HEALTH × TECHNOLOGY

In Vitro Fertilisation

1978 CE

History · Contemporary · Holocene · Meghalayan

Louise Brown, born on 25 July 1978 in England, was the first person conceived outside the body, by fertilisation in a culture dish and transfer of the embryo to the uterus.

In vitro fertilisation is the obtaining of an embryo outside the body, by bringing an oocyte and spermatozoa together in culture medium, followed by transfer of the embryo into the uterus. Louise Brown, born on 25 July 1978 in England, is the first person conceived by this method, developed by Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards after a decade of unsuccessful attempts. Fertilisation itself never constituted the difficulty. The obstacles were obtaining a mature oocyte, which presupposes locating the moment of ovulation to within a few hours, and implantation of the embryo in the uterus, which almost always failed; implantation remains today the limiting factor of the method. The announcement of the birth occupies two pages in The Lancet.

Why it matters

The method dissociated conception from the body, as oral contraception had dissociated sexuality from conception. It rendered the human embryo of the first days accessible to observation and analysis, opening preimplantation genetic diagnosis, the preservation of oocytes by freezing and, subsequently, the questions raised by editing of the embryonic genome. Several million living people have been conceived by this route.

Dating & uncertainty

Robert Edwards received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2010; Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988, could not be honoured, the prize not being awarded posthumously.

Our species’ history as one day

23:59:4613.2 s before midnight

if the 315,000 years of Homo sapiens were compressed into a single day