TODAY IN HISTORY: 25 JULY, 1978 World’s first "test tube" baby, Louise Joy Brown is born

On July 25, 1978, an English woman who was the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilisation experiment (IVF) is born at Oldham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England, to Mr. and Mrs. Lesley and Peter Brown.

Her birth, following a procedure pioneered in Britain, has been lauded among "the most remarkable medical breakthroughs of the 20th Century".  

The healthy baby who was delivered shortly before midnight by caesarean section, weighed in at five pounds, 12 ounces.

Before giving birth to Louise, Lesley Brown, a home maker had suffered nine years of infertility due to blocked fallopian tubes. In November 1977, she underwent the then-experimental IVF procedure. A mature egg was removed from one of her ovaries and combined in a laboratory dish with her husband’s sperm to form an embryo. The embryo then was implanted into her uterus a few days later. Her IVF doctors, British gynecologist Patrick Steptoe and scientist Robert Edwards, had begun their pioneering collaboration a decade earlier. Once the media learned of the pregnancy, the Browns faced intense public scrutiny. Louise’s birth made headlines around the world and raised various legal and ethical questions.

Louise’s birth became an instant global sensation and a turning point in the treatment of infertility, offering hope to millions of couples who had been unable to have children. Since then, more than four million babies worldwide have been born through in vitro fertilization.

The Browns had a second daughter, Natalie, several years later, also through IVF. In May 1999, Natalie became the first IVF baby to give birth to a child of her own. The child’s conception was natural, easing some concerns that female IVF babies would be unable to get pregnant naturally. In December 2006, Louise Brown, the original “test tube baby,” gave birth to a boy, Cameron John Mullinder, who also was conceived naturally.

Lesley, the mother of Louise, died on June 6, 2012 at age of 64 in Bristol, England. Her death, at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, was caused by complications of a gallbladder infection, said Michael Macnamee, executive director of the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge, where the in vitro fertilization technique that produced Louise was developed by Robert G. Edwards and Dr. Patrick Steptoe.