Sarah Ferber, Nicola J. Marks, and Vera Mackie, IVF and Assisted Reproduction: A Global History

Abstract

In 1978, two of the world’s first IVF (in vitro fertilization) babies were born in the UK and India. The first of these two revolutionary outcomes was achieved by Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards, and Jean Purdy in the UK; the baby, Louise Brown, was born on 25 July. Their names are well known worldwide because the news was reported so enthusiastically around the globe. However, how many people know Subhas Mukerji and his colleagues Sunit Mukherjee and Saroj Kanti Bhattacharya, who are responsible for the world’s second IVF baby, or the baby’s name, Kanupriya Agarwal, who was born in India only three months after Louise? The 1978 IVF birth in India was not widely recognized until 1997 (52). IVF and Assisted Reproduction: A Global History presents the transnational history of IVF and assisted reproduction (AR), including how IVF was achieved, what new assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) have been produced from IVF, and what issues have arisen after the advent of these technologies. The book consists of seven chapters. Chapter 1, “IVF and Assisted Reproduction: Global Visions, Local Stories,” provides an introduction and outline of the book. Chapter 2, “Towards the Two 1978 Births,” is a pre-1978 history of IVF. IVF is now a popular and standard medical technology for human reproduction. However, the history of ART is not a very long one. Before the 1940s, no one knew what an early human embryo looked like (34). In this chapter, the authors focus mainly on the world’s first two successful IVF births, and they examine how the paths towards IVF were shaped by a range of conditions outside the laboratory and hospital, as well as the local and global political, economic, and socio-cultural conditions that influenced where and how IVF research occurred (38). It is interesting that the authors see “professional hostility” as one of the key elements in the social recognition of ART. Steptoe, Edwards, and Purdy of the British team were recognized as leaders in the research field; they respected communication with other researchers and scientists in their