On December 14, 1995, the first public presentation of results of the Transnational Case-Control Study of Oral Contraceptives and the Health of Young Women was made at the winter meeting of the British Pharmacological Society at Brighton. Four weeks later, those results and further analyses were published in the British Medical Journal. There has been much debate about them in Europe and elsewhere. I feel privileged to have been invited to write a Leading Article about the safety of combined oral contraceptives in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. These are personal opinions about the meaning of all the recent pharmacoepidemiological findings. With an historical context as the background I have added my personal reflections as a scientist and a public health doctor. These views do not necessarily reflect the views of my co-investigators.