American Experience (1988–…): Season 19, Episode 4 - Test Tube Babies - full transcript

♪ ♪

On September 12, 1973,

on the Upper East Side
of Manhattan,

a 29-year-old woman was wheeled
into an operating room

at New York Hospital.

A surgeon made an incision
into her abdomen

and withdrew an egg
from her ovary.

If the procedure went
as planned,

Doris Del-Zio would become
the first woman in the world

to conceive a baby through
in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

The surgeon put the egg
in a test tube



and went to find
Doris's husband.

And I waited until he had...
had the egg in the tube,

and he had put the nutrients in,
and he had sealed it,

and he gave it to me.

He says, "Get to Dr. Shettles."

I took the test tube,

and I put it under my arm
to keep it warm, I thought,

and I went over
to Columbia by cab.

15 minutes later,
John Del-Zio arrived

at Columbia
Presbyterian Hospital.

Waiting for him in the lobby,
near the men's room,

was the country's foremost
expert on IVF,

Dr. Landrum Shettles.

And he said, "Now, you take
this other tube,



go into the men's room..."

"and get me some sperm."

So that's what I had to do.

And I went in and got the sperm.

Brought it out to him, handed it
to him, and he says,

"Okay, I'll call you
at the hospital tonight."

Shettles headed straight
to a lab on the 16th floor.

After years of frustration
and disappointment,

he believed he was about
to make history.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Back in the 1930s,
Harvard scientists had mastered

in vitro
fertilization in rabbits.

But the human egg refused
to yield its secrets.

Nobody had seen a human embryo.

In fact, the earliest stages
of human embryogenesis

had never been seen.

They were just a figment
of our imagination.

We assumed they existed,
because we assumed

that human reproduction
was the same

as reproduction
in other mammals.

The Harvard experiments
attracted the attention

of John Rock,

one of the nation's
leading fertility specialists.

Rock was quick to see IVF's
potential

to help infertile women.

In 1938, he hired researcher
Miriam Menkin...

who had experience with IVF
in rabbits...

to begin experimentation
in humans.

Several hundred women had agreed

to have their eggs used
for fertilization.

No success.

Week in, week out, no success.

Trying all these different
techniques... no success.

Over the next six years,
she recalled,

failure became routine.

Tuesday, Menkin would hunt
for eggs in ovaries

removed from Rock's
surgical patients.

Wednesday, she would mix
the egg with sperm

donated from medical students.

On Thursday, she would pray.

Then, on Friday
came disappointment...

No fertilization.

On the morning
of February 6, 1944,

Menkin's routine
was finally broken.

She had a teething baby at home,

she was up for
two nights running.

She went into the lab,
she did her fertilization,

and she was watching the sperm
attack the egg.

She was watching the sperm
go round and round and round.

And she was tired.

She felt like
she couldn't get up.

So she exposed the egg
to the sperm

for a longer period of time.

When Menkin looked
into her microscope,

she was stunned to see
a two-cell fertilized egg.

Miriam Menkin, when she saw
the first fertilized egg,

was absolutely awestruck.

It was, she said, the most
profound sight in the world.

She was unable
to take her eyes from it.

News of the achievement
spread quickly

and the press coined the term
"test tube baby."

The response shocked John Rock.

Infertile women inundated him
with letters

begging for
the promising new technology.

But just as
the path-breaking research

was getting off the ground,
Rock received devastating news.

Miriam Menkin told him
she was leaving

to follow her husband to
his new job in North Carolina.

Without Menkin,
the project floundered,

and John Rock soon abandoned
the experiments.

IVF research came
to a standstill.

♪ ♪

For many Americans in the 1950s,

the prospect
of "test tube babies"

seemed ripped from the pages
of science fiction novels.

Nobody knew what would happen

when you put human sperm
and a human egg in a dish

and then you grew it
and you implanted it

in a woman's uterus.

Nobody knew what would happen.

There was a cadre of people
who thought

this is just going beyond what
is appropriate for scientists,

that this is treading
on the work

that belongs only to God
and nature.

