How the Development of the First IVF Baby, Louise Joy Brown, Really Happened in the 60s and 70s

Netflix Happiness
recounts the events that led to the development of the first IVF baby, painting a challenging picture due to the obstacles encountered during the scientific process, but also the objection of society in general. Coming to Netflix on November 22, 2024, following a limited run in select theaters, the biographical drama stars Bill Nighy as gynecologist Patrick Steptoe, James Norton as physiologist Robert “Bob” Edwards and Thomasin McKenzie as Jean Purdy, the world’s first embryologist. Happiness is extremely accurate in detailing the true story that culminated in the birth of the first IVF baby in 1978Luisa Brown.

With the three as protagonists of the story, Happiness aims to return credit to Jean Purdy as an integral part of the team that developed the first IVF babyas for some time IVF was remembered only as an achievement of Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe. Praised by critics, Happiness debuts with a high score on Rotten Tomatoes, and it’s easy to understand why, considering how its goal is to faithfully and intriguingly adapt the real story. However, much more about the true story can be learned from Edwards and Steptoe’s book. A matter of life. The history of IVF – a medical breakthrough.

Bob Edwards made his first major discovery about the potential of in vitro fertilization in 1965

Happened before Jean Purdy and Patrick Steptoe were involved

Before working directly with human eggs, Bob Edwards worked with mice, rats, and hamster eggs in the early 1960s. Adding hormones to mouse eggs showed that maturation occurs simultaneously in mice and in vitro, following the same schedule. However, Edwards quickly realized how he needed to start working with human eggs, which led to his analyzes of human ovarian tissue. The discovery that the human egg took 36 hours to mature came during his six-week research trip to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore in 1965.when Edwards failed to fertilize human eggs, but was one step closer to it.

Although the discovery of the behavior of human ovarian tissue was quite promising, talking about his ideas about egg implantation with Patrick Steptoe over the phone in 1968 ultimately began the project to develop in vitro fertilization. Meeting him by chance six months later at the Royal Society of Medicine began his and Jean Purdy’s collaboration with Steptoe in Oldham265 kilometers from his laboratory in Cambridge. The 2024 Netflix film showed their first meeting happening exactly as Edwards told in A question of life.

Bob Edwards and Barry Bavister successfully fertilized human eggs outside the uterus in 1969

It was the first step towards in vitro fertilization in humans

Like this Happiness showed that once Steptoe became involved most of the work took place in Oldham. However, the next big step was taken at Cambridge by one of Edwards’ doctoral students, Barry Bavister. In fact, When trying to achieve in vitro fertilization of hamster eggs, Bavister refined a culture fluid that was particularly successful with hamster eggs.containing a source of energy, salts, protein extracted from cow serum and penicillin. Edwards had the idea of ​​trying to use the same culture fluid for in vitro fertilization of human eggs.

The first successful fertilization of a human egg outside the uterus took place in 1968 in Cambridgeafter Edwards obtained ovarian tissue at Edgware General Hospital, which he worked with before moving to Cambridge. Edwards and Bavister let the eggs mature in Bavister’s culture fluid, before adding sperm to nine of the 12 eggs. After about 11 hours, Sperm were seen entering two of the eggs, making the experiment the first successful in vitro fertilizationalthough it also happens from human eggs matured in vitro.

Various culture fluids were considered and tools for collecting eggs were invented

The fact that fertilization was successful, but from eggs matured in vitro, meant that problems with embryonic development were to be expected. Edwards explains in A question of life how eggs from fertilized animals matured in vitro and the resulting embryo presented several problems and even die, which happens to both rabbits and cows. This presented an entirely new problem, as This meant they needed to find a way to collect ovary-matured human eggs without destroying them. so they could be fertilized in vitro before being implanted again.

Edwards and Purdy thus developed a vacuum-like mechanism that could be used during laparoscopy to gently extract eggs. of ovarian follicles. However, since embryos did not exceed eight cells during development, they also modified Bavister’s culture fluiduntil they changed completely, switching to Ham’s F10. This ended up causing them to follow the embryo’s development process well beyond the time it should have been implanted, until one fateful day when four embryos finally developed into blastocysts. humans, effectively reaching the “early stages of human life”in their cultural fluids.

Edwards & Purdy’s first IVF patients did not have a successful pregnancy until 1977

Some pregnancies were ectopic and others never started

Removing human eggs from patients to replant them necessarily involved their expectations, thus causing a high degree of disappointment, as highlighted by Edwards in A question of life and shown in Happiness. Edwards, Purdy, and Steptoe first replanted a fertilized embryo in December 1971, only to discover that the patient was not pregnant in January 1972. Edwards describes in A question of life as the problem was eventually identified in fertility drugs, which shortened the menstrual cycle by almost a weekcausing the moment of reimplantation of the fertilized embryo to coincide with the days before menstruation, which guaranteed that the embryo would not be retained.

Edwards and Purdy tried to support the embryo’s development after it was replanted by giving patients hormones, and in the summer of 1975, a woman finally had a positive pregnancy test. This effectively made it the first human pregnancy to begin outside of a person, even if the pregnancy was eventually revealed to be ectopic.therefore unfeasible and dangerous for the patient. In another patient, hormones wavered and declined, causing her to lose her pregnancy before Steptoe could even examine her via ultrasound.

Between hormones not consistently helping the pregnancy after the fertilized embryo was replanted and Edwards discovering how the liquid paraffin they used in the process had become toxic, Purdy, Edwards and Steptoe faced obstacle after obstacle. At the end, deciding to follow the menstrual cycle and measuring the rise in the LH hormone to understand when the egg had matured gave them success. Lesley Brown was one of the first patients whose LH levels were set when the collection would have taken place, and after the fertilized egg was replanted, she finally became pregnant in 1977.

Louise Joy Brown, the first IVF baby, was born on July 25, 1978

Second IVF baby born six months after Louise Brown was born

Louise Joy Brown was born on July 25, 1978, by cesarean section, after a closely monitored pregnancy during which Purdy, Edwards and Steptoe had all the necessary tests to check that everything was developing as it should, as Happiness showed. Except for Lesley Brown’s high blood pressure, everything went relatively well, as described by Edwards and Steptoe in A matter of life. The history of IVF – a medical breakthrough. The second IVF baby, Alastair MacDonald, was born six months after Louise Brown, proving that IVF could be successfully replicated.

Sources: A Question of Life. The Story of IVF – A Medical Breakthrough, by Patrick Steptoe and Bob Edwards, Bourn Hall