Test-Tube Baby: It's a Girl

Born: Louise Brown, 5 Ibs. 12 oz., 11:47 p.m., July 25.

When Gilbert John Brown left Oldham General Hospital early one evening last week, he had no idea it was to be a special night. He and his wife Lesley, due to give birth in about nine days to the world's first baby conceived outside the human body, had spent a-quiet day together reading the papers and watching television. But shortly thereafter, rumors began to circulate that the baby would arrive soon. Reporters and photographers thronged the entrance to the maternity unit. At 10:45 p.m., John Brown was summoned back to the hospital. Soon after midnight, the announcement came: "Mrs. Brown has been safely delivered by caesarean section of a female child. The child's condition at birth was excellent. All examinations showed her to be quite normal."

The next day, as John, Lesley and Louise Brown posed for pictures, Dr. Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards spoke openly about their achievement for the first time. At a press conference, Steptoe explained that the baby was delivered early by caesarean section because Lesley Brown had developed toxemia, a disorder of pregnancy usually associated with hypertension that can lead to stillbirth. The delivery was uneventful. Said Steptoe of Louise: "She came out crying her head off . . . a beautiful, normal baby."

Steptoe revealed that the birth had been filmed; the pictures may prove an important point. Some doctors had observed that if Lesley's fallopian tubes were intact, Steptoe would not have irrefutable proof that Louise was conceived in a test tube. But, Steptoe said with evident satisfaction, "I was able to show that the tubes were absent." Lesley, he explained, had had an operation in 1970 to clear her blocked tubes--but with no success. After she was referred to Steptoe in 1976, he did an exploratory operation and found "there were mere remnants of her tubes." Because these remnants blocked his access to the ova, Steptoe removed them.

Finally, last Nov. 10, Steptoe extracted an egg from one of Lesley's ovaries, and placed it in a laboratory dish. Edwards then fertilized the egg with John Brown's sperm. Two and a half to three days later, when the egg had undergone three cell divisions, it was placed in Lesley's uterus. Said Edwards about Baby Louise: "The last time I saw her, she was a beautiful eight-celled embryo."

Steptoe and Edwards refused to confirm or deny that there are any other test-tube babies on the way. But Steptoe hopes that "in a reasonable number of years, instead of this being a one-day wonder or a seven-day wonder, it'll be a reasonably commonplace affair." Nevertheless, said Edwards, a great many questions remain to be answered, the chief one being why the uterus accepts or rejects the test-tube embryo. Said he: "This is the first time we've solved all the problems at once. We're at the end of the beginning--not the beginning of the end."

Blond-haired Louise, whom proud father John described in the Daily Mail as "beautiful, with a marvelous complexion, not red and wrinkly at all," is also at the end of her beginning. Three days after birth, she had gained 2 oz. and was being breast fed. She and her mother will remain in the hospital for about ten days. Then, said John Brown, "we're just going to go home and try to slide back into our own world . . . we don't want a newfangled life." Whether that will be possible is another question. Asked by reporters if the world's first test-tube baby could expect to lead a normal life, Edwards replied: "That depends on you." qed

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