China's First Baby Conceived through In Vitro Fertilization-Embryonic Transfer, by Zhang Lizhu's Research Team

On 10 March 1988, China?s first baby conceived through human in vitro [5] fertilization [6] (IVF) and embryo transfer [7] (ET), commonly referred to as a test-tube baby [8], was born at the Peking University Third Hospital [9] (PUTH) in Beijing. This birth was reported in numerous media reports as a huge step forward in China?s long march to keep pace with global advances in science and technology. Led by gynecologist Zhang Lizhu [10], the PUTH research team had devoted more than four years to the human IVF-ET project. The team had to start by learning the basics of human egg [11] morphology [12] and embryology [13] in order to design an IVF-ET strategy that was suited to the reproductive pathology affecting China?s infertile population.