Test-Tube Baby Pioneer Dr. Patrick Steptoe Dies

Dr. Patrick Steptoe, the gynecologist who pioneered the test-tube baby technique that made parenthood possible for thousands of otherwise infertile couples, has died at 74.

A family announcement today said Steptoe had been suffering from cancer. He died Monday night at Chaucer Hospital in Canterbury, 62 miles southeast of London.

Together, Steptoe and his longtime partner, physiologist Robert Edwards, were responsible for the world’s first test-tube baby, Louise Joy Brown, born at Oldham in northern England on July 25, 1978.

The announcement of the birth of the healthy baby from an embryo fertilized outside her mother’s womb caused shock waves at the time. The technique, known as in-vitro fertilization, has since been used in clinics around the world.

Louise Brown’s birth was hailed as a miracle by some and criticized as a wrong use of scientific techniques by others, including the Roman Catholic Church.

But Steptoe avoided the controversy.

“I am not a wizard or a Frankenstein,” he said. “All I want to do is to help women whose child-producing mechanism is slightly faulty.”