Dr. Howard W. Jones Jr., the world-renowned gynecological surgeon and medical pioneer that paved the way for in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the United States, died on Friday due to respiratory failure at the Sentara Heart Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. He was 104 years old.
While Jones experienced success as a surgeon during the early part of his medical career, he is best remembered for his achievement in developing the procedure of IVF, along with his wife and collaborator, reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Georgeanna Seegar Jones.
During the 1980s, the husband-and-wife duo successfully fertilized the egg of woman outside the womb, after failing in their first 41 attempts.
The result was the birth of Elizabeth Carr to her mom, Judith, through cesarean section on Dec. 28, 1981 at the Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS), now known as the Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. Elizabeth became known as the first "test-tube baby" in the world.
Jones' death came a decade later after his wife, Georgeanna, passed away in 2005. The EVMS' Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine is named after the couple.
The pioneer physician is survived by his children, Dr. Howard Wilbur Jones III, Lawrence Massey Jones and Dr. Georgeanna Jones Klingensmith, and his seven grandchildren.
Contributions to the Field of In Vitro Fertilization
Aside from his collaboration with his wife, Jones also worked with British researcher Robert Edwards in conducting studies on eggs and sperms at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the 1960s.
Edwards later helped produce the first test-tube baby in the United Kingdom in 1978, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2010.
As the field of IVF started to develop, Jones also made efforts to have practitioners adopt ethical standards, which are still followed by doctors today.
Since the development of in vitro fertilization, there are now an estimated five million babies born in the world through the procedure, with around one million of them born in the U.S.
Elizabeth Carr, who is now Elizabeth Comeau, said that she and Jones kept in touch throughout the years. She said that the pioneer physician would often call and greet her on her birthday every year.
"He was like a grandfather to me," Comeau said during an interview.
"You can't replace that person who's responsible for bringing you into the world and having an impact on bringing five million babies into the world."
American Society for Reproductive Medicine president Rebecca Sokol hailed Jones as a researcher, innovator and a family man as well. She said that people of Jones' caliber are very rare to find.
