Team behind film about world’s first IVF baby hopes to spread joy and spark debate

LONDON – The makers of a new film about the British pioneers of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) hope it highlights the fragile status of fertility treatment, with perceived threats in places like the United States and dwindling availability in Britain.

Joy, now available on Netflix, chronicles the sustained and wide-ranging opposition that a trio of British scientists faced while pioneering the then highly contentious treatment in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Starring Bill Nighy, James Norton and Thomasin McKenzie, it tracks their struggles in the face of a media- and church-led backlash, which culminated in the successful 1978 birth of Louise Joy Brown.

Ms Brown, the world’s first baby born through IVF, is now 46 and told AFP she welcomes the film, which gives the trio the recognition that they all deserve.

But despite more than 10 million IVF births since hers, Joy’s release comes with fertility treatment increasingly attacked by some American conservatives and legal efforts to curb its use gaining traction.

Religious and cultural conservatism in other countries, including in Europe, and stretched public healthcare finances have seen its availability increasingly limited.

For the stars and creators of Joy, all that makes their movie set five decades ago as relevant as ever.

“We sit on the shoulders of many, many people who have given a lot. And for us to be 50 years later at a place where that progress is incredibly fragile is very, very scary,” Norton said in a recent interview.

“That’s why this film is so fortuitously important.”

Director Ben Taylor, who has two children conceived through IVF, said the film-makers wanted “to celebrate and tell the story of the origin of this world-changing procedure” rather than focus on contemporary controversies.

“But our story is about opposition too. It’s about fear. It’s about ignorance and the people who were trying to get in the way of something that was only being developed purely for good, purely to give families hope,” he added.

“So, if it holds up a mirror to that similar conversation now, I would hope it proves the same.”

With a taut script, humour and uplifting soundtrack – which opens with The Beatles’ 1969 song Here Comes The Sun – Joy turns a potentially dry tale of scientific discovery into a funny and heartwarming story.

Its makers opted to tell it through Jean Purdy (played by McKenzie), a nurse and embryologist whose pivotal role in pioneering IVF was long overlooked.

Her name was added to a blue plaque at the northern English hospital where the team laboured for years only in 2015.

For four decades prior to that, the plaque had honoured only her male colleagues, 2010 Nobel Prize for medicine laureate Dr Robert Edwards (Norton) and Dr Patrick Steptoe (Nighy).

Purdy’s airbrushing from recognition is what first attracted Nighy to the role.

“It was another opportunity to put a bomb under the male tendency to dismiss women’s contribution to anything,” he said. “There are many, many cases, from DNA to IVF.”

In addition to Taylor, a number of other people involved in Joy had direct experience of using IVF to conceive, making the film-making process highly emotional.

“A lot of personal experience has gone into this movie, both in the writing and the making,” noted Norton. “It was evident on the page – I cried when I read it.”

Husband and wife co-writers Jack Thorne and Rachel Mason, who went through seven rounds of IVF before welcoming their son, hope the film will raise awareness of the treatment’s decreasing availability in Britain.

Mason said the country’s cash-strapped National Health Service increasingly rations access, so it was now down to where you live or how much money you have.

“The people who get to do IVF now are the ones who can afford to do it,” echoed Thorne.

“It’s wrong and, hopefully, this film poses the question about how we feel as a society about it.”

Ms Brown noted that that went against the ethos of the pioneering scientists’ she owes her life to.

She grew up knowing the trio, likening them to a big extended family, and forged a decades-spanning friendship with Dr Edwards in particular.

He attended her wedding and met her children.

“Bob, Patrick and Jean wanted it to be available for everybody – normal, everyday, working people – and I agree,” Ms Brown said before the London Film Festival premiere of Joy in October.

“I think everybody should be able to have it.” AFP

• Joy is available on Netflix.