In Vitro Fertilization Comes to America

This is a story about the struggle to develop in vitro fertilization technology in America, told by the pioneer, Howard W. Jones, Jr., M.D. "This is an inspirational book from one of the giants of medicine in the last century," Suheil Muasher, M.D., Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

It begins with the retirement of two internationally famous doctors, Howard Jones and his wife Georgeanna, after long careers at Johns Hopkins University. The day they arrived to make a new home in Norfolk, Virginia, the world woke up to an announcement that Robert Edwards and his colleague, Patrick Steptoe, had delivered the first baby conceived in a Petri dish ('in vitro') in a northern English city. When a local newspaper heard that the Joneses had worked with Edwards, a future Nobelist, the reporter asked if it could be done in America. It took a lot of toil with sparse resources to build a program against bitter resistance in Norfolk, a conservative city in Virginia. Finally, success came in 1981 with the birth of Elizabeth Carr, making the United States the third country in the world to have a 'test-tube' baby. And now, millions of people owe their existence to IVF.

For the rest of his life to the age of 104, Howard promoted IVF and published research and books on human infertility, embryology, and medical ethics and law, including several after becoming a centenarian. A charismatic doctor in his earlier career, he became an almost mythic figure in American medicine, deeply engaged in the latest advances and the social reactions to the controversial treatment, and even defending the new technology at the Vatican.

This book was edited and compiled by Roger Gosden, the last Howard and Georgeanna Jones Professor of Reproductive Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School. His wife, Lucinda Veeck, worked with the Joneses from the beginning as director of the embryology laboratory before moving to Cornell in New York City.

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