Teenagers' Use Of Contraception Urged by Doctor

A Harvard nutritionist has written a letter to the British Medical Journal advocating that intra-uterine contraceptive devices--IUD--be fitted for young girls.

Dr. Michael C. Latham, research fellow in Nutrition in the School of Public Health, said in his letter that IUD would solve the problems of unwanted pregnancies and the "population explosion," but he stressed that the device must be perfected before it can be administered to young girls.

"I don't suggest that girls be fitted with IUD now in January 1966," Latham said last night, "but I look forward after its perfection to a utopia of no unwanted births."

Latham admitted that the moral consequences of fitting the IUD on a national basis is still open to question but he doubted that there would be a serious increase in promiscuity or venereal disease.

Latham said that he became interested in IUD during his work with underdeveloped peoples in Africa. "I realize that it was no use to solve the nutritional problems in these countries without solving the problem of an unchecked population increase."

Latham also saw a use for IUD in the slums and ghettos of developed countries like the U.S. and England, and he suggested that such application be a matter of national policy. The government, he said, could administer IUD through special birth control clinics or city hospitals.

IUD is being tested now on adult women in such clinics in New York City, he said, as well as in Egypt, India, and Puerto Rico.