of Fertility Control has recommended the use of Anovlar in Family Planning Association clinics as an alternative contraceptive. "
16. ↑ Literal translation of the Dutch original text "dat de paus zijn steun verleende aan de pil" in Van den Broeck 2014: 165.
17. ↑ Van den Broeck 2014: 94-95.
18. ↑ This information (from Van den Broeck 2014: 208-209) is based on the memories of an employee who dates this conference (about which he gives more details) to 1967.
19. ↑ cf. this page of the website of the Order.
20. ↑ Het Laatste Nieuws . April 2, 2014.
21. ^ So this page ( memento of October 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) of the website of the project developer.
22. ↑ JPEG was considered a Belgian invention because it was based on the research of Belgian mathematician Ingrid Daubechies .
23. ↑ This page of the bpost website (accessed on June 13, 2017).
24. ↑ This article always refers to the original Dutch version.