Louise Brown at 40 - Life changing

There are inventions and discoveries which change the world and shape the development of humankind for the better. The wheel, penicillin, vaccination, the printing press for example.

There are others, such as nuclear power, the internet and artificial intelligence whose long-term impacts have not yet been fully felt.

Forty years ago yesterday, with the birth of Louise Brown, we experienced one of those moments after which it was possible to say “life has never been the same since”.

She was the first successful case of in vitro fertilisation and was wrongly described as a “test tube baby”. The conception actually took place in a petri dish under processes pioneered in the British health service by Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards.

Since that happy event in Oldham, Lancashire, four decades ago (Louise was 5lb 12 oz; 2.608 kg at birth and is herself the mother of two sons) millions of babies have been born through ivf and related technologies.

Some scientific journals put the figure as high as 8m. That is a legacy of joy and fulfilment of which science can be truly proud.