In Vitro Fertilization Comes to America

by Howard W. Jones

Overview

 

This is a story about the struggle to develop in vitro fertilization technology in America, told by the pioneer, Howard W. Jones, Jr., M.D. "This is an inspirational book from one of the giants of medicine in the last century," Suheil Muasher, M.D., Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

It begins with the retirement of two internationally famous doctors, Howard Jones and his wife Georgeanna, after long careers at Johns Hopkins University. The day they arrived to make a new home in Norfolk, Virginia, the world woke up to an announcement that Robert Edwards and his colleague, Patrick Steptoe, had delivered the first baby conceived in a Petri dish ('in vitro') in a northern English city. When a local newspaper heard that the Joneses had worked with Edwards, a future Nobelist, the reporter asked if it could be done in America. It took a lot of toil with sparse resources to build a program against bitter resistance in Norfolk, a conservative city in Virginia. Finally, success came in 1981 with the birth of Elizabeth Carr, making the United States the third country in the world to have a 'test-tube' baby. And now, millions of people owe their existence to IVF.

For the rest of his life to the age of 104, Howard promoted IVF and published research and books on human infertility, embryology, and medical ethics and law, including several after becoming a centenarian. A charismatic doctor in his earlier career, he became an almost mythic figure in American medicine, deeply engaged in the latest advances and the social reactions to the controversial treatment, and even defending the new technology at the Vatican.

This book was edited and compiled by Roger Gosden, the last Howard and Georgeanna Jones Professor of Reproductive Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School. His wife, Lucinda Veeck, worked with the Joneses from the beginning as director of the embryology laboratory before moving to Cornell in New York City.  

Product Details

BN ID:	2940166521255
Publisher:	Jamestowne Bookworks LLC
Publication date:	07/30/2022
Sold by:	Draft2Digital
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Howard W. Jones, Jr., was born December 30, 1910 in Baltimore, Maryland. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree (cum laude) from Amherst College in 1931 and his M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1935. He was a member of the staff of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Johns Hopkins until his mandatory retirement at age 65.

Besides responsibilities for patient care and medical education, Dr. Jones is and always has been a prolific author and editor. He held key positions in the development of ethical standards for reproductive technologies in the United States. He is a past Chairman of the Ethics Committee on Reproductive Technology for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Dr. Jones and his late wife, Dr. Georgeanna Jones, were the only American gynecologists invited by the Vatican to participate on a panel to advise Pope John Paul II concerning assisted reproduction.

Dr. Jones’ early training and experience were in gynecological cancer. He was then involved in describing the precursors to the common type of cancer of the cervix which enabled early detection with the Pap smear and other technologies which substantially reduced the death rate from that disease. One of his patients was Henrietta Lacks whose cancer cells, known as “HeLa Cells,” proved to be immortal, and they continue to be of immense importance in basic and applied science.

While at Johns Hopkins, he became involved in reconstructive surgery of the internal and external genitalia of individuals affected by disorders of sexual development. He was instrumental in performing sex reassignment surgery for transsexual patients.