Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: test tube babies

  • Bob Edwards and the perils of publicity

    James DrifeLeeds, United Kingdom The physiologist Robert Edwards began thinking about human in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in the 1950s and first suggested it in print in 1965. Thirteen years later Louise Brown, the world’s first IVF baby, was born in Oldham, United Kingdom.  Today that sequence of events seems logical, even inevitable, but it very nearly…