Lesley Brown, first test tube baby mom -- RIP

2008 photo showing Lesley Brown
between Robert Edwards and her daughter and grandson
(photo from nobelprize.org)

Until 1978, the creation and successful birth of a test tube baby was something straight from the comic books. While there had been many attempts at artificially induced birth, none had succeeded in reaching anything close to full term. Lesley Brown changed history, and impacted science's increasingly successful intervention in human biological processes, by carrying and delivering a test tube baby.

As the BBC noted in its obit of the 64-year-old Brown, she found herself mercilessly hounded by the media. She managed to escape its clutches long enough to experience her pregnancy without intrusion from money-mad paparazzi and heartless tabloid journalists. As with many social pioneers in the mid to late 20th Century, her journey was a psychologically demanding one. She had guts.

The most touching aspect of the BBC piece was its accompanying photograph. It showed Brown, her daughter, her grandson, and Cambridge professor Robert Edwards, one of the scientists responsible for the test tube baby herself. Edwards won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his development of in-vitro fertilization.