UK Edition
World's first 'test tube baby' Louise Brown targeted by 'cruel' online trolls
The world's first "test tube baby" has revealed that she is targeted by internet trolls who subject her to "cruel and ill-informed" comments.
Louise Brown, whose family were bombarded with hate mail when she was born, disclosed that she still suffers harassment online exactly 40 years after the pioneering IVF.
She said that she hopes people who undergo today's pioneering fertility treatments - such as mitochondrial replacement therapy for "three parent" babies - do not suffer the same barrage of negativity.
On November 10 1977, Lesley Brown, who with husband John had been trying to conceive for nine years, fell pregnant after undergoing in-vitro fertilisation.
Nine months later, their daughter Louise was born - the first baby born following IVF. Six million babies have been born thanks to the technique, pioneered by British scientist Robert Edwards and his obstetrician colleague Patrick Steptoe.
Ms Brown, a clerk at a freight company, said: "People put cruel and ill-informed comments on the internet just about whenever there is a story about me. But I just ignore it."
Asked whether she thought families who use the "three-person baby" technique will get similar mail, she replied: "I hope they don't."
The world's first three-parent baby was born last year. Abrahim Hassan, whose Jordanian mother was treated by a US team in Mexico, was conceived from an egg containing DNA from his mother and father, and a tiny amount of mitochondrial DNA from a third person - a female donor.
The aim was to prevent Abrahim inheriting defective mitochondria, rod-like batteries in cells, that could give him Leigh syndrome - a fatal nervous system disorder.
Earlier this year, doctors at the Newcastle Fertility at Life clinic were awarded the first official licence to create a baby with three genetic parents.
Ms Brown said she would have tried IVF if she had needed to. Her sons - one of whom is named after the scientists who developed the technique - were conceived naturally.
Mrs Brown said her parents, who have both since died, "just wanted to have a baby".
"Like millions of other couples with fertility problems they were prepared to do pretty much anything to have a baby," she added. "They didn't really see themselves as pioneers at the time, but the older I get the more I appreciate what they went through to have me."