Patrick Steptoe (In vitro fertilization)

Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards (Cambridge physiologist) perfected the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and created the first human test-tube baby.

Patrick Steptoe (1913-1988), British gynecologist and medical researcher who helped develop the process of in vitro fertilization was born in Witney, Oxfordshire, England.

He graduated from the University of London’s Saint George’s Hospital Medical School, specializing in obstetrics and gynecology in 1939. In 1951, Patrick Steptoe began working at Oldham General and District Hospital in Northeast England, where he developed a method of retrieving human eggs using a laparoscope. Using this new technique in his clinical practice, he was able to rescue fresh preovulatory oocytes from the pelvis of patients who suffered from infertility due to tubal damage.

In 1971 Steptoe, Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy published a description of the first human blastocyst observed after in vitro fertilization.

Steptoe used laparoscopy to obtain human eggs and Edwards fertilized them in the laboratory. In 1972, Steptoe implanted a fertilized a fertilized egg into a uterus for the first time.

In 1977, Steptoe and Edwards produced the first successful IVF pregnancy, and the following year the world’s first test-tube was born.
Patrick Steptoe (In vitro fertilization)

Robert Edwards: pioneer in reproductive medicine, and in-vitro fertilization (IVF)

Robert Edwards is a world famous reproductive physiologist with a distinguished career as a research scientist.

His doctoral research concentrated on mouse embryos and in collaboration with a fellow student Ruth Fowler, he developed the Fowler-Edwards method used to treat female mice with hormones and regulate the number of eggs produced and their time of evolution.

Robert Edwards began to study in-vitro maturation of human oocytes in the early 1960s. On February 15, 1969, the journal Nature published a paper authored by R.G Edwards, B.D Bavister and P.C Steptoe: Early stages of fertilization in vitro of human oocytes matured in vitro.

Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe perfected the process of in-vitro fertilization and created the first human test tube baby.

Louise Joy Brown, born in 1978 was the first ‘test tube’ baby – born from the in-vitro fertilization or conception outside a woman’s body. Edwards and Steptoe worked on procedures for in-vitro fertilization for 10 years before the procedures resulted in the birth of Louise Brown.
Robert Edwards: pioneer in reproductive medicine, and in-vitro fertilization (IVF)

In vitro fertilization – Dr Daniele Petrucci

For more than 90 years, work on in vitro fertilization of humans has been reported. In 1959, Daniele Petrucci, an Italian scientist announced to the press that he had fertilized a human egg in vitro and sustained the embryo alive in this artificial environmental for 29 days, although it became enlarge and deformed.

He had begun with a female ovum removed surgically at just the right, ripe moment. He had then admitted male sperm, one of which had proceeded to fertilize the egg. Under his careful laboratory nursing, the egg had grown into this embryo.

The extraordinary experiment was the 42nd attempt by Daniele Petrucci to grow a human embryo outside the womb.

He is using this startling technique to solve one of the world’s knottiest medical problems: how to transplant human tissue.

The embryo was being grown in the laboratory until the research was condemned Pope John XXIII. Vatican sources as well as laymen roundly denounced Petrucci for manipulating human life in this fashion.

An outrage citizen even demanded that the doctor be prosecuted for murder because he ‘terminated the experiment’ at the end of 29 days.
In vitro fertilization – Dr Daniele Petrucci