The First Test-Tube Baby

Birth watch in Britain for an infant conceived in the laboratory

The Director ... continued with some account of the technique for preserving the excised ovary alive and actively developing; passed on to a consideration of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity ... actually showed them ... how the eggs ... were inspected for abnormalities, counted and transferred to a porous receptacle; how ... this receptacle was immersed in a warm bouillion containing free-swimming spermatozoa ...

—Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)

To millions of people in Britain and elsewhere around the world last week, it seemed as...

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