A Brief History of ART & EGG Donation

• 1790

  A Scottish doctor inseminated a woman with her husband’s sperm

• 1884

  A woman was inseminated with donor sperm

• 1944

  Pioneering physicians John Rock and Miriam Menkin reported the first in vitro fertilization of a human egg, though no pregnancy resulted.

• 1954

  First successful pregnancy using frozen sperm

• 1978

  First baby, Louise Brown, conceived through IVF was born on July 25th 1978 by Prof. Robert Edwards

• 1982

  The first IVF twins, Taylor and Freddie Axton, were born at Queen Elizabeth hospital in United Kindom

  The world’s first delivery after intrauterine insemination(IUI) was done

  First successful life birth through donor egg was recorded in California

• 1984

  Birth of world’s first frozen embryo, which was a breakthrough in ART history

  First surrogacy embryo transfer baby was born in California, USA

• 1987

  Norway was the first country in the world to pass a law on ART on June 12th, 1987 (Norwegian law on Assisted Reproduction and Genetics)

• 1988

  First baby was born with the help of ART in China

• 1989

  First report on biopsy taking from preimplanted human embryos and sex detection by DNA amplification was published

• 1992

  First successful pregnancy after intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) by Gianpiero Palermo and Andre Van-Steirteghem occurred in Brussels, Belgium

  First unaffected pregnancy was reported after using preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for sickle cell anemia

• 1999

  World’s first baby for a patient with cystic fibrosis was born. It was the world’s first successful IVF-ICSI pregnancies after airplane transport of oocytes as reported by McGill Reproductive Centre, Toronto

• 2002

  Kylie de Boer and her assistants reported the first live birth after blastocyst biopsy for PGD. A comparative genomic hybridization and polar body testing for PGD of chromosomal aneuploidy were applied for the first time

• 2005

  Adriana Iliescu was reported as the world’s oldest mother to give birth at the age of 66 years and had an IVF using donated eggs and sperm

• 2010

  British scientist Robert Edwards, the man who devised the fertility treatment IVF, has been awarded this year's Nobel prize for medicine.

• 2012

  The world’s five-millionth IVF baby was born

• 2013

  Professor Sir Robert Edwards, scientist and co-pioneer of IVF, passed away peacefully in his sleep on the morning of April 10th