Such was the excitement and anticipation around the pioneering procedure of IVF and the work of embryologist Professor Sir Robert Edwards, gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and embryologist and nurse Jean Purdy, that Louise Brown's birth was treated as a sensational scientific advance in 1978. The event attracted praise from the scientific community while evangelical groups expressed disapproval; ever-helpful press articles predicting the possibility of 'Frankenbabies' captured the public's imagination and led to endless discussions about the legitimacy of the procedure. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion about IVF. 'I was never her baby' Louise Brown remembers her late mum Lesley explaining, 'I was the world's baby'.
Revisiting Bourn Hall for a short segment of a Mothers' Day edition of the One Show (the segment begins at the 20:42 mark), Brown marks the spectacular breakthrough in assisted conception that has since enabled over eight million births worldwide by interviewing Grace Macdonald, mother of the world's first IVF boy, born in 1979 just six months after Brown.
Macdonald's vivid recollection of the anxieties of pregnancy and subsequent elation on hearing of Brown's successful delivery will bring a tear to those of us whose IVF pregnancies were a daily mix of happiness and visceral fear for all that could go wrong.
Paying tribute to the often-overlooked role of embryologist and Bourn Hall co-founder Purdy, Brown is shown around the early laboratory by Dr Kay Elder, who points out that although the term 'test tube baby' was in use in the early days, the embryos were grown and divided in a petri dish, under the watchful supervision of Purdy. 'Jean was my first babysitter' muses Brown. This work, now finely monitored with digital technology, underlines the importance of the embryologist's early role and why, despite her untimely death at the age of 39, Purdy deserves to be remembered for her pivotal role in the story of IVF.
An accompanying three-minute video by Bourn Hall Clinic focuses on the unveiling of a new plaque finally acknowledging the collaborative achievements of Professor Edwards, Steptoe and Purdy. In an interview with Bob Edwards' daughter, Jenny Joy, she also pays tribute to Purdy, remembering a kind and empathetic figure who always found time for a chat. Families appear in the video, in one instance multi-generationally benefiting from IVF, reminding us that beyond the effort to overcome the problem of infertility, the work of clinics has life-changing effects, creating families and establishing something magical not just for would-be parents, but for the wider family unit too.
The One Show segment and the accompanying video show how assisted conception has been both normalised and obscured in public discourse. As someone who has twice benefited from IVF, I was moved to learn more about Purdy and her pivotal, under-appreciated role in the history of IVF. Both pieces, in the guise of being celebrations of IVF, omitted the obvious concerns of the postcode lottery funding of the treatment, with its trail of disappointed would-be parents (see BioNews 1120). While this is not a major criticism (both pieces were, after all, made to celebrate the existence of IVF) it is an inevitable aspect of IVF treatment that it is mentally gruelling for patients who undergo it and often out of the financial reach of many who need it.
Perhaps this is something for a longer documentary; assisted conception is not always of public interest beyond families who require it and those who deliver it. Even then, the assisted conception journey is an intensely personal experience that does not easily fit into a convenient narrative. As someone with adult children and my IVF years firmly behind me, I watched the One Show segment and wanted to know more about the history of IVF. For someone currently undergoing treatment, the emphasis might lay elsewhere.
As an introduction and a way of reminding the viewer that fertility cannot be taken for granted, Brown's feature touched on many of the issues that might be greeted with familiarity today; the fear and uncertainty of treatment, even through a successful pregnancy; the casual misogyny of decision makers that thought so little about erasing the role of one of the scientists in the birth of the world's first 500 IVF babies; finally – the sheer, reassuring ordinariness of family life for those lucky enough to have successful pregnancies.
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