"During the 1950s, in the early days of hormonal contraceptive research, pellets of progesterone were inserted under the skin of rabbits to prevent them from conceiving (Asbell, 1995). Forty years later, a variation on those experiments became an approved form of birth control in the U.S. ⎯Norplant. But just as with DMPA, American women had to wait longer than their sisters around the world to have access to this very effective method (Asbell, 1995). Developed by the Population Council and distributed in the U.S. by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, Norplant was approved by the WHO in 1984, after nearly 20 years of research and clinical trials. WHO heralded Norplant as an “effective and reversible long-term method of fertility regulation ⎯particularly advantageous to women who wish an extended period of contraceptive protection” (Population Council, 1990).Six years later, the FDA approved Norplant for use in the U.S. By then it had been used by a half-million women in 17 countries where it had received regulatory approval (Grimes, 2000). By July 1994, nearly a million women in the United States had chosen to use Norplant implants (Lewin, 1994)."