Nation’s first IVF baby takes a stand, 30 years on

NOT many people can say a camera crew filmed their birth or that their arrival in the world was hailed a triumph.

Or that their birth made the national newspaper’s front page.

But on June 23, 1980, that’s what happened to Candice Elizabeth Reed when she was delivered by a pioneering team of doctors at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne to claim the title of Australia’s first IVF baby and the world’s third.

The procedure is now commonplace, and in 2007, 9842 Australian babies were born as a result of assisted reproductive technology, accounting for 3.1 per cent of all births that year.

Ms Reed, now a social worker in New Zealand and patron of IVF group Access, will celebrate her 30th birthday on Wednesday and is marking the occasion by writing to Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard to call for ART to be taught in schools under the health and personal development curriculum.

She writes that IVF-lings, as they call themselves, can feel “abnormal” or that their origins must be something to be ashamed of because of the secrecy surrounding their birth (but) greater education would eliminate many of the myths about the process.

“The present teaching of traditional human reproduction also fails to address the reality of many primary students who are adopted or are the result of donor insemination,” writes Ms Reed, who grew up in Churchill, in Victoria’s LaTrobe Valley with her brother Daniel and parents John and Linda Reed.

On the day after Ms Reed’s birth, the “test-tube baby” dominated the front pages of The Australian and Sydney’s The Daily Mirror and made page two of the Daily Telegraph.

“What happened today is extremely important for our team,” Alex Lopata told the press at the time. “It’s important for parents wanting to be treated, and also for teams setting up all around the world,” Dr Lopata added.

But the Telegraph warned: “Some churchmen no doubt will see her birth as morally wrong, as changing the normal course of nature. The outcry they may raise is unjust.”

Today, about one in six couples needs fertility treatment to become pregnant.

There are about 60 registered IVF clinics across the nation, with the technology subsidised by the federal government.