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Americans and Assisted Reproduction: The Past as Prologue

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The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History

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Abstract

In 2010, the venerable in vitro fertilization (IVF) pioneer Howard Jones used the occasion of his 100th birthday to recommend that his younger colleagues adopt a bold new research agenda, including reproductive cloning (‘somatic reproduction’) and foetal gestation in artificial uteri (‘exogenesis’). Most couples, he argued, desire genetically related offspring; these technologies could provide them. Seemingly straight out of dystopian fiction, for Jones these techniques were simply unconventional means to a time-honoured end. Such attempts to ‘normalize’ new reproductive technologies are not new but date back to the earliest days of research into human IVF. This chapter explores the history of IVF in the context of today’s controversies over new varieties of assisted reproduction, providing a nuanced understanding of what has become a deep divide in the way we understand such technologies, as both vehicles to accomplish a ‘traditional’ objective – having a much-desired child – and as alien, and alienating, interventions with negative long-term repercussions.

Research for this chapter was supported by an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research, 2014–17, from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Walter E. Duka, M.S. and Alan H. DeCherney, M.D., From the Beginning: A History of the American Fertility Society, 1944–1994 (Birmingham, AL, 1994).

  2. 2.

    American Society for Reproductive Medicine, ‘ASRM Honors Dr. Jones Upon His Centennial Birthday’ (25 December 2010): http://www.asrm.org/Jones/.Accessed 6 December 2016.

  3. 3.

    Howard W. Jones, Jr., Personhood Revisited: Reproductive Technology, Bioethics, Religion and the Law (Minneapolis, MN, 2013), p. 145; Ethics Committee of the ASRM, ‘Human Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer and Cloning’, Fertility and Sterility, 98:4 (October 2012), pp. 804, 806; M. D. R. Evans and Jonathan Kelley, ‘US Attitudes Toward Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research’, Nature Biotechnology, 29:6 (June 2011).

  4. 4.

    It may go back further. See Bridget E. Gurtler, ‘Synthetic Conception: Artificial Insemination and the Transformation of Reproduction and Family in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century America’. Unpublished PhD thesis, Rutgers University, 2013. Although Artificial Insemination is not ‘assisted reproduction’ in the technical definition of the term, which refers only to reproduction that begins with the fertilization of an egg outside a woman’s body, it was considered quite controversial.

  5. 5.

    The Free Hospital was founded in the late nineteenth century as a charitable institution that specialized in the diseases of women.

  6. 6.

    James M. Snodgrass, John Rock, and Miriam Menkin, ‘The Validity of “Ovulation Potentials”’, American Journal of Physiology, 140:3 (December 1943). The companion study of early human embryos is discussed in Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner, The Fertility Doctor: John Rock and the Reproductive Revolution (Baltimore, MD, 2008), pp. 92–3; ‘Conception in a Watch Glass’, New England Journal of Medicine, 217 (21 October 1937), p. 678; Miriam Menkin, ‘Notes for Lecture, American Association of Anatomists’ (1948) Typescript, p. 3. Series VII, Miriam Menkin Personal Records, Box 22, Folder 62, John Rock Papers, Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard University (JR-CLM).

  7. 7.

    Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (New York, 2006) [1932].

  8. 8.

    J.D. Ratcliff, ‘No Father to Guide Them’, Collier’s, 20 March 1937, pp. 19, 73. This article does not draw a clear distinction between Pincus’s IVF experiments, which were controversial enough, and his work on parthenogenesis. See Marsh and Ronner, The Fertility Doctor, pp. 141–2.

  9. 9.

    Miriam Menkin, ‘Untitled Talk on In Vitro Fertilization at Cold Spring Harbor’, on either 18 or 28 July (the first number is illegible), 1949, JR-CLM; George V. Smith, ‘The Life of a Physician’, unpublished memoir, typescript, 1982, p. 84, JR-CLM; Miriam Menkin, ‘Figures on Number of Patients Studied’ (ova research 1 July 1938 – 30 June 1944), JR-CLM. Ultimately, just 47 of the women produced the 138 eggs that were considered suitable for the insemination attempts.

  10. 10.

    Clinic patients either received free care or were billed on a sliding scale depending on their family income. About 10% of the participants were private patients.

  11. 11.

    Joan Younger, ‘Life Begins in a Test Tube’, Collier’s, 10 April 1945, p. 27.

  12. 12.

    Miriam Menkin, ‘Cold Spring Harbor’, pp. 5–14; John Rock and Miriam Menkin, ‘In Vitro Fertilization and Cleavage of Human Ovarian Eggs’, Science, 100:2588, 4 August 1944, pp. 105–7; Marsh and Ronner, The Fertility Doctor, p. 114.

  13. 13.

    Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner, The Empty Cradle: Infertility in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Baltimore, MD, 1996), pp. 145, 160.

  14. 14.

    ‘Test Tube Babies’, New York Times, 6 August 1944; Howard W. Blakeslee, ‘Ova of Humans Fertilized in Test Tube for First Time’, Washington Post, 5 August 1944; Time, 14 August 1944, p. 75.

  15. 15.

    Robert S. Bird, ‘A Human Ovum is Fertilized in Test Tube for the First Time’, Clip** in JR-CLM, most likely from the New York Herald Tribune, 5 August 1944.

  16. 16.

    Younger, ‘Life Begins in a Test Tube’, p. 49.

  17. 17.

    Marsh and Ronner, The Empty Cradle, pp. 171–186; Younger, ‘Test Tube’, p. 27.

  18. 18.

    Marsh and Ronner, The Fertility Doctor, pp. 95–7, 99–103, 108; Luigi Mastroianni, Interview with Wanda Ronner, July 5, 2007; Younger, ‘Test Tube’, p. 27.

  19. 19.

    Letter from Mrs C to John Rock, 17 August 1944; Rock’s reply, 31 August 1944, JR-CLM.

  20. 20.

    Letter from Mrs M to Miriam Menkin, 9 October 1944; Rock’s response, 16 October 1944, JR-CLM.

  21. 21.

    Time, 14 August 1944, p. 75.

  22. 22.

    John Rock to Mrs W, 29 November 1945, JR-CLM.

  23. 23.

    John Rock to Mrs P, 30 July 1948, JR-CLM.

  24. 24.

    J.D. Ratcliff, ‘Babies by Proxy’, Look Magazine, 31 January 1950, p. 44.

  25. 25.

    John Rock to Mrs E. M., 5 February 1950, JR-CLM.

  26. 26.

    John Rock to Mrs B. L., 22 June 1951, JR-CLM.

  27. 27.

    Loretta McLaughlin, John Rock, the Pill, and the Church: The Biography of a Revolution (Boston, MA, 1982), p. 87.

  28. 28.

    Miriam Menkin, ‘Cold Spring Harbor Talk’, typescript dated 26 July 1949, JR-CLM.

  29. 29.

    Letter from Miriam Menkin to Dr Delpla (no first name listed), 3 November 1961, JR-CLM.

  30. 30.

    Marsh and Ronner, The Empty Cradle, p. 230; Daniele Petrucci Interview, CBC Television News, 9 February 1961: http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/health/reproductive-issues/fighting-infertility/test-tube-baby-experiments.html. Accessed 6 December 2016. In 1964 there were reports that Petrucci claimed to have overseen 28 IVF births. See Ottowa Citizen, 24 September 1964, for one such report.

  31. 31.

    R. G. Edwards, B. D. Bavister, and P. C. Steptoe, ‘Early Stages of Fertilization in vitro of Human Oocytes Matured In Vitro’, Nature, 221, 15 February 1969. See ‘In Vitro Fertilization of Human Ova and Blastocyst Transfer: An Invitational Symposium’, Journal of Reproductive Medicine, 11:5 (November 1973), especially pp. 201–2.

  32. 32.

    R. G. Edwards, P. C. Steptoe, and J. M. Purdy, ‘Fertilization and Cleavage in vitro of Preovulator Human Oocytes’, Nature, 227, 26 September 1970; P. C. Steptoe, R. G. Edwards, and J. M. Purdy, ‘Human Blastocysts Grown in Culture’, Nature, 229, 8 January 1971, pp. 132–3; Times, 19 February 1969, p. 9, Letters to the editor; also letter from Lord Rothschild, Nature, 221, 8 March 1969, p. 981. M.C. Chang was also sceptical. See ‘First Test Tube Fertilization?’, Medical World News, 7 March 1969, p. 17; Judy Ramsey, ‘Controversial Test Tube Conceptions’, Medical World News, 4 April 1969, pp. 27–8.

  33. 33.

    With apologies to Huxley’s later book of that title. Albert Rosenfeld, ‘Science, Sex, and Tomorrow’s Morality’, Life, 66:23, 13 June 1969, pp. 39, 50.

  34. 34.

    Nicholas Panagakos, ‘Life in a Test Tube: Nearer than you Think’, Boston Herald Traveler, 11 October 1970, p. 8; ‘Invit: The View from the Glass Oviduct’, Saturday Review, 65, 9 September 1972, p. 68; David M. Rorvik, ‘The Test-Tube Baby is Coming’, Look, 35 (18 May 1971), pp. 83–8; David R. Zimmerman, ‘Test-Tube Babies: How Soon?’, Ladies Home Journal, 87 (September 1970), p. 32.

  35. 35.

