Word: britain
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...millions of people in Britain and elsewhere around the world last week, it seemed as if Huxley's prophetic vision had become reality. Banner headlines in Britain called it OUR MIRACLE and BABY OF THE CENTURY. On television newscasts in Europe and the U.S., stories about an obscure British couple and the abstruse subject of embryology shouldered aside items about the Middle East, international trade balances and inflation. Some commentators heralded the coming birth as a miracle of modern medicine, comparable to the first kidney and heart transplants. Theologians?and more than a few prominent scientists?sounded warnings about...
...first public hint of the impending birth of a British test-tube baby came last spring not from London's Fleet Street but from, Manhattan's South Street, in the New York Post-After getting a tip that Britain's Dr. Patrick Steptoe was on the verge of success with an in vitro fertilization technique, Post Reporter Sharon Churcher placed an overseas call to Steptoe. He let it slip that a test-tube baby might soon be born, and Churcher broke the news on April...
Churcher's carefully worded story was scarcely noticed by the public. But a similar report a day later by Britain's Oldharn Evening Chronicle caught the attention of the sensation-seeking National Enquirer. Within 24 hours, half a dozen reporters left the Enquirer's Lantana, Fla., headquarters and arrived on Steptoe's doorstep to buy worldwide rights to the story of the test-tube baby. When Steptoe hesitated, the Floridians looked to other sources. According to London's Sunday Times, the Enquirer team tried to buy details from nurses at Oldham and District General Hospital...
...that did not sit well with the Mail's principal tabloid rival in Britain, the Express, which had dropped out of the bidding at $190,000. Express reporters claim they had learned that the yet unidentified father was driving three hours each way to visit his wife. So they staked out the hospital parking lot, jotted down license numbers of male motorists who looked as if they might be expectant fathers and traced them through Britain's motor licensing bureau. How? "By subterfuge, even bribery!" speculated an angry civil servant. The Express soon narrowed the search to Brown...
...EXCLUSIVE followed EXCLUSIVE, Britain's more serious dailies were beginning to find the affair distasteful. The Times fretted that if the orgy of publicity continued, it might be traumatic for the child. The Guardian denounced "chequebook journalism" and thrashed Oldham health officials for allowing the Mail to control news from the hospital. Embarrassed, regional health authorities ordered that any bulletins be given to all comers. Sniffed Guardian Editor Peter Preston: "The research, the doctors, the hospital-all were funded by the taxpayer. It's as if the Prime Minister said, 'For 350 quid I'll give...