But Landrum Shettles
saw things differently.

He was convinced
in vitro fertilization

was the next
scientific frontier.

Shettles seemed to have almost
an obsession with human eggs.

He actually slept in his office.

He had seven children and a wife

in some little apartment
on Claremont Avenue

in the Upper West Side
of Manhattan,

and he chose to stay up
on 168th Street in the hospital.

And in the middle of the night,
he would just sort of be around,

be in the hallways with his
white coat flapping behind him.

I would see him in the hall
in his scrub greens

at all hours of the day
and night.

He was a sort of mystical
figure in the department.

Nobody really seemed to relate
to him, particularly,

nor did he reach out very much
to us in the research wing.

In 1955, Life magazine reported

that Shettles had managed
to fertilize a human egg

and keep it alive
for three days.

The 46-year-old scientist made
an unlikely public figure.

Shettles had a thick
Mississippi accent

from his...
his farm boy days,

and he kind of looked like...

One of his colleagues called him

a large version
of Truman Capote.

And his manner was strange

because he didn't look people
in the eye.

He was... he was awkward.

He had some of the earmarks

of what you would think
of as a genius.

He couldn't quite live
in this world.

In 1960, Shettles published
Ovum Humanum,

a photographic atlas showing
microscopic human eggs...

Called oocytes...
In early stages of development.

They were unique.

Here were human oocytes.

Sperm, one had seen,

but many of us had worked
with mice and cows and sheep

and monkeys and species
of that sort,

but to see human
was very exciting;

really thrilling photographs.

Throughout the 1960s,

Shettles struggled to grow an
embryo until it was large enough

to reinsert into the womb.

Then, in 1969, he was stunned

to learn that two British
researchers

were racing ahead of him.

After a series of breakthroughs,

physiologist Robert Edwards and
gynecologist Patrick Steptoe

were ready to implant embryos
into women's bodies.

♪ ♪

Test tube babies were no longer
a fantasy.

They were on the horizon.

Many Americans were horrified.

The idea that you could take
a human embryo

which you've created
in the Petri dish,

which is already very unnatural
and abnormal,

and then take that embryo
and put it back

into a woman's uterus
and have a baby born

was appalling to most people.

Even to scientists
and most other doctors,

it felt uncomfortable.

There was a real belief

that if you were going to mess
around with eggs and sperm

in a Petri dish and make a baby,

that you could do
some real chromosomal damage

and create monsters.

Even testing in animals wouldn't
really, at the end,

tell us whether
this would be safe in humans.

So there were some people
who were warning

that we simply shouldn't go
down this road.

Many people were concerned,

"Will we come to see

"the technological production
of children

"as, in fact,
superior in the long run,

"because in the newfangled
Brave New World,

"we will be in a position
to ensure

that unhealthy or imperfect
children are not born?"

Well, I think there was a fear
of the slippery slope...

that if it would work
for infertile couples,

then maybe people would start
to say,

"Hey, I'd like to have a smart
baby, or an athletic baby,

or some other desirable
kind of traits in my baby,"

and if you could pick the sperm
and the egg,

then maybe that's the way
that we'll all have babies.

It was about eugenics.

It was about making
super babies, perfect babies,

better babies.

In Washington,
federal agencies placed

an unofficial moratorium
on IVF funding.

The progress of IVF in America,
of course, was greatly impeded

by the fact that the
National Institutes of Health,

the greatest granting agency
there is,

or at least with the greatest
amount of money,

would not entertain
any applications for IVF.

It was clear

that IVF opponents prevented
federal funding for IVF.

At Columbia Presbyterian,

administrators grew
increasingly concerned

that Shettles' research
might jeopardize

the hospital's reputation.

This was
a very conservative place.

It prided itself on being, uh,
let's put it this way,

not first to get there,
but maybe second to get there,

but that was okay

because the people
who got there first

didn't always know
what they were doing.

Shettles' superiors
repeatedly warned him

not to cross the line
into human experimentation.

If any one individual
does research

that goes against
some regulation,

like, does human research
without asking for permission,

then all the federal grants
are endangered.

