First Test-Tube Baby Born

In July 1978, Louise Brown was born at Oldham General Hospital in northern England, the first human being conceived through in vitro fertilisation (IVF). Her birth, widely reported as the arrival of the first "test-tube baby," showed that a human egg could be fertilised outside the body and develop into a healthy child. It opened the way for a branch of medicine that has since helped millions of people have children.

The groundwork was laid over decades. Researchers had achieved IVF in animals, notably rabbits, in the 1950s. In the 1960s the physiologist Robert Edwards, based at Cambridge, began working on human eggs and the conditions needed to fertilise them in the laboratory. He was later joined by Patrick Steptoe, a gynaecologist at Oldham who had pioneered laparoscopy, a keyhole technique that let doctors retrieve eggs with relatively little surgery. Their work was controversial. It drew criticism from some religious leaders, scientists and ethicists, and they struggled to secure funding, partly relying on private support after the Medical Research Council declined to back them.

Louise's mother, Lesley Brown, had blocked fallopian tubes and had been unable to conceive for years. Steptoe retrieved an egg, which Edwards fertilised with her husband John Brown's sperm in the laboratory. The resulting embryo was then transferred to her uterus, and the pregnancy proceeded to a caesarean delivery. Louise was born in late July 1978. Earlier attempts by the team had ended in failed or lost pregnancies, so the success came after considerable trial and error. Press interest was intense, and the family faced a great deal of public attention.

The consequences were far-reaching. Within a few years, clinics opened in other countries, and the first IVF births followed in places such as Australia and the United States. The technique was refined with hormone stimulation to produce multiple eggs, embryo freezing, and later methods such as intracytoplasmic sperm injection, which addressed some forms of male infertility. Today IVF is a routine part of reproductive medicine, and estimates of the number of people born through it run into the millions worldwide.

The birth also prompted lasting debates about the status of embryos, the regulation of fertility treatment and the possibilities of genetic screening. In Britain, these questions contributed to the creation of a legal framework, including the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act and a regulatory authority. Edwards received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2010; Steptoe had died in 1988 and could not share the honour, as the prize is not awarded posthumously.