Presenting the First Test-Tube Baby: The Edwards and Steptoe Lecture of 1979

In January 1979, Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe delivered a lecture detailing the ten-year clinical and scientific research programme that led to the birth of Louise Brown, the first baby born utilising IVF. This thoroughly-researched book provides both a full annotated transcript of the lecture as well as recorded reminiscences from those who attended, detailing the contemporary understandings of the event. An essay on the lecture's historical context adds fresh insight into the biographies of Edwards and Steptoe and highlights sources from print and broadcast media that have received scant attention in earlier publications. Current and future implications of the advances in IVF since the first procedure are also explored, examining future medical and scientific possibilities as well as ethical issues that may arise. A foreword by Louise Brown herself places this remarkable leap of science in a personal context, one that so many families have since experienced themselves.

Fiona Kisby Littleton has Masters' degrees and a Ph.D. in Education, History and Musicology from King's College, University College London Institute of Education and Royal Holloway College in the University of London. She was a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Royal Holloway College and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Initially producing publications on Tudor England, her research interests and publication activity have widened considerably over the years and have most recently focused on the history and contents of curricula and textbooks in British schools, fertility education and the history of IVF.

Susan Bewley is Emeritus Professor (honorary) of Obstetrics and Women's Health at King's College London. She was the first woman subspecialist in Maternal-Fetal Medicine in the UK. Her particular research interests are severe maternal morbidity and violence against women. She chaired the Ethics Committee of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and ran Expert Working Groups on Ethics in O&G and Reproductive Ageing.

James Owen Drife is Emeritus Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Leeds and was the Medical Director of the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths. He has been vice-president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and was a columnist for the BMJ.