Landrum Shettles

Landrum Brewer Shettles (November 21, 1909 – February 6, 2003) was an American biologist and a pioneer in the field of vitro fertilization.[1]

Landrum Brewer Shettles
Born(1909-11-21)November 21, 1909
Pontotoc, Mississippi, U.S.
DiedFebruary 6, 2003(2003-02-06) (aged 93)
St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.
Alma materMississippi College (BS)
Johns Hopkins University (MS, PhD)
OccupationBiologist
Known forIn vitro fertilization
Spouse(s)Priscilla Elinor Schmidt (divorced)

Early life and education

He was born on November 21, 1909 in Pontotoc, Mississippi. He graduated from Mississippi College in 1933. He was awarded a Ph.D. in biology and an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He served in the United States Army Medical Corps from 1944 to 1946.[1]

Career

In 1951, he reproduced the procedure developed by John Rock and Miriam Menkin to artificially fertilize eggs. In 1954, he received the annual Markle Prize from Columbia University.[2]

Shettles developed a method to maximize the probability of having a baby of the sex of the parents' choice. Using his "Shettles Method," couples who wanted to have a male baby should time intercourse as close as possible to ovulation to allow the faster Y-bearing sperm to reach the egg first. Couples desiring a female should time intercourse to take place about three days prior to ovulation, when the pH of the vagina is more acidic and thus more hostile to the faster but less bulky Y-bearing sperm, and therefore favoring the bulkier X-bearing sperm on a small level.[3]

In 1973, he was involved with an IVF controversy, the Del-Zio case, at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York.[4] After he resigned from the hospital, he moved to Vermont where he worked on cloning at Gifford Medical Center in Randolph, Vermont. He then moved to Las Vegas to resume work on cloning.

Later life

He retired from work at the Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2000 and moved to Florida.[1][5] He died on February 6, 2003 in St. Petersburg.[1]

Works
  • Landrum B. Shettles; David M. Rorvik (23 March 2011). How to Choose the Sex of Your Baby: Fully revised and updated. Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-78617-3.
  • Ovum Humanum, Hafner Pub. Co., 1960
  • Roberts Rugh, Landrum B. Shettles, Richard Einhorn, From Conception to Birth: The Drama of Life's Beginnings, Harper Row, 1971

See also

References
  1. Stuart Lavietes (February 16, 2003). "Dr. L. B. Shettles, 93, Pioneer in Human Fertility". New York Times. Retrieved 2014-12-26. Dr. Landrum B. Shettles, an early developer of in vitro fertilization techniques who gained national attention as the author of How to Choose the Sex of Your Baby and as a central figure in a lawsuit over efforts to produce the first test tube baby, died on Feb. 6 in St. Petersburg, Fla. He was 93. ...
  2. "Landrum Shettles . Test Tube Babies. WGBH American Experience | PBS". pbs.org. Retrieved 2014-03-11.
  3. Shettles, Landrum B.; Vande Wiele, Raymond L. (1974). "Can Parents Choose the Sex of Their Baby?". Birth. 1 (2): 3–5. doi:10.1111/j.1523-536X.1974.tb00661.x.
  4. "2 Charge ealous' Doctor Killed 'Test‐Tube Baby'". The New York Times. 1978-07-18. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-07-06.
  5. Robin Marantz Henig (December 28, 2003). "The Lives They Lived: Landrum Shettles". The New York Times.
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