The job of protecting Columbia
Presbyterian's interests

fell to Dr. Raymond Vande Wiele,
chair of the ob-gyn department.

Ray Vande Wiele

was very conservative,

strongly oriented
toward moral values,

particularly religious values.

This is a guy
who is the captain of the ship.

He was a guy who was large
and in charge.

Vande Wiele demoted Shettles
to a low-profile position

with few responsibilities.

But Landrum Shettles
was not easily deterred.

He still had access to a lab
and continued his IVF research.

Great scientists, he believed,
advance science

by defying
conventional thinking.

In January 1973,

the Supreme Court ruled
in Roe v. Wade

to legalize abortion

and unleashed one
of the most polarizing debates

in the nation's history.

The course of IVF in America
would now become entangled

with the controversy
over the status of the embryo.

It seems that in order

to achieve a successful
fertilization in vitro

in the laboratory, a number of
fertilized ova must be there,

and, of course, only one is
going to go through the process

of embryo transfer
into the uterus.

Now, what do you do
with these discards?

What are they?

So when the subject came up
to do in vitro fertilization,

you might have to do research
on an embryo,

that immediately raised
the question,

"Well, what is an embryo?"

That immediately raised
the question,

"When does life begin?"

You have increasingly vocal

anti-abortion forces saying

in order to create an embryo

that you might be able to
transfer into a woman's uterus,

you have to destroy
all these embryos

on the way to doing research,
and you're engaging in murder.

Opponents of abortion began
pressing the federal government

to ban embryo research.

Landrum Shettles believed
it was now or never.

If he didn't act quickly,

the government might move
to prohibit IVF.

That fall, he agreed
to try the procedure

on a couple from Florida.

Doris and John Del-Zio had been
married for five years.

Doris had a daughter
from her first marriage.

Still, she wanted a child
with John.

I felt that the bad portion
of life was behind me

and that we've got
something ahead

that we might look forward to

and make a future of it
for both of us.

We were both divorced.

I thought this might be the time
to start fresh.

But a ruptured appendix had left
her fallopian tubes mangled

and scarred,
leaving Doris infertile.

When they tell you
that you are incapable

of conceiving a child,
it's horrible.

I'm not giving John a child.

It's my failure.

It's not John.

It's my failure.

Doris underwent
three painful surgeries

to open her damaged tubes.

Each attempt failed.

Her surgeon, Dr. William
Sweeney, urged her to stop.

He said, "I really think
you're crucifying yourself

with all this surgery
you're doing."

He said, "I know
you want a baby,

"but you've got to accept
the fact

that you just can't have
a child."

And I just could not accept
that fact.

Reluctantly, Sweeney decided

to tell Doris about Landrum
Shettles and the risky,

new procedure he was developing

to bypass
damaged fallopian tubes.

Shettles could take an egg
extracted from her ovary,

fertilize it in a Petri dish,
and return it to her uterus.

As a child, I had polio,

and I always believed

that because of the doctors
helping me overcome the polio,

that they were put up
on a pedestal

and that they can do anything,

and that they were able
to help me walk again

and live a normal life;

that they were going
to help me with this.

We thought that this guy
is the guy,

this is the man that's going
to make a success

of what we wanted,

and we thought nothing
about not going ahead with it.

♪ ♪

Landrum Shettles told no one
at Columbia Presbyterian

he was proceeding with an
experiment in human IVF.

Alone in a 16th-floor lab,

he mixed Doris's egg
and John's sperm in a test tube

and placed it in an incubator
set to 98 degrees.

Later that day,

a young scientist
unexpectedly entered the lab.

She saw this unusual test tube

that looked kind of dark-brown
red with a red stopper,

which meant it was a chemical
test tube, nonsterile.

And she came to my office
and said,

"I want you to look at this

"because I don't know
what this is

and perhaps
it shouldn't be there."

At 8:00 a.m.
the following morning,

Raymond Vande Wiele learned
of the experiment

taking place down the hall
from his office.

Vande Wiele was enraged.

