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On July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown was born in the United Kingdom and her birth quickly caught the media’s attention, as she was the world’s first “test tube baby.”

In other words, Brown was the first baby born through in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Her mother Leslie and father Peter suffered from infertility due to Leslie’s blocked fallopian tubes, according to History.com. 

In November 1977, Leslie underwent an experimental IVF procedure. A mature egg was taken from one of her ovaries and combined in a laboratory dish with one of Peter’s sperm to form an embryo, per the source.  

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A few days later, the embryo was implanted into Leslie’s uterus, and nine months later, their daughter was brought into the world through Cesarean section. 

This successful IVF treatment was made possible by Robert Edwards, a British scientist, and Patrick Steptoe, a gynecologist. Steptoe was the one who delivered Brown at Olham and District General Hospital in Manchester, England, and gave her the middle name Joy, according to Brown’s website. 

At the time, Brown’s birth was made very public, a decision many criticized. However, Brown herself has defended her parents and the publicity that came from her scientific birth. 

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“My parents didn’t have a choice about making it public,” Louise previously told Time. “If they didn’t, they would have had people asking ‘Why can’t we see her? What’s wrong with her?’” 

The birth of Louise Brown was made very public by her parents, a decision she now, as an adult, supports. She made many press appearances as a young child to show the success of the procedure. (Getty Images)

She shared that Steptoe and Edwards needed the success of her birth to be made public. 

“Had there been anything at all wrong with me, it would have been the end of IVF,” she said. 

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Following the birth of Louise, the Browns had a second daughter named Natalie by means of IVF. 

When they grew older, Louise and Natalie both gave birth to children of their own by natural means. 

After the success of Brown’s birth, IVF slowly started to grow. In the United States, the first IVF baby was born in 1981, according to Time. 

In celebration of Louise Brown’s 40th birthday in 2018, the Science Museum in London held a series of special events at the venue, including an exhibition featuring the glass incubator that began her life. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Today, there have been over 6 million babies born through IVF, according to the Science Museum.

In the United States, the average cycle costs around $15,000 to $30,000 per cycle, according to Forbes.

The success rate varies greatly dependent on the age of the woman undergoing the procedure. For women younger than 35 and younger, the success rate on the first try is 55.1%, according to a 2020 CDC report. As a woman gets older, the rate of success begins to drop. 

Brown is still very vocal about being born through IVF today. She makes many public speeches telling her story, and penned an autobiography called “Louise Brown: My Life as the World’s First Test-Tube Baby.” 

Government health officials gathered in Budapest this morning (25 July) to discuss EU action on heart disease and implementation of new rules on sharing and access to medical data, with Hungary claiming progress despite an ongoing diplomatic chill that saw only a handful of countries send ministers to the informal summit.

Orazio Schillaci from Italy, Bulgaria’s Galya Kondeva-Mankova and Maltese lawmaker Jo Etienne Abela were the only fully fledged ministers on the attendee list. Czechia and Greece sent deputy ministers; some eight others – including Germany and neighbour Slovakia – sent delegates of state secretary or similar rank.

Hungarian health minister Péter Takács brushed off suggestions that the lack of senior government officials reflected a backlash against Hungary’s conduct in the first weeks of its six-month turn as chair of inter-governmental legislative debates, with premier Viktor Orbán having drawn fire for using the EU Council presidency as a launchpad for a self-styled ‘peace mission’ to Moscow and Beijing.

“I believe that given it is the summer season these are by no means bad numbers,” Takács told reporters after chairing a first round of talks. He stressed that informal ministerial summits were policy forums where delegates share opinions “based on facts and not ideology”. Such meetings were “an island of peace in European politics and, I hope, will remain so”, he said.

Still, the choice of delegate from some member states was difficult to interpret other than as a diplomatic rebuke: Austria sent its resident ambassador, Denmark an EU affairs specialist, Belgium an attaché from its EU representative office in Brussels, and France the deputy head of a delegation on European and international affairs.

Action on heart disease

On the substance of the talks, the Hungarian minister said there had been broad agreement among delegates on the need for concerted action on cardiovascular disease, and the importance of prevention and promoting health literacy. Ideas put forward during the discussion would be channelled into Council conclusions at a formal ministerial summit in December, he said.

“We are confident that we will jointly adopt an action plan as successful as the one on cancer that was agreed [during the presidencies of] Sweden, France and Czechia,” Takács said.

Sharing health data

Regarding implementation of the recently agreed regulation for a European Health Data Space (EHDS), the minister said Hungary was floating the idea of setting up a joint platform where data could be shared in a “structured form” for subsequent use in research and policy planning.

“I believe this could be a good pilot project where we can test in real time what the system is capable of,” he said. “Good decisions can only be based on good data – I am convinced of this.”

Organ donation plan

Discussions were due to move onto the topic of organ donation in an afternoon session, said Takács, who earlier in the week had outlined potentially controversial plans to boost availability by implementing a universal ‘opt-out’ system.

“Organ donation not only saves lives, but is also the most effective intervention in the treatment of certain chronic diseases,” Takács said.

“The success of the EU organ donation and transplantation action plan between 2009 and 2015, which saw a 21% increase in organ donation, shows that cooperation is crucial, and that a new action plan is needed,” he said.