First test tube baby owes life to benefactor
Heiress who wanted to remain anonymous now revealed to have funded pioneering IVF project
THE world’s first test tube baby has discovered she owes her life to a mysterious American heiress who bankrolled groundbreaking IVF trials in the Sixties and Seventies. Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy, the British fertility pioneers, battled to gain funding for their controversial IVF research.
But in 1968, just when it looked like they would be forced to abandon the project, Edwards was contacted by Lillian Lincoln Howell, an eccentric American philanthropist.
Over the course of 10 years, she donated nearly $100,000 (more than £500,000 in today’s money) allowing the pair to carry out 457 IVF cycles on 282 women, which led to the birth of Louise Brown on July 25 1978 at Oldham General Hospital. Mrs Howell stipulated that she should not be identified in her lifetime, and her name has only now emerged, four years after her death at 93, as researchers look back into the archives ahead of the 40th anniversary.
Even Ms Brown, now Louise Mullinder, did not know about the benefactor. Martin Powell, a spokesman for Mrs Mullinder, said: “Louise was not aware of this donation but is grateful to all of those who helped IVF happen.”
Speaking about the finding at The Cheltenham Science Festival, Dr Kay Elder, of Bourn Hall, Cambridge, Britain’s first fertility clinic, said: “Edwards and Steptoe were doing this in their spare time. They were trying to fit it in with everything else. Bob had PHD students, a full-time position, a wife and five children. Patrick and his team were employed by Oldham General Hospital. They didn’t have the funding.
“But the major source that allowed them to do this work, to allow Bob to do this work and go up to Oldham, was an American benefactress, an anonymous lady, she died recently, so we are now able to reveal her name was Lillian Howell.
“She was a philanthropist who heard about Bob’s work. And she phoned him out of the blue. Bob used to talk about this conversation, he thought it was someone pulling his leg, one of his friends trying to pretend that it was some rich American that was going to fund it, but it was true.”
In a scientific paper from 1982, Mr Edwards said: “The work would not have been possible without the generous benefaction of an American millionairess, who herself had suffered problems similar to those of the patients now being treated.” Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Mrs Howell was the eldest of three children born to John Lincoln, an industrialist and inventor who founded Lincoln Electric in 1895.