Dr. Landrum B. Shettles, 93; Pioneer in Fertility Research and Treatment

Dr. Landrum B. Shettles, 93, pioneer researcher of in vitro fertilization and in determining a baby’s sex, died Feb. 6 in St. Petersburg, Fla., of natural causes.

A native of Pontotoc, Miss., Shettles graduated from Mississippi College and earned a doctorate in biology and an MD from Johns Hopkins University. He served in the Army Medical Corps from 1944 to 1946 and worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City from 1947 until he was forced to leave in 1973.

The highly publicized ouster involved Shettles’ attempt to help a Florida couple become the first to have a child by in vitro fertilization. His supervisor destroyed the extracted egg and semen before fertilization could be accomplished, and accused Shettles of unethical practices and ignoring guidelines for human experiments. Shettles resigned, and the couple sued Columbia-Presbyterian, winning $50,000. Shettles continued his fertility research in Vermont and Las Vegas until retiring in 2000.

In 1970, with the help of writer David M. Rorvik, and based on another of his research interests, Shettles published the controversial but top-selling book “Your Baby’s Sex: Now You Can Choose.” The book, explaining Shettles’ theories of timing conception and regulating the acidity or alkalinity within the uterus to determine an embryo’s sex, has sold more than 1 million copies and is still in print. Despite naysayers, Shettles claimed a success rate of at least 75%.

A Los Angeles Times review of the book in 1970 noted: “Some chapters sound like science-fiction dealing with sex and long-range moon flights, and other parts repeat ancient tales of old wives....”