An early plastic IUD was moulded on cookie sheets in a kitchen oven
In the late 1950s, Dr Jack Lippes and plastics developer Paul Bronnenkant heated and shaped plastic on cookie sheets in Bronnenkant's kitchen. The result, the Lippes Loop, became one of the most popular early intrauterine devices. Today's T-shaped descendants fail in fewer than 1 in 100 users, far better than pills or condoms.
An IUD is a small T-shaped device placed in the uterus, a form of long-acting reversible contraception that lasts for years. There are two main families: hormonal devices releasing levonorgestrel, and copper ones. Both suit most women, including teenagers and those who have never been pregnant, and neither affects breastfeeding. By 2019 data, 19.4 percent of women of reproductive age worldwide relied on one. Both types fail under 1 percent of the time, against about 2 percent for perfectly used combined hormonal methods, around 13 percent for male condoms and 22 percent for fertility awareness. Fertility returns quickly after removal.
The two kinds behave differently. Hormonal IUDs often cut menstrual bleeding by up to 90 percent, though it may take six months. Copper IUDs avoid hormones but can raise bleeding by roughly half and worsen cramps. Placed within five days of unprotected sex, a copper device is the most effective emergency contraception, with only 0.1 percent becoming pregnant. Expulsion happens in 3 to 5 percent of users and perforation in about one in 1,000. The devices work mainly by stopping sperm reaching the egg.
The history is dramatic. Richard Richter of Waldenburg made the first device in 1909, a design crossing both vagina and uterus that caused frequent pelvic infection. Ernst Gräfenberg, the German doctor the G-spot is named after, built a ring of silver filaments; the Nazi regime suppressed his work, and in 1935 Margaret Sanger paid a ransom to free him, a Jewish physician, from a Berlin jail. He later practised in New York.
Bendable thermoplastics and a nylon removal string, both Lippes innovations, made devices easier to use. In the 1960s Howard Tatum chose the capital T shape to fit the uterine cavity and, with Chilean physician Jaime Zipper, found copper works as a spermicide. Hormonal devices followed; Mirena arrived in 1976. China used IUDs in its birth control drive, inserting them in 324 million women between 1980 and 2014, long favouring a steel ring with more complications.
Source: Intrauterine device
