Innovations ‘Out of Place’: Controversies Over IVF Beginnings in India Between 1978 and 2005

ABSTRACT

In 1978, the year the first in vitro fertilization (IVF) baby was born in the United Kingdom, a research team in Kolkata reported that it too had successfully produced an IVF baby in India. However, the claim was dismissed at the time, because the experiment was conducted outside authorized institutions and recognized centers of innovation—in short, because it was an innovation ‘out of place.’ Tracing controversies over the case between 1978 and 2005, I show the importance of space or place in processes of knowledge production and recognition. Further, I explain the initial repudiation and subsequent partial recognition of the claim through shifts in the landscape of legitimate spaces of innovation. By discussing this specific case of the production of science and technology in the Global South, I challenge conventional narratives of diffusion that are prevalent in studies on the worldwide proliferation of reproductive technologies.

KEYWORDS:

• India
• Global South
• innovation
• in vitro fertilization (IVF)
• knowledge production
• science studies

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to my interlocutors in Kolkata for their fascinating stories and invaluable cooperation, the Dr. Subhas Mukherjee Memorial Reproductive Biology Research Centre for generously providing material, and Aditya Ghosh for his precious insights. Furthermore, I would like to thank Eva Ambos, Claire Beaudevin, Christoph Bergmann, Marion Herz, Daniel Moure Garcia, Laurent Pordié, Bo Sax, Mihir Sharma, the participants of the Ethnologiekolloquium at the University of Zurich, and four anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and insightful criticisms. I am also grateful for funding provided by the Research Cluster Asia and Europe at the University of Heidelberg and the Advances in Research on Globally Accessible Medicine (AROGYAM) Research Network.

Notes

1. Following Jean and John Comaroff (2012a), I define the term “Global South” not in a substantive but in a relational sense that “always points to an ‘ex-centric’ location, an elsewhere to mainstream Euro-America, an outside to its hegemonic centers, real or imagined.”

2. It would be worthwhile to investigate Dr. Subhas’s relationship with acknowledged centers of innovation during his fight for recognition. According to Prof. Sunit, both of them had been in contact with Prof. Edwards and other reproductive biologists in different parts of the world who were not always supportive of their cause.

3. Among them were the Fifth International Congress on Hormonal Steroids in New Delhi in November 1978, the satellite symposium of the congress in Varanasi, and the Indian Science Congress in Hyderabad in 1979. He also gave lectures at Gangaram Hospital in New Delhi and Gauhati Medical College (Kumar 1997:528).

4. The history section disappeared from the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare’s ART (Regulation) Bill 2010, a revised version of which awaits debate in Parliament.

5. India’s ‘first scientifically documented test tube baby’ was delivered in 1986 in Mumbai through cooperation between the Institute of Research in Reproduction and the King Edward Memorial Hospital.

6. For many, Dr. Kumar’s words gained even more gravity, since by supporting Dr. Subhas’s claim he lost his own status of having produced India’s first IVF baby (cf. Bharadwaj 2002).

7. The comparison to Louis Pasteur is intriguing. According to Latour (1983), one of Pasteur’s strengths was exactly his success in extending the laboratory to the field through a succession of displacements, thereby dissolving the inside/outside dichotomy. However, he did not start this endeavor from the home but from his laboratory at the École Normale Supérieure—a space endowed with credibility from the outset.

8. Even Dr. Kumar commented critically on the rugged transition from concealed experimentation in a hidden space to public declaration. He noted that although similar controversies emerged in the United Kingdom, a “combination of transparency, scientific debate as well as discussing moral, ethical, legal and religious issues” made the process acceptable to the general public as well as the scientific community (Kumar 1997:530).

9. They explained that in the same way that crabs trapped in a basket prevent each other from climbing out of their prison (by pulling more advanced crabs downwards), Dr. Subhas’s colleagues prevented him from receiving recognition. A recent documentary on Dr. Subhas by Rajib Sarkar is entitled “Effect of Indian Crab Syndrome” (Deccan Herald 2014).

10. See Itty Abraham (2006) for a discussion of the ideological reliance of modern nationalism in India on local knowledge, and Gyan Prakash (1999) for the long-lasting intimate relationship between science, colonialism, and nationalism.

11. Simultaneously, however, they emphasize their international connections and their training from commonly acknowledged centers of innovation.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this project was facilitated through funding from the Research Cluster Asia and Europe at the University of Heidelberg and the Advances in Research on Globally Accessible Medicine (AROGYAM) Research Network.

Notes on contributors

Sandra Bärnreuther

Sandra Bärnreuther recently completed her PhD in socio-cultural anthropology at the South Asia Institute and the Research Cluster Asia and Europe at the University of Heidelberg. She studied in Delhi, New York City, Munster, and Heidelberg and is currently a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the University of Zurich. Her research interests include Medical Anthropology, Anthropology of Biomedicine, Science and Technology Studies, History of Life Sciences, and South Asian Studies.