I can't imagine that
Vande Wiele wasn't freaking out

that if this experiment hit
the papers,

that it could adversely impact
Columbia's funding,

it could get some sort of legal
authorities in there to say,

"What are you doing,
making this thing in the lab?"

and that the PR alone could be
damaging to the department.

Vande Wiele
ordered a staff member

to remove the test tube
from the incubator,

knowing it would destroy
the specimen.

Then, he went searching
for Shettles.

I happened to be

in the hallway
up where ob-gyn was,

and all of a sudden
here comes Landrum Shettles

flying down the hallway
at almost a run...

if not running, then close...

and he zooms around the corner.

And I'm sort of,
"Whoa, what was that?"

And he's trailed
within 30 seconds

by Raymond Vande Wiele,
who's a much bigger guy,

and this is more like a large
semi coming down the hallway

at a pretty fast clip.

And he's red-faced, and he's
mad, and he's muttering.

And he goes whipping around the
corner, clearly after Shettles.

When Vande Wiele
caught up with him,

Shettles knew his career
at the hospital was over.

The maverick scientist
was forced to resign.

♪ ♪

Several hours later,

John Del-Zio was called away
from his wife's bedside

to take a phone call
from Dr. Sweeney.

And Dr. Sweeney says,

"Somebody at Columbia

"removed the test tube
from the incubator,

and we have to abort
the whole thing."

I said, I-I-I asked him,
"No part could be salvaged?"

He said, "No, no, it's...

just forget about
the whole thing."

And we were both stunned.

And he said to me,
Dr. Sweeney said to me,

"I don't know what to tell her."

♪ ♪

As evening
settled over the city,

Doris lay alone
in her hospital room.

The phone rang.

It was Landrum Shettles.

He said, "I'm so sorry, Doris."

He said, "I can't believe
they did this."

And I said, "Who did what?"

He said, "You don't know?"

And I said, "No.
What are you talking about?"

He said, "Dr. Vande Wiele
destroyed the specimens."

And I said,
"No! No! It couldn't...

it couldn't... they couldn't...
they couldn't."

And I just lay there all night.

And I couldn't sleep.

And I'm just laying there
crying.

And early the next morning
before daybreak,

the door opened
and Dr. Sweeney walked in...

And he came over
and he just held me,

and just let me cry.

That was the end
of my... my dream.

And it was the beginning
of a nightmare.

Back home in Florida,

Doris Del-Zio could not let go
of the past.

She was aloof,
didn't want to even

have anything to do, er, uh,
sexually, you know.

And for a long period of time,

she was affected in that way.

Uh...

She felt that she wasn't
a woman anymore.

Then, John received a call
from Landrum Shettles.

And Dr. Shettles explained to me
that if we don't do something

to show that we had opposed
the actions of Dr. Vande Wiele,

then perhaps experimentation
on procedures like this

could not go on in
the United States in the future.

And I was really upset
about this at this point,

because I didn't want to go
to a lawsuit.

I said,
"John, I can't face it."

And he said we have a lawsuit.

But they couldn't do it
without me.

The Del-Zios sued
Columbia Presbyterian

for a million
and a half dollars,

accusing Raymond Vande Wiele

of inflicting severe
mental pain and anguish.

The progress of IVF in America

was about to shift
from the lab to the courtroom.

♪ ♪

In England, Edwards and Steptoe

were transferring
fertilized eggs

back into the mother's body.

But the embryos wouldn't take.

One, two, ten, 100 transfers...
And no pregnancies.

The problem was

many times you changed two
or three things,

and then if you got
a little inkling

that something was working,

you weren't sure
which one it was.

So that it became
a very troublesome

trial-and-error sort of thing

to get all these little
technical details right.

For nearly a decade,

the pair persevered
without government funding.

Then, in November 1977,

they achieved
a successful pregnancy

for a factory worker
named Lesley Brown.

The fate of IVF would rest
on the health of this baby.

While the world waited
for the arrival

of the first test tube baby,

the Del-Zios' lawsuit
finally came to trial.

I was stunned.

The whole street was closed off.

