I n 1968, three people decided to cure infertility. In the 10 years between 1968 and 1978, Robert (Bob) Edwards, a scientist, Patrick Steptoe, an obstetrician, Jean Purdy, an embryologist, worked together, with many others, to do something incredible. Basing themselves in an outbuilding at Oldham general on scraps of money, with nurses volunteering their time, and patients their patience, they worked incessantly on the issue of infertility.
Bob had had a number of breakthroughs working with mice and rabbits, and thought that with Patrick’s innovations with laparoscopes (keyhole surgery), there was a possibility that tubal infertility could be, at least partially, cured. They faced a mass of opposition, societal and medical. They argued that infertility was a disease as deserving of attention and cure as any other.
They were told that they were playing God, that they risked creating Frankenstein babies, that society was overpopulated as it was. The British medical establishment – rather than rewarding their progress – set out to destroy and decry their achievement. They fought on, despite everything, and managed to do something truly great: Louise Joy Brown was born on the 25 July 1978.
There are now 12 million more children on the planet because of them. Born to people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to have them. It is, without doubt, one of the great medical breakthroughs of the 20th century.
It is an amazing British story, one which I don’t think many peopl.
