Excerpt:
Am I pregnant? The answer to this age-old question once demanded a combination of guesswork, intuition, and time. In 1978, however, the long wait to know for sure became a thing of the past. Trumpeted by advertisements as “a private little revolution,” the first home pregnancy tests started appearing on drug store shelves that year. A quarter of a century later, innovations promise to make even the telltale thin blue line obsolete. This web site looks at the history of the home pregnancy test—one of the most ubiquitous home healthcare products in America—and examines its place in our culture.
The home pregnancy test works by identifying the presence of the “pregnancy hormone,” human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), in urine. Research that led to a sensitive, accurate test for hCG was done by scientists in the Reproductive Research Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at NIH.
Annotation:
A Thin Blue Line: The History of the Pregnancy Test Kit, an online exhibit at the National Institutes of Health, explores the history of the pregnancy test kit from the laboratory to the digital age and invites women to share their personal stories through an online survey. In addition to the scientific background on the research that led to the development of the test, it also includes an historical timeline of pregnancy testing, as well as early advertisements for the test and portrayals of the test in television. There are excerpts from oral histories and interviews with Judith Vaitukaitis, M.D. and Glenn Braunstein, M.D., who in the early 1970’s collaborated on the experiments that led to the sensitive assay for hCG, the “pregnancy hormone.” The site is an interesting introduction to a modern technology that is so widespread and easily accessible as to be taken for granted.