There were TV trucks and
cameras all over the place.

There were people
running after me.

I didn't know where
they were coming from.

It was like a mob scene.

And they were all running at me
with-with microphones.

The court was completely packed

with people from
all over the world:

from South America,
from China, from Japan.

I couldn't believe it!

I could not believe it.

I sat there completely stunned.

The press dubbed
the Del-Zio case

"the test tube baby
death trial."

How are you feeling?

Nervous and hopeful.

The defense...
the defense is saying

that this procedure would
have endangered your life.

Do you agree
with that?
No comment.

No comment.
I'm sorry.

Dr. Shettles
has no comment.

No comment.

The Del-Zios said that
something had been done to them

by Raymond Vande Wiele and
Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

And the defense chose instead

to put on trial
Landrum Shettles.

How do you feel about the baby?

We have no opinion
about the matter.

Thank you.
Please let
the doctor through.

He was presented

as a once-promising scientist

who couldn't do his work
anymore,

who was taking shortcuts,

and who was so inept
that he couldn't possibly

have been actually
growing an embryo in there.

The defense claims the procedure

was a Model-T operation.

How do you defend
your handling of it?

Well, I think that Mr. Lindbergh
flew the Atlantic

in the Spirit of St. Louis.

I can't compare the
Spirit of St. Louis with a 707,

but he got to Paris.

If Mr. Lindbergh, sitting out
there in Long Island,

if his airplane had been
destroyed before he took off,

he couldn't have
gotten to Paris.

And that's exactly
what happened to us.

We had an airplane sitting up
there, ready to fly to Paris,

and somebody destroyed it.

Once the trial began,

Vande Wiele's attorneys
called Doris to the stand.

For the next three days, she was
grilled by a battery of lawyers.

They're defending Columbia,
the giant.

And here we were,
defending me and Doris.

It was like David and Goliath.

And at one point,
one of the lawyers says,

"Why did you even
file this lawsuit?"

She said,

"I didn't want this
to happen again."

And he said, "You mean, you...
you didn't want to allow

the kind of rash experimentation
that Landrum Shettles did?"

Which was, of course,
the defense,

you know, this was
all rash experimentation.

And she said, "No, I didn't
want anyone else

to have a Dr. Vande Wiele
kill their baby."

You know, "You killed my baby."

The... her response
all the time was,

"That was going to be my baby
and you killed my baby."

And there was sort of a hush
in the courtroom,

and the lawyer said,

"You don't mean that.

You didn't think
that was a baby."

And she said, "Yes! It was.
He killed my baby."

To this day, it was my baby.

It'll always be my baby.

I don't know which baby it was,
but it was my baby.

On July 25, 1978,
nine days into the trial,

the drama in the courtroom
was overshadowed

by events in England.

Good evening.

The first baby ever conceived
outside the mother's body

was born in England...

the so called "test tube baby,"
born by cesarean section.

It is a girl,
in excellent health.

A beautiful, normal baby,
the doctors said.

And they said this may open the
way for some, though not all,

women who cannot have children
otherwise.

With the birth
of Louise Joy Brown,

Edwards and Steptoe
had pried open the mystery

of human reproduction that had
eluded Landrum Shettles.

I guess I'll always wish
that was my baby.

I'll always want my child.

And it does hurt
a little bit to know

that I'll never be able
to have a baby,

but it can't take away from the
joy I feel for Mrs. Brown today.

Well, we're overjoyed,
overjoyed, for Mrs. Brown,

of course, and for science,

which is what we're talking
about mostly now.

I was very angry.

I says, "We didn't...

We're not the first
in this country to do it,"

because I was thinking
in terms of the United States

being the first to do
something like this.

And I was angry at first,
and I said,

"Well, I hope that this
will show the jury

"that it's possible,

that we certainly
can win this case now."

After a month-long trial, the
jury found Raymond Vande Wiele

guilty of wrongfully causing
emotional distress,

but awarded the Del-Zios

only $50,000 in damages...
A fraction of their request.

I think the court, when it tried
to wrestle with the question

of what to do, didn't know how

to compensate
for a hypothetical.

