American Experience

The Impact of the First Test Tube Baby

Robert George: I think when Louise Brown was born, it really startled the public and got people thinking and talking… at least initially, [it] made a lot of people more positive toward biotechnology than they had been. After all, her birth appeared to make it the case that the problem of infertility would be solved. People were too optimistic about that. Of course in the majority of cases, in vitro fertilization does not result in a successful pregnancy. But nevertheless, a lot of people were very enthusiastic and saw this as solving a terrible problem. And infertility certainly is a terrible problem, terrible burden for people to have to bear.

Arthur Caplan: The day Louise Brown got made was the day that a core aspect of human life, reproduction, moved from a mystery to a technology, moved from something that we were in awe of to something that we manipulate. And that was really the significance. It put reproduction, if you will, under our control. If you add Louise Brown to the birth control pill, you really see a fundamental shift in human life, because what used to be something that most of our ancestors thought of as determined by God or the gods, all of a sudden got determined by a person or two people about when and how to have a kid. As profound as you’re going to get, in all of human existence. There’s nothing more contentious, morally in dispute, and the object of discussion, than sex. So learning to do things without sex, that might lead to babies, learning to make a break between procreation and reproduction, there’s nothing more basic you’re going to change before or since in the history of humanity.