Madrid, June 4 (EFE).- Louise Brown, the first person in the world to be conceived via in vitro fertilization, assures EFE that she hates the expression “in vitro fertilization”, because “even” one of these tubes is not used in the technique.

It was 45 years ago, in Great Britain, and its birth, which is known around the world, was one of the greatest milestones in assisted reproduction.

During a visit to Madrid this week, days before World Fertility Day this Sunday, Brown revealed that he had the opportunity to meet journalists from the British newspaper Manchester Evening News who coined the term “test tube babies”.

She told him she used the name because it was “the first thing that came to mind”.

Born on July 25, 1978, Brown remembers being a childhood “like any other kid”, except for some tests she underwent after giving birth, in which no health problems were detected.

Facing the possibility that he could figure out how he came into the world from the comments of other children, his parents decided to explain it to him in “a simple way” when he was four years old.

Doctors Patrick Steptoe, Robert G. Edwards and Jean Purdy were behind her birth and showed her a video of her coming into the world, which Brown described as “terrible”.

She never worried about “being different”, though she admits that it was when she entered her teens that she began to become aware of her fame; she worries that someone, “on the other side of the world, who she doesn’t know”, knows everything about her, though she notes that it was part “of growing up”.

Laughing, Brown commented that she has two identities, one from Louise Brown, as everyone knows, and the other from Louise Mullinder, her married name, which she uses with her family and friends: “I’m like Dr. Jeckyll and Hyde” , synthesize.

Since her birth, assisted reproductive techniques have made many advances, including the birth of Spain’s first baby to a woman with a transplanted uterus, on May 22.

Although he insists it is unscientific, Brown is committed to advancing on techniques that could help a person to have children, because, according to him, it is something “great”, and asks “doctors” to be believed. to see how far they can go.

As for the ethical debate around assisted reproduction, the world’s first in vitro-born person considers them “the ordinary” in the face of every new advance, although he believes they can be overcome with time.

“We are about 10 million people born via in vitro fertilization, so we will be doing something right right?”, he concluded.

Lucia Serrano Redondo