by Regina Mobley, 13News Now

WVEC.com

Posted on October 24, 2013 at 5:13 PM

NORFOLK -- Reproductive medicine in America changed forever onDecember 28, 1981 when Drs. Howard andGeorgeanna Jones announced the birth ofElizabeth Carrat Norfolk General Hospital.

Elizabeth was the nation's first, so-called "test tube baby." The birth was controversial at the time. Some even called in vitro fertilization, the process by which an egg is fertilized by sperm outside the body, as immoral.

When Dr. Georgeanna Jones died in 2005, the controversy had faded and the Joneses had become the "grandparents" to thousands ofIVFbabies.

While Dr.Howard Jones is known as the co-founder of in vitro fertilization in America, he also played a major role in another historic, yet alsocontroversial, advance in medicine.

At Johns HopkinsHospital in Baltimore, Maryland in 1951, Dr. Jones examined married mother of five Henrietta Lacks, who had complaints of cervical pain. Suspecting cervical cancer,Dr. Jones removed tissue from the cervix that was used for a biopsy.

After 62 years, Dr. Jones says he still vividly remembers the examination. "It did not look like any cancerI had ever seen, and at that timeI had seenmaybe a thousand cancers of the cervix," said Jones.

The cancer diagnosiswas confirmed, and within the year, the disease claimed the life of the 31-year oldmother.

Original post:

Father of in vitro fertilization weighs in on future of reproductive medicine