Main description:

In January 1979, Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe delivered a lecture detailing the ten-year clinical and scientific research programme that led to the birth of Louise Brown, the first baby born utilising IVF. This thoroughly-researched book provides both a full annotated transcript of the lecture as well as recorded reminiscences from those who attended, detailing the contemporary understandings of the event. An essay on the lecture's historical context adds fresh insight into the biographies of Edwards and Steptoe and highlights sources from print and broadcast media that have received scant attention in earlier publications. Current and future implications of the advances in IVF since the first procedure are also explored, examining future medical and scientific possibilities as well as ethical issues that may arise. A foreword by Louise Brown herself places this remarkable leap of science in a personal context, one that so many families have since experienced themselves.

Contents:

1. Introduction: presenting the first test-tube baby Fiona Kisby Littleton, Susan Bewley and James Owen Drife; 2. From Oldham and Cambridge to the rest of the world: the contexts and contents of the lecture, 1978-80 Fiona Kisby Littleton; 3. The lecture, 1979: pregnancies following implantation of human embryos grown in culture Fiona Kisby Littleton and Susan Bewley; 4. The professional reminiscence, 2019: retired fellows look back Fiona Kisby Littleton, Susan Bewley and James Owen Drife; 5. The local reminiscence: an Oldham journalist remembers Janice Barker; 6. The legacy: 2019 and beyond Peter Braude and Martin Johnson.