The Founding Papers · FP·12 · 1992
1992: One sperm, one egg
G. Palermo and his colleagues injected a single sperm into an egg. Four babies followed, and fatherhood became possible for men who had been told it never would be.
The story
For couples where the man had very few sperm, IVF often failed. The team tried something bold: placing one sperm directly inside the egg with a fine glass needle.
It worked. By the time the paper appeared, two healthy boys had been born, and a twin boy and girl. The technique, ICSI, was developed for male infertility and is now used far more widely, in clinics around the world.
“Two healthy boys have been delivered from the singleton pregnancies and a healthy boy and girl from the twin pregnancy.”From the paper's abstract
The paper
Pregnancies after Intracytoplasmic Injection of Single Spermatozoon into an Oocyte
G. Palermo, H. Joris, P. Devroey, A. C. Van Steirteghem
The Lancet 1992;340(8810):17 to 18. Published 4 July 1992. Read the paper.
How we know
Abstract read in PubMed, 6 October 2026. The journal could not be opened.
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