History of IVF – There was a transient biochemical pregnancy reported by Australian Foxton School researchers in 1953. John Rock was the first to extract an intact fertilised egg. The first pregnancy achieved through in vitro human fertilization of a human oocyte was reported in The Lancet from the Monash University team in 1973, although it lasted only a few days and would today be called a biochemical pregnancy. There was also an ectopic pregnancy reported by Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards in 1976. In 1977, Steptoe and Edwards successfully carried out a pioneering conception which resulted in the birth of the world’s first baby to be conceived by IVF, Louise Brown on 25 July 1978.In October 1978, it was reported that Subash Mukhopadyaya relatively unknown physician from Kolkata, India was performing experiments on his own with primitive instruments and a household refrigerator and this resulted in a test tube baby, later named as “Durga” (alias Kanupriya Agarwal) who was born on October 3, 1978. However, state authorities prevented him from presenting his work at scientific conferences and, in the absence of scientific evidence; his work is not recognized by the international scientific community.
Steptoe and Edwards were responsible for the world’s second (confirmed) baby conceived by IVF, Alastair MacDonald born on 14 January 1979 in Glasgow. A team led by Ian Johnston and Alex Lopata were responsible for Australia’s first baby conceived by IVF, Candice Reed born on 23 June 1980 in Melbourne. It was the subsequent use of stimulated cycles with Clomiphene citrate and the use of human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) to control and time oocyte maturation, thus controlling the time of collection, that converted IVF from a research tool to a clinical treatment.
This was followed by a total of 14 pregnancies resulting in nine births in 1981 with the Monash University team. The ability to freeze and subsequently thaw and transfer embryos has significantly improved the feasibility of IVF use. The other very significant milestone in IVF was the development of the intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) of single sperms by André van Steirteghem in Brussels, 1992. This has enabled men with minimal sperm production to achieve pregnancies. ICSI is sometimes used in conjunction with sperm recovery, using a testicular fine needle or open testicular biopsy.