On July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown was born in the United Kingdom and her birth quickly caught the media’s attention, as she was the world’s first “test tube baby.”
In other words, Brown was the first baby born through in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Her mother Leslie and father Peter suffered from infertility due to Leslie’s blocked fallopian tubes, according to History.com.
In November 1977, Leslie underwent an experimental IVF procedure. A mature egg was taken from one of her ovaries and combined in a laboratory dish with one of Peter’s sperm to form an embryo, per the source.
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A few days later, the embryo was implanted into Leslie’s uterus, and nine months later, their daughter was brought into the world through Cesarean section.
This successful IVF treatment was made possible by Robert Edwards, a British scientist, and Patrick Steptoe, a gynecologist. Steptoe was the one who delivered Brown at Olham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England, and gave her the middle name Joy, according to Brown’s website.
At the time, Brown’s birth was made very public, a decision many criticized. However, Brown herself has defended her parents and the publicity that came from her scientific birth.
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“My parents didn’t have a choice about making it public,” Louise previously told Time. “If they didn’t, they would have had people asking ‘Why can’t we see her? What’s wrong with her?'”
She shared that Steptoe and Edwards needed the success of her birth to be made public.
“Had there been anything at all wrong with me, it would have been the end of IVF,” she said.
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Following the birth of Louise, the Browns had a second daughter named Natalie by means of IVF.
When they grew older, Louise and Natalie both gave birth to children of their own by natural means.
After the success of Brown’s birth, IVF slowly started to grow. In the United States, the first IVF baby was born in 1981, according to Time.
Today, there have been over 6 million babies born through IVF, according to the Science Museum.
In the United States, the average cycle costs around $15,000 to $30,000 per cycle, according to Forbes.
The success rate varies greatly dependent on the age of the woman undergoing the procedure. For women younger than 35 and younger, the success rate on the first try is 55.1%, according to a 2020 CDC report. As a woman gets older, the rate of success begins to drop.
Brown is still very vocal about being born through IVF today. She makes many public speeches telling her story, and penned an autobiography called “Louise Brown: My Life as the World’s First Test-Tube Baby.”
