A Baby Boom
Through Assisted Reproduction
On July 25, 1978, a unique birth took place in Oldham, England, when a baby girl named Louise Joy Brown entered the world. Louise was history’s first test-tube baby.
NINE months earlier, Louise had been conceived in a laboratory through a process called in vitro fertilization (IVF). By means of this procedure, an egg extracted from her mother was united with a sperm in a glass dish. Two and a half days later, after the egg cell had subdivided into eight microscopic cells, this little cluster of dividing cells was inserted into her mother’s uterus to develop normally. Louise’s birth opened up a whole new chapter in the treatment of infertility.
IVF gave momentum to what is now known as assisted reproductive technology (ART), which includes all kinds of fertility treatments in which both egg and sperm are handled. Consider some examples. In 1984 a woman in California, U.S.A., gave birth to a baby developed from an egg donated by another woman. The same year, in Australia, a baby was born from an embryo that had been frozen. In 1994 a 62-year-old woman in Italy gave birth, using donated eggs and her husband’s sperm.
A Progressive Development
Now, some 25 years after Louise Joy Brown was born, researchers have assembled a battery of medicines and high-tech procedures that have utterly transformed infertility treatment. (See the boxes “Some Types of Fertility Treatments” and “What Are the Risks?”) Such breakthroughs have led to a dramatic increase in the number of children born by means of assisted reproduction. In 1999, for example, ART resulted in the birth of over 30,000 babies in the United States alone. In some Scandinavian countries, between 2 and 3 percent of the children born each year have been conceived by such means. Worldwide, about 100,000 children are born annually as a result of IVF treatment. It has been estimated that about one million such children have been born since 1978
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