26 Jul 2024 Women: The Unsung Pioneers in the Development of IVF

While male scientists have traditionally received most of the credit for developing the field of assisted reproductive technology (ART), many women who pioneered vital components of the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process have remained in the background. Yet without their often-heroic efforts, the rapid technological advancement and vastly improved outcomes characteristic of modern fertility treatment would not have been possible.

Women’s groundbreaking work in embryonic development, which resulted in the first IVF baby, has largely been ignored, even as their scientific ingenuity, countless hours of meticulous research, and innovative experimentation can be credited with providing hope to thousands of intended parents facing infertility. Their under-recognized contributions have left an indelible mark on the field, transforming IVF from a daring experiment into a standard medical procedure benefiting millions of would-be parents. The time is long past to recognize these unsung heroes for their life-affirming work.

In 1938, John Rock, a prominent obstetrics and gynecology physician in Boston and founder of an infertility clinic at the Free Hospital for Women, hired lab technician Miriam Menkin with the goal of finding out if IVF was even possible. According to PBS, for nearly six years, Menkin worked with microscopic eggs taken from ovaries that Rock had surgically removed during hysterectomies. She cultured these eggs, placed them in petri dishes, and added donated sperm in an effort to achieve fertilization. In 1944, after leaving a petri dish with sperm and an egg in contact for much longer than she had previously, Menkin became the first person to perform and witness the first fertilization of a human egg outside the human body.

 Dr. Wanda Ronner, a professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of several history of reproductive health books, tells Today, “Menkin was absolutely imperative to Rock’s success. Without her, Rock would not have been able to achieve this. He was the surgeon, he was taking out the tissue, but she was the person in the lab, trying to get these eggs fertilized.”

Jean Purdy played a crucial role in the development of in vitro fertilization (IVF) alongside British researchers Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe. After the publication of Rock and Menkin's 1944 article on IVF, Edwards, a biologist, and Steptoe, a gynecologist, began their efforts to conceive a baby using IVF. Purdy, a trained nurse and self-taught embryologist, joined their team in 1968 and became instrumental in their research. She was responsible for combining the egg and sperm to fertilize the embryo.

In 1978, their efforts culminated in the birth of Louise Brown, the world’s first baby conceived through IVF, making Purdy the clinical embryologist for the first IVF baby. Despite initial public skepticism about IVF, the successful birth marked a significant milestone in the world of ART. Edwards, Steptoe, and Purdy went on to launch an IVF clinic in 1980. Tragically, Purdy died from melanoma before she turned 40, shortly after the clinic's establishment.

Edwards and Steptoe both acknowledged Purdy as an equal partner. According to The New York Times, Edwards emphasized her contributions in a letter to the Oldham Health Authority in 1981, stating, “I regard her as an equal contributor to Patrick Steptoe and myself.”

After earning her medical degree in 1936, Dr. Georgeanna Jones completed postgraduate training at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the National Cancer Institute. She became the gynecologist-in-charge at the Gynecological Endocrine Clinic and director of the Laboratory of Reproductive Physiology at Johns Hopkins in 1938. Alongside her husband, Dr. Howard W. Jones, Jr., she established the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology at Johns Hopkins in 1939.

In 1978, the same year the first successful IVF procedure was performed in England, the Joneses were invited to develop a similar program in the U.S. per the  National Institutes of Health. They accepted and founded the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia. Their work at the institute led to the birth of Elizabeth Carr, the first IVF baby born in the U.S. in 1981, marking another significant milestone in reproductive medicine.

“There were very few women in reproductive endocrinology in this time – very few women who were IVF pioneers – and she was one,” Margaret March a historian of reproductive medicine and reproductive sexuality at Rutgers University, told Today.

According to an article written by Martin H. Johnson, FRCOG, FMedSci, FRS, Emeritus University Professor of Reproductive Sciences in the Department of Physiology Development and Neuroscience at Christ’s College Cambridge, and published in the National Library of Medicine, there were almost 300 women who underwent early IVF procedures between 1969 and 1978. Only two, Lesley Brown, mother of Louise Brown (the first IVF baby ever born), and Grace MacDonald, mother of Alistair MacDonald (the second IVF baby ever born), were known. Although the remaining hundreds of anonymous women did not become pregnant, they still underwent hormone stimulations, laparoscopic egg recovery under general anesthesia, and unsuccessful attempts at embryo transfer. The article goes on to report that 7 percent of women continued with four or more unsuccessful IVF cycles, with one patient continuing unsuccessfully for 10 IVF cycles.

In the article, Johnson quotes Patrick Steptoe’s son, Andrew, British Heart Foundation Professor of Psychology at the University College London, from a tribute speech to Steptoe, Edwards, Purdy, and the anonymous women who helped advance IVF. Steptoe says, “Most of all, I think about the infertile women themselves. They came year after year to Kershaw’s [Cottage Hospital] to undergo the processes of egg removal and embryo transfer. Although they will have harbored hope that they would be lucky, most must have known that there was next to no chance of success for them personally. But they willingly gave themselves so that others would benefit in the future.”

Even as women of the past finally receive well-deserved recognition for their work, women of the present continue helping other intended parents with their paths to parenthood. Alex Webster, a 31-year-old medical writer from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, has donated 88 eggs to help four couples conceive. Inspired by a friend’s need for donor eggs in 2016, Webster contacted TFP Oxford Fertility and was accepted as a donor. “I’m possibly not geared fo motherhood as much as some,” she tells the New York Post. “Because there are women who need help creating their own families, this is where I can fit in.”

In November 2022, her first donation resulted in 42 eggs, followed by another 46 eggs eight months later. Though she doesn't know the recipients, she values the impact her donations have on their lives. She goes on to state in the New York Post, “This process is three weeks long, but the long-term implications of a family being able to have a child is worth it.”

The women in the field of ART who conducted years of research, challenged conventional medical boundaries, and made groundbreaking discoveries paved the way for the first successful IVF births and were crucial to the technology’s inception. Today in the U.S., 2.5 percent of all births are now a result of successful IVF cycles, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). The ongoing involvement of women in IVF underscores their indispensable impact on the evolution and success of assisted reproductive technology. At IFLG, we celebrate all women who have had an impact on the advancement of assisted reproductive technology and look forward to an exciting and promising future in which women continue to break the mold.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions regarding your fertility journey. We are happy to help!