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Netflix is all set to debut its latest real-life-inspired movie, Joy, on November 22, 2024, and this time, it is about an achievement that shook all of mankind. The upcoming British movie by Ben Taylor will tell the story of the first IVF birth, which saw success after over a hundred failed attempts.
The biographical drama will follow the three people involved in the complex scientific procedure, Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards, and Jean Purdy, with a special emphasis on Purdy, whose role in this is often overlooked. The movie will also reportedly be told through Purdy's perspective.
The culmination of this hard work and scientific innovation led to the birth of Louise Joy Brown, who also went on to become the first artificially conceived person to give birth naturally herself.
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The achievement eventually won Robert Edwards a Nobel Prize in 2010. The other two involved in this process had already passed away by then.
Of course, elements of this film have been fictionalized but the core story of three people bringing forth one of the greatest scientific achievements of the century is intact in the tale.
How was Louise Joy Brown born?
After nine years of unsuccessful attempts at conceiving, Lesley and John Brown agreed to be part of the experiment that Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards, and Jean Purdy were performing to conceive a baby artificially.
The team had reportedly tried with over a hundred embryos but none were successful till Lesley Brown. The trio originally started the experiments in the 1960s, with Steptoe collecting eggs from women and trying to fertilize them at the Centre for Human Reproduction in Oldham, near Manchester in northwest England.
Their efforts finally came to fruition when Purdy noticed that Brown's embryonic cells were dividing.
On July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown was born at Oldham General Hospital, Lancashire, by planned Caesarean section. She was deemed healthy at birth and became the first successful baby conceived out of artificial insemination. The process would later be known as in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Though Brown was described as the first test tube baby by the media, she was actually conceived in a petri dish.
Louise Brown went on to have a fulfilling life herself and kept in touch with the two scientists behind her conception. Unfortunately, Purdy had passed away at the age of 39, which means Brown never got to know her. She even spoke about Edwards and the close relationship they shared at Bristol's Old Vic Theatre. She said:
"Bob Edwards I was able to get to know as an adult. He came to my wedding and was the first person I rang when I got pregnant after my parents. I knew him and his family as friends. Unfortunately, Jean Purdy died at the age of 39 and I did not know her."
Edwards also became the only recipient of a Nobel Prize in 2010 for this as the other two had already passed away by this time.
Louise Brown Joy's birth is widely considered one of the biggest scientific achievements of the 20th century.
Netflix's Joy will cover this story in further detail, giving an insight into all that went on during the attempts to conceive Louise Brown.
