Even before
Louise Brown arrived, the London tabloids called her "Our Miracle Baby,"
and critics muttered words like Frankenstein. The world's first
test-tube baby, she was born at 13 minutes to midnight—a 5-lb.
12-oz. bundle of squealing ethical questions and implications for the
future of the species. After hundreds of tries, Lesley Brown's doctors
found the secret to creating a baby outside the womb: having fertilized
her egg in vitro, or in a Petri dish, they implanted the embryo after
only 2 1/2 days rather than waiting for five and were rewarded with
their first successful pregnancy. The breakthrough was not chronicled in
some journal of reproductive medicine. The whole world awaited the birth
because at the suggestion of one of their doctors, the parents had
negotiated exclusive rights to the first baby pictures with the London
Daily Mail for more than $500,000. Newspapers that bought reprint rights
were guaranteed a 40% discount if the baby died within the first
week.
It was the rare commentator who avoided any mention of Aldous
Huxley. Some warned of baby farms and assembly lines of fetuses grown in
test tubes, of rich women renting poor women's wombs to avoid the
inconvenience of pregnancy. But fear was no match for dreams for
thousands of infertile couples: "I would hope that within a very few
years ... this will be a fairly commonplace affair," said Robert
Edwards, one of the doctors. Louise is now 24, and 1 million babies
later, that prophecy has come true.
TIME Cover
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