Sally Allen: Bring joy not war

These days it is difficult to write anything positive about anything that is happening in the world, particularly as it appears that we are gradually inching towards Armageddon. 

I just hope that someone starts to consider the unavoidable horrific consequences if the current leaders continue the boys’ own macho contest. 

Things have now become extremely serious and have been elevated way above the schoolboy obsession with ‘mine is bigger than yours’ scenario and the fallout will literally be nuclear. 

We can only hope that good sense will prevail as there is no way that we can influence anything as a member of the masses. So many bad decisions have been made around the globe in electing our leaders, and no more so it seems, than here at home.

So, whilst muttering about all the doom and gloom, the other night I watched the film ‘Joy’ for you guessed it – some joy. 

I hadn’t read the preview of what it was about, I just knew that two of my favourite actors, Bill Nighy and James Norton were in it. As soon as the film started it was like going back in time for a re-run of my life and all the effort I had made desperately trying to have children.

The film unfolds in 1969 with Dr Robert Edwards (James Norton) in his laboratory spearheading his research into IVF and interviewing for a lab manager, Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie). 

Edwards discovered that one of the reasons a woman couldn’t conceive was that her fallopian tubes may be blocked or there could be too few eggs or sperm cells. He created a solution to this: removing an egg from the woman, allowing it to be fertilised in a test tube and then replacing it in the woman. 

To advance his work into infertility Edwards had the foresight in 1970 to try to persuade the gynaecologist, Patrick Steptoe to combine his advances in keyhole surgery with his and Purdy’s developments. 

Thus creating the brilliance of great minds bouncing off one another to achieve what was thought of at the time, as the impossible.

As with all new ideas and breakthroughs nothing goes easily, and the research was even dismissed by other scientists. 

This subsequently led to all the research getting shelved at one point, but with Edwards still determined to make a breakthrough. This is when Jean Purdy plays an increasingly important role in the development of IVF. It was Jean who first observed a fertilised egg dividing to create new cells. 

The film also commemorates the would-be mothers who took part in the IVF study but who didn’t get to become mothers. 

The backstories that encouraged the women to participate and Purdy’s personal reasons for her involvement are moving. At this point in the film, it was like watching my own life pass before my eyes, not obviously as a scientist, but as a young woman who also suffered with chronic endometriosis as Jean did, and also both of us aware that in those days it would mean that we would remain childless.

Chronic endometriosis is beyond painful and caused me to have more laparoscopies than I can count, more haemorrhages than I want to remember, splints in my fallopian tubes, one gynaecologist stitching my uterus to my leg by mistake, an ectopic pregnancy and more operations than I can count. 

This all culminated in an 8-hour hysterectomy, because my womb had grown around my bowel, and I was still only 30 years old. 

The surgeon who did my hysterectomy had not performed this operation on someone so young before and so he asked if his students could come and talk to me to enable them to write about it in research and medical journals. Not much solace there, but at least I was useful to science in my own way!

Jean co-authored 26 papers with Steptoe and Edwards, during her career, but sadly died prematurely in 1985 at only 39 years old. Since 1978 over 10 million babies worldwide have been born through IVF treatment pioneered by these three dedicated people.

The joy of “Joy” lies in showing the very precise work being done at this cellular level and the trail-blazing work achieved. 

Many people will remember Louise Brown as the world’s first child born through an in-vitro fertilization (IVF), but what “Joy” seeks to make clear is that a lot of work and sacrifice went into the making of the “test tube baby.”

In 2010, Sir Robert Edwards was awarded the Nobel Prize for the development of human in vitro fertilization (IVF) therapy. Thanks to these three remarkable human beings, women all around the world now have the chance to have a baby.

Back in August 2023, there was another incredible ground-breaking British first, Professor Richard Smith led a team of around 30 in a gruelling 17-hour marathon of surgery to transplant a womb. 

I have the great privilege of knowing this man quite well as he is my gynaecologist. I therefore know first-hand his passion and dedication for the last 25 years in trying to achieve this amazing breakthrough for women with no hope of ever having children. Sadly, this is too late for me, but for so many women this is the answer to their prayers.

If only the world could focus all its energies on these types of scientific breakthroughs rather than trying to achieve world domination and human carnage. Russia has just alleged its new Oreshnik missiles can reach targets across Europe - and Vladimir Putin has claimed Western defences systems will not be able to stop them.

Horrifically, President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will ramp up the production of these new, hypersonic ballistic missiles. 

In a nationally-televised speech, Mr Putin said the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was used in an attack on Ukrainian city Dnipro in retaliation for Ukraine's use of US and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.

Referring to the Oreshnik, the Russian president said: "No one in the world has such weapons. "Sooner or later other leading countries will also get them. We are aware that they are under development."

This is all beyond terrifying and there certainly doesn’t appear to be any common-sense prevailing at any level. Great brains should be used to create greatness in breakthroughs to benefit the human race and thereby give us all joy, not annihilate all of us.