Maybe there had been
an embryo made.

Maybe that embryo
could have become a baby.

Maybe that baby
would have been normal.

That's a lot of maybes,

and courts don't like
to award a lot of money

on the basis of a lot of maybes.

♪ ♪

Shettles never regained
his reputation

and the Del-Zios
never had a baby,

but the trial forced Americans

to grapple
with their conflicted attitudes

toward in vitro fertilization.

♪ ♪

How would you like to be the
world's first test tube baby?

What do you do on Father's Day?

You send a card
to the DuPont Corporation?

I understand after the baby
was conceived in the laboratory,

a pair of beakers
smoked a cigarette

and stared at the ceiling.

A test tube baby, yes, indeed.

Both mother and baby
are doing very well indeed.

She was on the cover

of every magazine
and every newspaper,

and she was called
"the baby of the century,"

and it was an incredible circus

around the birth
of Louise Brown, because...

people had been so sure

that she was going to be
a monster,

that when she turned out to be

just this chubby-cheeked,
blonde newborn

who was quite beautiful,
there was so much relief.

We clearly have a beautiful,
beautiful and normal baby.

You couldn't get in your home

when you came home from
the hospital with the baby.

That's right, yes.

Because of the press?

Press. Uh...
people wanting to see Louise.

Because everybody
got the wrong impression.

What was the wrong
impression, Mr. Brown?

Well, when they say
"test tube baby,"

everybody had the impression
that she was going to be

about nine foot tall and about
a quarter-inch wide...

you know, something kind of
out of, you know,

out of a-a comic strip
sort of thing.
Yes.

And they were very, very
surprised when they seen her.

Who knew whether
the next ten babies

were going to turn out
to have birth defects

and be stillborn and have all
kinds of problems? Nobody.

But the appearance of this
clearly healthy, happy kid

basically silenced the critics.

In America, attitudes
shifted quickly.

Across the country,
infertile couples began

to clamor
for in vitro fertilization.

In response, critics of IVF

stepped up pressure
on Washington.

The idea of IVF
started to spread in 1980.

1980 is the year that Ronald
Reagan became president,

and one of Reagan's
constituencies was

the conservative,
religious Republicans,

and so Reagan made sure
that there would be

no federal funding for any
research on human embryos.

Politicians scrambled
to placate both sides.

If it could move forward without
federal involvement,

I think most people in Congress
and the state legislatures

were ready to say,
"God bless it.

It's off my desk."

It wasn't that IVF was banned;

it was just that federal funds
couldn't be used.

So it was a very clever
political ploy

in the United States.

It could be done freely
in private enterprise,

but we weren't going to use
any government funds

and so the government was being
more "ethical" that way.

And that's the way
the entire history of IVF began

in the United States.

♪ ♪

IVF in America
would start up again

with two physicians
on the verge of retirement.

Drs. Howard and Georgeanna Jones
were leading experts

in reproductive medicine
at Johns Hopkins.

Even Robert Edwards had sought
the couple's advice.

All that was behind them.

Now, when Georgeanna
and I had to retire,

the question was:
What do we do?

Do we go fishing?

We consulted our children...
And we have three children...

and they unanimously voted
that we should go fishing.

The Joneses were ready to settle
into a quiet academic life

in Norfolk, Virginia,
when their plans were up-ended

by the birth of Louise Brown.

The reporter
from the local newspaper

came to our home on the day
that Louise Brown had been born.

While we were moving in,
she interviewed us

about this nice thing
had happened.

We gave her all sorts of good
information about that,

and then, as she was leaving,
she said,

"Could this be done in Norfolk?"

And it sounded like
a flip question,

and I gave her a flip answer.

I said, "Of course."

And she said,
"What would it take?"

And I said
it would take some money.

And as a result of that,
a former patient called up

and said, "I see by the paper
you need some money.

How much do you need?"

And I had never been asked
that question before,

and I don't think I've ever been
asked that question since.

The Joneses soon announced their
plan to open an IVF clinic.

