The world’s very first IVF baby, Louise Brown, celebrated her 36th birthday on Friday, 25th July 2014. Born at Oldham General Hospital, Manchester, Louise's birth saw her parents, John and Lesley Brown, become the first people to successfully undergo in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
 
Talking about the milestone, Professor Simon Fishel, who was part of the original pioneering team that produced the world’s first IVF baby in 1978, said: “IVF was born 36 years ago when Louise Brown was delivered following years of work by my erstwhile colleagues Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards and John Webster in Oldham near Manchester. At that time IVF created a flurry of international interest but mainly outrage and many detractors from all professional walks of life. We were just four practitioners carrying this torch of hope amongst a world of antagonism.”
 
Talking about the development of IVF since Louise’s birth, Professor Fishel, who is currently the CEO of Beacon Care Fertility in Ireland and Care Fertility in the UK added:  “Today, with the birth of well over 5 million babies, it has become routine practice in most countries of the world and it continues to develop technologies to help those who can't have children or want to eliminate devastating genetic disorders from their family lineage. Although, all those years ago we had great hopes for helping thousands of people to have their own family, we could not have dreamt of the development of the technologies, the improvements in opportunities, dramatic increase in success rates and how much we would learn about the problems of infertility which has been on the increase due to many factors not least lifestyle and environmental toxins. We would see the introduction of amazing technologies that would allow us to freeze the eggs of women, to specialised incubators with internal cameras that can seal off the embryo for five days whilst taking thousands of photographs that are electronically transmitted to the Embryologist.”  
 
The professor added that “success rates and the opportunity for achieving the dream has never been higher” and with the ability to “offer treatment to more than 90% of infertile couples [...] it has been an amazing journey in a new medical science and we are still creating more and more opportunities and higher success rates every year.”

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