Louise Brown: First Test Tube Baby

Born: July 25, 1978

In the 70's, in vitro fertilization, or IVF was hailed as a breakthrough in the fields of medicine and science. Through a planned caesarean section, Louise Joy Brown, the first test tube baby , was born on July 25, 1978 in Oldham, Greater Manchester, England. Her birth, videotaped and became top news worldwide, gave a flicker of hope to many infertile couples around the world. However, not a few were skeptical about the IVF's future implications and ill-use; it also became a source of heated dispute within medical and religious groups alike. The religious sect still raises issues against physicians for "playing God" by practicing the IVF procedure.

Louise's parents, Lesley and John Brown had decided to seek the help of gynecologist Patrick Steptoe and physiologist Robert Edwards after nine years of failed conceptions due to Lesley's blocked fallopian tubes. Four years later, the Brown's next child, Natalie, was also conceived through IVF. She was the 40th IVF baby in the world and in 1999 became the first "test-tube" baby to give birth.

Louise, 28, married 37 year old Wesley Mullinder in 2004. Like Natalie's daughter Casey, Louise's son, Cameron John Mullinder, born on 21 December 2006, was also conceived naturally and without IVF.

In 2003, in her first public appearance as an adult, at Bourn Hall, near Cambridge, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of her birth, Louise said she hoped to have children without resorting to IVF although she would have the treatment too, if necessary.

She likewise narrated incidents wherein schoolmates would ask her if she was born in the laboratory. "I thought it was something peculiar to me. I thought I was abnormal," she confided. At times, she would feel "completely alone". Nonetheless, she remains proud to have been the world's first successful "test-tube" baby but she admits media attention makes her uncomfortable. The public's fascination over her was as unrelenting, to which she quoted: "I don't feel any more special than anyone else. I just get on with my life. Just normal- I just plod along".

In her recent interview following the birth of her child, Louise expressed belief that "the science that created her has become a soulless conveyor belt ...". She thinks "it is wrong for parents to use science to choose the sex of their children unless it's for medical reasons...". Continuing, she remarked that she was teased at school because she was a "test tube" baby.

Currently, Louise is an administrator with a shipping firm, a task she shall be putting off until her son, Cameron, is older. Previously for three years, she had a stint as a nursery nurse in Bristol.

If she so desired, an opulent life would have been just within her grasp as offers from newspapers and television journals to sell her story were never scarce. But the eldest of the "test tube" babies, whose life has had been closely monitored by the medical scientists and the world, opted to lead a life of modesty and privacy.

Louise Joy Brown has had plodded along her own life level-headed and sans any signs of abnormalities, as opposed to all the initial criticisms and skepticisms surrounding the technology by which she was conceived.

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LOUISE BROWN