India's first test-tube baby (Durga, Calcutta)
Primer bebé probeta de la India (Durga, Calcuta)
- Date
- 3 de octubre de 1978 · confidence medium
- Place
- Kolkata, West Bengal, India
- Credited to
- Subhash Mukhopadhyay, Sunit Mukherjee and Saroj Kanti Bhattacharya
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
The physician Subhash Mukhopadhyay achieved the birth of a girl by in vitro fertilisation two and a half months after Louise Brown, with very limited resources. West Bengal authorities discredited the work and it was only recognised later.
A state committee rejected the claim in 1978; the case was rehabilitated decades later (T. C. Anand Kumar of the ICMR reviewed his notes and recognised his priority in 1997) and documentation is scarce. Mukhopadhyay took his own life in 1981. In India, Harsha (1986, Mumbai) is often cited as the first officially recognised case.
What it led to
- belated recognition by the Indian Council of Medical Research and by historians of assisted reproduction
- debate on the invisibility of Southern research
- later development of IVF in India (Harsha, 1986, Mumbai)