Anti-abortion activists
in Norfolk

immediately rallied
their forces to stop them.

This is News 3.

Charles Dean is president
of the Tidewater chapter

of the Virginia Society
for Human Life.

Dean claims that fertilized eggs

have and will be destroyed
by doctors in the clinic.

Basically, the manipulation
and destruction

of human beings, tiny human
beings at their earliest stage,

is... has to be unacceptable
to any civilized society.

Dr. Howard Jones, who heads up
the in vitro clinic,

says that doctors plan to
re-implant all fertilized eggs,

not destroy them.

But fertilization,
whether natural or in vitro,

isn't perfect, he says,

and in those cases,
abortion will be offered

as an alternative.

It seems to me that
it would be... um, unwise

and indeed, um...
even malpractice

not to offer these women
the same opportunity

that patients who are normally
pregnant have.

Anti-abortion groups
found it hard

to fight a technology that
enabled couples to have a baby.

The momentum was now
on the side of IVF.

If you get babies

and they're the biological
offspring of those couples,

and those couples don't have
many other options,

I think most Americans say,
"Who cares?"

Test tube baby technology

is seen by almost every American

as pro-life technology.

On March 1, 1980,

the first in vitro
fertilization clinic in America

opened its doors.

Thousands of women flooded
the Joneses with letters,

phone calls, and telegrams,
begging for the procedure.

In the two years following
the birth of Louise Brown,

there had been numerous attempts
at IVF around the world,

but only two more successes.

The science of in vitro
fertilization

was still in its infancy.

In the beginning, the lab was
a bit of a black box.

We didn't have
a manual to follow.

There hadn't been a number of
published papers to that point

showing us "do this, push that,
collect this, do that."

We had to learn very much on our
own through trial and error.

To start, seven couples

arrived in Norfolk
from across the country.

Following Robert Edwards' model,

the Joneses began tracking
the women's menstrual cycles.

They're all elevated
over the normal,

and we know that...

In that first year when we were
working with natural cycles,

we were forced by the patients'
reproductive biology

to collect eggs when their
bodies said it was appropriate.

So quite often we were
at the hospital

at 1:30 in the morning,
4:00 in the morning.

One of the first things was

that we weren't sure we were
going to get the egg... the egg.

And I recall going back
to the office after each time,

and as I'd walk in the office,

the girls in the office said,
"Did you get it?"

That would be the question,

and most of the time
we had to say no.

A year later,
there were still no pregnancies.

The Joneses were stymied.

We sought the advice
of everybody we could.

One of our colleagues said,
"You need to work in the dark.

You must remember that the sperm
and egg have never seen light."

And therefore, when we began, we
did indeed use infrared lights.

Well, that turned out
not to be the case.

The sperm and egg have
no light receptors

and they don't know whether
it's light or dark.

But this is the type
of technical thing...

and I'm sure I could make
a list of 50 of these

little technical details...
That had to be worked out.

♪ ♪

The turning point came

when Georgeanna Jones started
using hormones

to stimulate her patients'
ovaries to produce more eggs.

♪ ♪

Her decision to begin
using hormones

was a great boon
to our patient population,

because instead of having
a single oocyte

that we would hope
would become fertilized,

we now had two or three

we could work with
in the laboratory,

and thus the chances for our
patients were much greater.

A young couple
from Massachusetts,

Judy and Roger Carr,

were among the first
to try the new method.

Months earlier,
Judy had nearly died

when an embryo lodged
itself outside her uterus.

During emergency surgery, her
fallopian tubes were removed,

leaving her infertile.

My physician walked into
the room with a brochure,

waving it, saying,
"Well, I don't know

if you're interested in
anything like this, but..."

He said, "It's some husband
and wife,

"and they're starting
something new

"for couples that can't
conceive children.

So, you might want
to look into it."

In March 1981,
Judy began a regimen

of three hormone shots a day.

Weeks later, two of her eggs
were retrieved

and one fertilized.

Dr. Jones cautioned the Carrs
not to get their hopes up.

I remember him asking us
specifically,

"Are you... are you
a betting... betting man?"

