The sole remaining U.S. firm was Ortho Pharmaceutical Corporation (a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson); the three European firms were Organon International, Schering AG, and Roussel-Uclaf (a subsidiary of Hoechst Pharmaceuticals). The U.S. firms that for all practical purposes had abandoned significant efforts on new contraceptive research as of the mid-1980s included: Syntex Laboratories; G.D. Searle and Company; Parke-Davis and Company; Merck Sharp and Dohme Company; the Upjohn Company; Mead Johnson; Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories; and Eli Lilly and Company (Djerassi 1989; NRC/IOM 1990).

The committee that generated the report (National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine. Developing New Contraceptives: Obstacles and Opportunities. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. 1990) included physicians; public health, policy, and legal experts; pharmaceutical company executives; reproductive biologists; economists; and demographers.

Public sector participants came from WHO's Special Programme in Human Reproduction and Training, the Population Council's Center for Biomedical Research, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Contraceptive Research and Development Program (CONRAD), the Center for Population Research of the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Development of the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH). The private sector was represented by eight firms: Finishing Enterprises, Ortho Pharmaceutical Corporation (Johnson and Johnson), and Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, from the United States; Gedeon Richter, Organon, Pharmacia-Leiras, and Schering AG, from Europe; and Silesia, from Brazil.