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1 - Introduction
- By Fiona Kisby Littleton, Susan Bewley, James Drife
Fiona Kisby Littleton, University College London Institute of Education, Susan Bewley, Emeritus, King's College London, James Owen Drife, Emeritus, University of Leeds
Book:

Presenting the First Test-Tube Baby

Published online:

23 February 2023

Print publication:

16 March 2023, pp 1-3
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Summary

This chapter describes how the 1979 lecture was rediscovered in the RCOG Archives, why the project was initially conceived, and how it was brought to fruition.

5 - The Local Reminiscence
- By Janice Barker
Fiona Kisby Littleton, University College London Institute of Education, Susan Bewley, Emeritus, King's College London, James Owen Drife, Emeritus, University of Leeds
Book:

Presenting the First Test-Tube Baby

Published online:

23 February 2023

Print publication:

16 March 2023, pp 179-200
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Summary

In this chapter, a reporter who was a member of the media team who got the very first scoop on the ‘test-tube baby’, taking the newspaper and Oldham out to the rest of the world, reflects on the local story and how it broke. It contains Barker’s original write-up of the 1979 lecture in the Oldham Chronicle and features new information on local women who volunteered for the research programme.

The Edwards and Steptoe Lecture of 1979
Fiona Kisby Littleton, Susan Bewley, James Owen Drife
Published online:

23 February 2023

Print publication:

16 March 2023
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In January 1979, Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe delivered a lecture detailing the ten-year clinical and scientific research programme that led to the birth of Louise Brown, the first baby born utilising IVF. This thoroughly-researched book provides both a full annotated transcript of the lecture as well as recorded reminiscences from those who attended, detailing the contemporary understandings of the event. An essay on the lecture's historical context adds fresh insight into the biographies of Edwards and Steptoe and highlights sources from print and broadcast media that have received scant attention in earlier publications. Current and future implications of the advances in IVF since the first procedure are also explored, examining future medical and scientific possibilities as well as ethical issues that may arise. A foreword by Louise Brown herself places this remarkable leap of science in a personal context, one that so many families have since experienced themselves.