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Doctor brought in vitro birth to U.S.

 
Published Aug. 2, 2015

Howard W. Jones Jr., a physician who pushed the boundaries of gynecologic surgery, opened the first sex-change clinic in a U.S. hospital and helped achieve the first birth through in vitro fertilization in the United States, died Friday in Norfolk, Va. He was 104.

Dr. Jones' success in fertilizing a woman's egg outside the womb, after 41 tries, was achieved alongside his wife, Dr. Georgeanna Jones, one of the nation's first reproductive endocrinologists. Working together at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, they accomplished the feat when Judith Carr gave birth to Elizabeth Carr, America's first "test-tube baby," by cesarean section on Dec. 28, 1981, at what is now Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.

The birth came two days before Dr. Jones' 71st birthday and three years after Dr. Robert Edwards and a colleague had opened a new era in medicine with the birth, in England, of the world's first baby conceived through in vitro fertilization, Louise Brown. That achievement, for which Edwards was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2010, enabled millions of infertile couples to bring children into the world and women to have babies even in menopause.

In the United States, baby Elizabeth's birth helped launch the fertility business. Infertile couples from all over the world flocked to get treatment at a facility the Joneses founded at Eastern Virginia in 1979, the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine. Doctors came to train there.

Dr. Jones also pioneered gynecologic surgery, particularly in operating on babies with ambiguous genitalia — without the typical appearance of either a boy or girl. In 1965, he helped found the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic, the first sex-change clinic in a U.S. hospital.