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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