Georgeanna Jones, 92; Her Work Led to Pregnancy Tests at Home
Dr. Georgeanna Seegar Jones, the pioneering endocrinologist whose studies of the female reproductive system laid the foundation for the modern home pregnancy test and who, with her husband, Howard, brought into being the first artificially conceived infant in the United States, died Saturday at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in Norfolk, Va.
She was 92 and had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for nearly a decade, but the immediate cause of death was heart failure, said an official of Eastern Virginia Medical School, where the couple spent the last two decades of their joint career.
When British physicians Dr. Patrick C. Steptoe and Dr. Robert Edwards announced the birth of Louise Brown, the first “test-tube baby” in the world, July 25, 1978, the Joneses had just completed distinguished careers at Johns Hopkins University and were moving into a planned semiretirement at the newly created eastern Virginia school. When a visiting reporter asked Howard Jones whether the same thing could be done in the United States, he said offhandedly that of course it could. All it would require was some money for research.
A few days later, a former patient of Georgeanna’s, grateful for her help in conceiving after many years of difficulty, offered them the money to get started. Three years later, on Dec. 28, 1981, Elizabeth Jordan Carr became the first U.S. baby to be conceived outside her mother’s body, and Howard and Georgeanna, then 71 and 69, respectively, became famous.
Their semiretirement suddenly turned into a productive second career that has led to the births of more than 2,700 children by in-vitro fertilization at what is now known as the Eastern Virginia Medical School Jones Institute for Reproductive Research. More than 114,000 babies have been born in the United States -- and more than 1 million worldwide -- using in-vitro fertilization. Many of the physicians who conducted the in-vitro fertilization for those babies were trained at the institute or were taught by the Joneses’ students.
Even before she became famous, Georgeanna Jones was well-known to her peers. In 1939, she became the first gynecological endocrinologist on a medical school faculty in the U.S., retaining that position at Hopkins until her mandatory retirement in 1978.
In the 1940s, she proved that human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone of pregnancy, was produced by the placenta and not by the pituitary gland, as was previously believed. That discovery laid the basis for the development of the home pregnancy tests that are now in wide use.
Later, she identified the luteal phase defect, which causes deficiencies in the production of progesterone, often leading to miscarriages. She pioneered the use of progesterone in such patients to help them achieve successful pregnancies.
Over the course of her career, she wrote more than 350 scientific articles on her infertility research and 20 book chapters. She also was coauthor of five gynecology textbooks. She is credited with inspiring generations of women to become physicians and became the first female president of the American Fertility Society in 1970. It wasn’t until 25 years later that the position was filled by another woman.
“She was one of the pioneers in our field,” said Dr. Gerald J. Pepe, chairman of physiological science at Eastern Virginia. “She opened up new ways to do research in reproductive medicine.”
Georgeanna Seegar was born in Baltimore in 1912, the daughter of an obstetric surgeon, Dr. J. King Seegar, who had delivered Howard Jones, son of another doctor, two years earlier. In their youth, the two children would often play together on the lawns of Hopkins while their fathers worked inside.
She attributed her interest in endocrinology to a lecture given by Dr. Harvey Cushing, a pioneering neurosurgeon. “This was problem-solving,” she said in a speech. “I had always loved puzzles. And endocrinology? A brand new field? A challenge? How exciting.”
Georgeanna went to Goucher College in Baltimore, and he attended Johns Hopkins, also in Baltimore, and they began dating after she returned to Hopkins for her second year of medical school. Howard was reportedly enchanted by the slender and delicate girl with blue eyes, wavy gold hair and a sparkling sense of humor.
Their first date was one only she would have accepted -- visiting the pathology lab to view slides of ovarian tumors.
The couple dated for eight years because of hospital rules that prevented them from marrying, but they tied the knot just after Howard completed his residency in 1940.
Howard joined the Army in 1944, becoming a field surgeon on the European front. For more than a year, the couple exchanged daily letters, she describing her research and her life with their two children, he talking about the soldiers he operated on and the colleagues with whom he lived and worked. Those letters were collected and published earlier this year in “War and Love: A Surgeon’s Memoir of Battlefield Medicine With Letters To and From Home.”
While he was away, Howard reviewed his career and decided the best way to spend time with his wife was to become a gynecologic surgeon, which he accomplished with a short residency after his return. From then on, the couple shared the same office, sitting across from each other at an old lawyer’s desk that made the move from Hopkins to Eastern Virginia with them.
Even after the onset of Alzheimer’s, Georgeanna accompanied Howard to the office every day until she broke a hip a year ago, forcing both of them to stay home.
On Saturday, Howard Jones described their partnership as one in which “the sum of two parts equaled more than just two. One plus one equaled about six, I think.”
Besides her husband, she is survived by three children: Dr. Howard W. Jones III of Nashville, Dr. Georgeanna Jones Klingensmith of Denver and Lawrence M. Jones, also of Denver; a brother, King Seegar of Towson, Md.; a sister, Elizabeth Seegar of Silver Spring, Md.; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
