"When Searle notified the FDA in 1959 that it wished to submit a supplemental application for Enovid to expand the drug’s labeling indications to include use as an oral contraceptive, it rapidly became clear that the American federal government wanted little to do with the process and saw it as no more than routine bureaucratic process of new drug review and approval at the FDA. As Critchlow and Watkins have discussed in great detail, there mere mention of contraception as a credible component of overseas aid had drawn the opposition of American Catholic bishops. Moreover, with the 1960 presidential election looming, neither President Eisenhower nor the Catholic presidential candidate, John Kennedy, wanted to make an issue out of contraception and the pending approval of the contraceptive pill. In Britain, the central government also vigorously refused to initiate debate over the pill. The British Ministry of Health had stated as early as 1955 that it did not want any involvement with contraceptive testing and approval. Again, in 1956, when news emerged of the possible availability of a contraceptive pill in the United States, the Medical Research Council, the main British government body responsible for clinical trials since 1919, refused to sponsor any monitoring of the new drug on the grounds that it was too politically and morally sensitive an issue for them to handle."