Happy Birthday Louise Brown!
24 Jul 2021
We are delighted to have celebrated with Louise many milestones in her life – including her 25th, 35th and 40th birthdays and the launch of her autobiography – hope you have a very special day Louise, from all of your Bourn Hall family.
When Louise Joy Brown was born on the 25th July 1978 she was the world’s first ‘test-tube’ baby, born as the result of IVF, a fertility technique pioneered by Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy.
Her mother Lesley Brown was among many brave women who volunteered for the ground-breaking treatment in the ten years following the first successful blastocyst (an egg fertilised outside the body and grown in the lab for five days). It was their determination, the commitment of the Bourn Hall founders Steptoe, Edwards and Purdy, and the dedication of a team of nurses at Oldham Cottage Hospital that achieved the ‘miracle’ that is Louise.
The second IVF baby – and first boy – Alastair MacDonald was born shortly afterwards.
Bourn Hall Clinic was set up to turn science into medicine and create a robust fertility treatment to give infertile couples the chance of having a baby.
Since those days millions of IVF babies have been born worldwide, bringing, as Lesley predicted, Joy to the lives of so many people.
Louise has lived up to her name and we wish her every happiness.
Happy Birthday Louise Brown!
You can read the full story in Louise’s autobiography ‘My life as the world’s first test-tube baby’
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Katy and Leigh are parents to Charlie after IVF
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