Recently, the 12th National Conference on Reproductive Medicine of the Chinese Medical Association was held in Chongqing, bringing together well-known experts and professors at home and abroad. At the opening ceremony, a special guest was welcomed: Louise Brown, the world's first IVF baby. Her appearance was warmly welcomed by everyone present and became the focus of the meeting.
Although Louise does not know anything about reproductive medicine, she herself represents the starting point of human assisted reproductive technology and has witnessed the continuous development and significant progress in the field of IVF. Louise, who is exactly 40 years old this year, with short blond shoulder-length hair and a smile on her face, came to China for the first time, and took advantage of such a grand occasion to slowly tell her extraordinary life on stage.
Quack to the ground – causing a global sensation
Louise Brown was born on July 25, 1978 in Oldham City Hospital, England, and was the first IVF born through assisted reproductive technology in the world. Therefore, from the moment she fell to the ground, she was endowed with extraordinary significance, which caused a sensation in the global medical community at that time, and was destined to be in the spotlight for the rest of her life.
It is reported that after Louise was born, her family received a lot of emails, all greeting cards and blessings from all over the world, at that time there were more than 400 greeting cards nailed to the wall of the clinic, and many of them were from women who had not been able to get pregnant for many years, and they also looked forward to the day in the future, they could have their own dreams of having children through IVF technology.
Childhood - questioned as an "ordinary person".
After her birth, Louise underwent more than 100 tests, including blood tests, to prove that she was no different from a naturally conceived healthy baby, but because she was conceived through "in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer", her birth has been accompanied by great controversy.
Louise herself recalls that when she was a child, she went out with her parents and would often be stared at for a long time, and many would ask her mother.
Being a Mother – Understanding the Meaning of IVF for Infertility Patients
Although Louise grew up in the world's eye, it didn't bother or negatively affect her life, she was optimistic and enjoyed life, not only married in 2004, but also conceived a son two years after marriage.
It wasn't until she became a mother that Louise was shocked by her mother's choice for the first time, she said: "Do you know, in fact, it wasn't until I gave birth to my son Cameron 11 years ago that I completely realized the true meaning of assisted reproductive technology for infertility patients. I finally understood how hopeful my birth meant for those who couldn't conceive a child. Indeed, Louise's birth has rekindled the desire of many families who are difficult to conceive. And that's thanks to her mother's courageous choice and the tireless efforts of IVF pioneers Edwards and Stepto, who did what no one else dared to do 40 years ago.
Today, IVF has gone through its 40th year, and more than 8 million IVF babies have been born worldwide, but the doubts that once existed in Louise still linger in the hearts of many people. In this regard, HRC in the United States has conducted a professional analysis of the two major focuses that everyone is more concerned about, hoping to let more people get out of the misunderstanding.
1. What is the difference between IVF and natural babies?
IVF refers to the use of artificial methods to remove eggs and sperm from the human body, combine fertilization in vitro, and cultivate into embryos, and then transfer back to the mother's uterine cavity to complete implantation, pregnancy until October pregnancy and delivery of the baby.
HRC experts in the United States said that IVF is the same as naturally conceived babies, and there is no difference in nature, but there are slight differences in the way of fertilization and the growth environment when the fertilized egg develops into an embryo. IVF assisted conception outlawed the function of the fallopian tubes, and the fertilization of sperm and eggs is done in a petri dish freely or by ICSI technology, and then it is cultivated in vitro until the third day to form an early embryo (domestic) On the fifth day, a blastocyst is formed (USA), and then it is implanted into the uterine cavity through a transfer catheter, and that's it, and the subsequent pregnancy process is no different from natural conception.
2. Do babies born through IVF worry about health and intellectual problems?
As we all know, the baby's intelligence problems are mainly related to the genetics of both parents and the acquired growth environment, and will not change because the place of conception is in the test tube and the other is in the fallopian tube. If you feel that manual manipulation will cause problems and deficiencies in mental and physical development, then you should be worried.
Taking HRC in the United States as an example, it has 9 hospitals, 21 authoritative IVF experts and 4 world-class high-end embryo laboratories, with a very high degree of specialization, and has been focusing on providing assisted reproductive services for the benefit of infertility patients for 30 years. Each reproductive specialist in the group has superb medical technology level and rich clinical practice experience, and has won many international and domestic awards in the field of reproductive endocrinology and infertility obstetrics and gynecology. In the process of IVF, from the preliminary physical examination, ovulation induction, egg retrieval, sperm retrieval, sperm and egg fertilization, blastocyst culture, genetic testing, blastocyst transfer, can be strictly controlled and standardized, to ensure the success of the IVF.
Especially in the control of the baby's health, it is made into sections by accurately extracting the peripheral cells of the blastocyst (which will develop into the placenta in the future, and the quality of the blastocyst will not be affected by cell extraction), and then using PGS PGD technology to detect its genes, which can comprehensively detect whether the 23 pairs of chromosomes of the blastocyst are abnormal, diagnose 300 kinds of heredity, and then select the healthy blastocyst for transfer, which can not only ensure the health of the baby after birth, but also enable the fetus to better inherit the excellent genes of the parents. This is not possible with a naturally born baby.