And he essentially said, "You
know, you put your money down

and you take your chances."

- Soon the results came in...
- Judy was pregnant.

We can't be this lucky.

This could not be happening
to us.

This is like
winning the lottery.

You know, one in a million,
or whatever it is,

and we just happened to be
that one couple.

Can you tell yet what sex
it's going to be?

Is it still too early?

Right now it's probably
still too early.

In another three weeks,
we might be able to tell.

Judy's pregnancy was
remarkably ordinary

until a sonogram raised concern.

As she approached term,

her head size began to fall
to the lower limits of normal.

We were concerned

that this slowing of the head
growth might be associated

with general abnormalities.

Georgeanna kept saying,
"Don't worry.

"Judy's small and Roger's small.

"It's going to be a small baby.

Don't be nervous about it."

For the next month, Howard Jones
could not shake his fear.

In the tense hours before
the scheduled cesarean birth,

he planned for the worst.

I had written out
a press release,

which said that
the baby had been born,

that there was an abnormality,

we were distressed about this,

we hoped that the privacy of
the patient would be regarded.

As he entered the delivery room
on December 28, 1981,

Howard Jones folded the press
release into his pocket.

At 7:46 a.m., America's first
test tube baby was born.

You're going to feel a pushing
on you, is that okay?

Weighing five pounds, 12 ounces,

she was much bigger than
the sonogram had indicated,

and in perfect health.

The Carrs named her Elizabeth.

All right, ladies,
here she is... Elizabeth!

Oh, she's doing great.

Hello! Hello!

The announcement itself was
made by Dr. Howard Jones.

This morning at 7:46,

a daughter was born
to Mrs. Judith Carr,

a 28-year-old school teacher.

The father is
Mr. Roger Carr,

a 30-year-old
mechanical engineer.

Not only was she perfect
and normal,

she had full head of hair
and, you know,

healthy, healthy looking
and very pink and...

and everything you hope for.

When Elizabeth Carr was born,

it emboldened
other medical centers

to go ahead and start up
their own IVF clinics

and to say
to the federal government,

"We're not going to worry about

getting your money for this;
we're going to risk it."

Over the next two decades,
Howard and Georgeanna Jones

would continue to perfect
in vitro fertilization

and train the first generation
of IVF doctors

in the United States.

Okay.

♪ ♪

By 1985, 115 children owed
their existence to the Joneses.

The first baby reunion

was perhaps
the most special to me.

The staircase was just filled

with parents holding
their babies.

And to see all those couples
with those beautiful babies,

that's the first time it hit me
just what had happened

over the course
of the past five years.

♪ ♪

It was a little surprising

how quickly people
got used to IVF.

But not really,
if you think about

how people get used to
all sorts of new technology.

That's sort of the pattern
that it takes

is that at first it seems like
it's abhorrent

and it's something that we
absolutely shouldn't do.

And then for a while it seems
kind of miraculous.

And then after a while, the
technology just becomes part

of the fabric of daily life.

In 1983, ten years
after he stopped

Landrum Shettles' experiment,

Raymond Vande Wiele becomes
the co-director

of the first IVF clinic
in New York City.

It's not because
he was a hypocrite,

or even because he changed
that much.

It's because society changed
and IVF became

just the next thing to do
for infertile couples.

Clinics popped up
all over the place.

Some programs would put
eight embryos back at a time,

to try and get
a better success rate.

Other places would say,
"That's immoral.

We're only going
to use three."

Some people would treat
gay people.

Some people would treat
single moms.

So the whole field wound up
being a kind of wild, wild west

where the free market reigned.

The doctor who gave us
Louise Brown

recalled looking at her
in the Petri dish,

and said, "She was beautiful
then, and she's beautiful now."

There are really very deep
and fundamental differences

between Americans

about some fundamental
ethical questions:

how we regard the human being,
how we regard human life.

We are not united as
a people on these questions.

Since the birth
of Elizabeth Carr,

over 400,000 IVF babies have
been born in America.

There are now
more than two million

"test tube" babies in the world.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

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