Word: vitro
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...have a child. Now, finally, the Browns were on the verge of achieving their hearts' desire?in a most spectacular manner. Early in August, she is due to give birth by natural means to a child that her doctors say was conceived not in her body but in vitro (in glass) in a medical laboratory...
...many scientists, there were even more sweeping ramifications. They noted that in-vitro fertilization techniques may give researchers an important new laboratory tool for devising ways of coping with genetic diseases, testing new methods of contraception and, perhaps most important of all, studying close up one of nature's most awesome and still baffling processes: the first stirrings of life. Said one leading specialist on reproductive physiology, Dr. Carl Pauerstein of the University of Texas, of the British work: "It has the potential for adding greatly to the knowledge of the reproductive biology of our species...
Other researchers were far more skeptical of going beyond in-vitro fertilization to the actual implantation of the developing embryo in the uterus. "The potential for misadventure is unlimited," said Dr. John Marshall, head of obstetrics and gynecology at Los Angeles County's Harbor General Hospital. How sure could anyone be that the Browns' baby will not be deformed, he asked. "What if we got an otherwise perfectly formed individual that was a cyclops? Who is responsible? The parents? The doctor? Is the government obligated to take care...
Then, as a last resort, the couple went to Gynecologist Patrick Steptoe of Oldham General Hospital and Cambridge University Physiologist Robert Edwards, a highly respected pair of researchers who for more than a decade have been conducting painstaking experiments on in vitro (Latin for in glass) fertilization...
...carry out any experiment that would end the life of a fetus that had survived abortion, or to conduct any studies that involve keeping fetuses alive artificially -unless they were aimed at preserving the lives of premature babies in general. Researchers would also be prohibited from attempting in vitro (test-tube) fertilization without clearance from a national ethical advisory board. Still, scientists will be able to conduct a wide variety of research. Much valuable knowledge on drugs, pregnancy, birth defects and cancer has already come from carefully conducted fetal studies, and HEW's about-face ensures that this research...