A California woman who was told she could never have children made history on this date in 1984 by giving birth to the first child by embryo transfer. The healthy boy was born at Memorial Hospital Medical Center in Long Branch, Calif. The identity of the parents and child were kept secret at the request of the family, but doctors did reveal that the infertile mother was a woman in her 30s. Unlike in vitro fertilization, in which the mother produces eggs but has a blocked fallopian tube, a donor egg is artificially inseminated with the sperm from the recipient’s husband and then transferred to the infertile mother. The nonsurgical procedure was developed by Fertility & Genetics Research Inc., which began a nationwide “adopt-an-embryo” network.

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