Worldwide Trends in Funding For Contraceptive Research and Evaluation

In an article on prospects for improved contraception that appeared in these pages five years ago, we and our coauthors noted that major new breakthroughs in contraceptive development were not likely without substantially increased long-term funding, improved coordination and planning by donors and research programs, more reasonable requirements by regulatory agencies and more effective harnessing of the potential of industry.I Funding, as we will show, has since declined in constant dollars for reproductive and contraceptive research and for the evaluation of long-term contraceptive safety; there has been a general increase in coordination and planning among publicly supported programs, as well as between these programs and private industry. There has been no substantial relaxation of regulatory requirements; and little has been done to make contraceptive research and development (R&D) more attractive to industry. In the meanwhile, a factor that has become more salient than it was five years ago-the threat of liability suits and the difficulty in obtaining product liability insurance-is increasingly restricting clinical research into new methods by both private industry and publicly supported research groups. Despite the continued financial and administrative roadblocks placed in the way of research in this area,