The world's first 40-year-old test tube: how the public reacted to the breakthrough of IVF of the century



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Louise Brown, the world's first "test-tube baby", turns 40 on Wednesday, July 25

Her parents, the railroad worker John Brown and his wife Lesley, have been trying for nine years to conceive unsuccessfully to meet him. Oldham obstetrician, Dr. Patrick Steptoe and his research partner, Dr. Robert Edwards, physiologist at Cambridge in 1977.

Steptoe and Edwards were working with Jean Purdy in the experimental field of in vitro fertilization (IVF) ) and successfully implanted an embryo Mrs. Brown – from a petri dish, rather than a specimen – on November 10 of this year, making headlines around the world

Nine months later Late, a healthy little girl named Louise Joy Brown was born by planned Caesarean section at the Oldham and District General Hospital, weighing five pounds and 12 ounces.

Public reaction to this revolutionary fertility treatment and the "baby of the century" has been decidedly mixed, however.

Tabloid hacks questioned the advent of "Frankenbabies" and sent enough paparazzi to Oldham to provoke a bomb threat, causing the evacuation of the hospital.

Institutional corridors lined up with police officers when John Brown first arrived with his daughter

When the new family arrived in Bristol together, 100 journalists blocked the streets. The curious local children were also in force, including seven-year-old Wesley Mullinder, who would become a nightclub bouncer and Louise's husband, their marriage in 2004 assisted by Dr. Edwards.

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would later write in his memoirs, Louise Brown, My Life as the World's First Test Tube Baby (2015): "My birth seemed to bring out the worst of all journalists.

The Vatican has expressed concern at the announcement of this news, Cardinal Albino Luciano (who will soon be pope John Paul I) telling the press from his hospital bed in 1978 that he had no right to sentence parents for wanting their own child, but he warned that doctors, like the sorcerer's apprentice, might end up struggling to contain the consequences of their actions.

He also argued that In the following months, the Browns received enormous amounts of letters and parcels from interested persons, much of which was retained by Ms. Brown as memories

. Consulting gynecologist Patrick Steptoe (seated left) and physiologist Dr. Robert Edwards (seated on the far left) address the press at the General Hospital. Oldham July 25, 1978 (PA)

Part was warm and congratulated, the rest hated mail from a particularly vicious band, like Louise, now an expedition employee, Take That fan and mother of two, has since recalled in her autobiography .

"Inside, Mom found a small jewelry-style box with the words" Test Tube Baby "printed on a sticker with a picture of some" She thought it might be a another gift from a company eager to be associated with my birth, but when she opened it there was red liquid that seemed to have been spilled and a letter neatly folded. "

also contained a broken glass test tube and a plastic fetus.

"It was threatening and scary and considering the time that people had to take to put this thing together and send it to around the world to a three-month-old baby., I would say a completely sick act by

"Imagine how disturbing it was to mom … For a moment she was even more cautious when she m & # He took the landau.

"[There was] many Catholic objections – and apparently I can read things with my mind and teleport things," she recalls.

At primary school, Louise’s fellow pupils knew about the sensation her birth had caused but struggled to comprehend the science behind it.

“I’ve always been a bigger girl and they used to say: ‘How did I fit in the test tube?’”

Living in the public gaze put a strain on the family but Lesley Brown felt an obligation to share her miracle baby with the world.

Louise likewise routinely takes time out from her job to attend fertility conferences around the world and spoke at the European Parliament on access to IVF in February 2017.

Louise Brown with Dr Robert Edwards in 2008 (PA)
    

Astonishingly, four decades on, she is still receiving abuse and harassment, with online trolls replacing the anonymous poison pen authors of the past.

“People put cruel and ill-informed comments on the internet just about whenever there is a story about me. But I just ignore it.”

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