3. From Hobby to Industry: How IVF Diversified

Abstract

On a pleasant afternoon, I met Dr. Indira Hinduja in her well-established private hospital in one of Mumbai’s affluent neighborhoods. She was part of the team that had produced India’s first “scientifically documented test-tube baby,” born on August 6, 1986. The project was headed by Dr. Anand Kumar, then director of the Institute of Research in Reproduction (IRR) who later publicized Dr. Subhas’s claim. In addition to the IRR, the public King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital took part in the project. Located in Parel, a former working-class neighborhood in Mumbai that used to house employees of the city’s textile mills, KEM Hospital opened its doors in 1926. A few hundred meters from its colonial structure, hustled into a small lane, stands the modern building of the IRR (today the National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health). Founded under the Directorate of Family Planning of the Government of India in 1954, from 1963 onward the institute has been governed by the Indian Council of Medical Research and entered into a partnership with KEM Hospital to “conduct application-oriented research” (National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health, n.d.). Further, the IRR’s initial focus on family planning has broadened over the years, particularly since the “beginning of the twenty-first cen­ tury when the institute decided to adopt [a] more holistic approach towards repro­ ductive health” (National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health, n.d.). During the 1980s, Dr. Hinduja was associated with both public institutions: she worked as a gynecologist at KEM Hospital and also became a PhD student at IRR. She remembered how she had to organize her scientific work around clini­ cal duties in the hospital while conducting research on IVF: “Pickups [egg cell