    Marsh and Ronner, Empty Cradle, pp. 210–12, 214–15, 245.

  36. 36.

    Leslie Reagan, When Abortion was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1997).

  37. 37.

    Clifford Grobstein, From Chance to Purpose: An Appraisal of External Human Fertilization (Reading, MA, 1981), p. 114. Over the past several decades, ethics boards have come and gone, but the funding ban remains in place.

  38. 38.

    Leon Kass, ‘Babies by Means of In Vitro Fertilization: Unethical Experiments on the Unborn?’, New England Journal of Medicine, 285:21, 18 November 1971; Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Ethics Advisory Board, Report and Conclusions: HEW Support of Research Involving Human In Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer (4 May 1979). Reprinted in Grobstein, From Chance to Purpose, p. 182.

  39. 39.

    Georgeanna Seegar Jones, ‘Women: The Impact of Advances in Fertility Control on Their Future – A Presidential Address’, Fertility and Sterility, 22:6 (June 1971), especially pp. 347, 349; ‘Symposium’, pp. 192–4; Firestone, Dialectic of Sex, p. 197.

  40. 40.

    Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York, 1983), pp. 391–2.

  41. 41.

    Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe, A Matter of Life: The Story of a Medical Breakthrough (New York, 1980).

  42. 42.

    Linda Witt, ‘Two Nashville Doctors May Help An American Mother Have Her Own Test-Tube Baby’, People Magazine, 14 August 1978; ‘Pierre Soupart, Pioneer in Laboratory Fertilization’, New York Times, 12 June 1981; Marie-Claire Orgebin-Crist, ‘Pierre Soupart, 1923–1981’, Journal of Andrology, 3:6 (November-December 1982), p. 354.

  43. 43.

    Witt, ‘Two Nashville Doctors’.

  44. 44.

    ‘A Young Couple Await their Test-Tube Baby’, Ebony, 34:1 (November 1978).

  45. 45.

    Grobstein, Chance to Purpose; Stephen S. Hall, Merchants of Immortality (New York, 2003), p. 99.

  46. 46.

    ‘Hearings Asked on Va. Clinic for Test-Tube Babies’, Washington Post, 15 January 1980, p. B2; also 2 February 1980, p. A3, and 17 May 1980, p. A2; Richard Cohen, ‘Test-Tube Babies: Why Add to a Surplus?’, Washington Post, 3 February 1980, p. B1; Ellen Goodman, ‘The Baby Louise Clinic’, Washington Post, 15 January 1980, p. A15; editorial, Washington Post, 19 January 1980, p. A14.

  47. 47.

    ‘Nation’s First ‘Test-Tube’ Baby Due within Days’, Washington Post, 25 December 1981, pp. A6-A7; New York Times, 29 December 1981, pp. 1, C1.

  48. 48.

    Marsh and Ronner, Empty Cradle, p. 238.

  49. 49.

    ‘Government Urged to Actively Support Test Tube Baby Research’, Washington Post, 4 January 1982, p. A3; ‘U.S. Scientist Barred from Speaking at Workshop’, Washington Post, 14 September 1982, p. C3; ‘Norfolk Team in Forefront of Test-Tube Baby Boom’, Washington Post, 13 September 1982, p. A2.

  50. 50.

    Debora L. Spar, The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception (Boston, MA, 2006).

  51. 51.

    Nightlight, ‘Snowflakes Embryo Adoption and Donation’: http://www.nightlight.org/snowflakes-embryo-donation-adoption/. Accessed 6 December 2016.

  52. 52.

    Francine Coeytaux, Marcy Darnovsky, Susan Berke Fogel, ‘Assisted Reproduction and Choice in the Biotech Age: Recommendations For a Way Forward’, Contraception Journal (January 2011). Judith Daar, ‘Federalizing Embryo Transfers: Taming the Wild West of Reproductive Medicine?’, Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, 23:2 (2012), argues that there is sufficient professional regulation and state tort law. However, national regulation is virtually non-existent.

  53. 53.

    Freedom to Marry, ‘Winning in the States’: http://www.freedomtomarry.org/states/. Accessed 6 December 2016. Adam Liptak, ‘Supreme Court Ruling Makes Same-Sex Marriage a Right Nationwide’, New York Times, 26 June 2015. Natalie Angier, ‘The Baby Boom for Gay Parents’, New York Times, 26 November 2013, p. D4.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Rutgers University, Camden and New Brunswick, NJ, USA

      Margaret Marsh

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    1. Margaret Marsh
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    Correspondence to Margaret Marsh .

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    1. School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

      Gayle Davis

    2. Department of History, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, UK

      Tracey Loughran

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    Marsh, M. (2017). Americans and Assisted Reproduction: The Past as Prologue. In: Davis, G., Loughran, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52080-7_28

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