TORONTO - With one brother working in Manitoba and the other on a road trip in central America, the first test-tube babies born in Canada will celebrate their shared birthday quietly and separately Sunday -- a stark contrast to the hoopla that surrounded their birth a quarter-century ago.
Conceived in a petri dish in England, Colin and Gregory Rankin made history when they were born under the media spotlight in Oakville, Ont., on March 25, 1982, becoming Canada's first test-tube babies and the first test-tube twins to be born in North America.
"At the time, the concept of a test-tube baby was like science fiction," said Ian Rankin, who lives with wife Katherine in the nearby town of Erin, Ont., northwest of Toronto.
"We wanted it to be a private thing, but it didn't quite turn out that way."
Concerned that the births would become a spectacle, Rankin had to hire a publicist to handle media attention and helped arrange for the hospital to hire extra security guards to deal with curious onlookers on delivery day.
At the time, all the excitement was an ordeal for two people who were just trying to build their family, something they had been unable to do on their own. Years later, however, Rankin said he realizes all the media attention helped to increase public awareness about infertility.
"A lot of people contacted us after reading our story, and my wife was incredible in reaching out to people who were going through the same struggle we had gone through," he said.
"We wanted to expand our nuclear family. But 25 years ago, in-vitro fertilization just wasn't done in Canada, and so we had no alternative but to look elsewhere."
Attempts to conceive naturally had left Katherine with two ectopic pregnancies, which occur when the embryo implants itself in tissue other than the mother's uterus, usually the Fallopian tube. Those two pregnancies almost "took her life," Rankin said.
As a last resort, the couple wrote to the only in-vitro fertilization specialist at the time, Dr. Patrick Steptoe in England. After more than a year of waiting, Katherine had a letter from the clinic confirming her appointment.
Steptoe, who ran a reproductive clinic in Bourne, England, had gained the title of IVF specialist after successfully conducting the first in-vitro fertilization, resulting in the world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978.
But despite the novelty of IVF and the ethical debates raging at the time, Ian said that they were willing to give the revolutionary reproductive technology a chance.
"We looked at it as a medical procedure; there was nothing ethical about it," Rankin said. "And we knew that there was a risk, and there was zero guarantee."
"I guess we just got lucky."
More than a year and a half after the birth of the Rankin twins, the first homegrown Canadian test-tube baby, Robert Reid, was born in a Vancouver hospital on Christmas Day 1983.
"While we weren't the only centre working on it in Canada, we were successful in having the first pregnancy that was conceived through IVF," said Dr. Anthony Cheung, the current medical director of the IVF program at the University of British Columbia.
Cheung said he agrees the media attention surrounding the birth of the Rankin twins must have influenced the researchers who were working in the field at that time.
"I think that this would give a lot of couples who were having trouble conceiving back then a sense of hope," said Cheung.
"And I am sure the physicians who were helping such couples were inspired to do something about it as well. I can't imagine them not being affected."
For Colin Rankin, the older of the twins by a mere 11 minutes and now employed by the University of Manitoba, the notoriety associated with being one of Canada's first test-tube babies is confined mostly to media interviews and case studies in biology class.
"We're has-beens," he said, laughing. "Our best days are behind us."
In Canada alone, there are now 28 IVF clinics across the country, and the 2004 numbers -- the latest available -- show that almost 2,000 babies were born through IVF that year.
But for Colin and Greg, who are planning to go on a road trip later this summer to make up for their lacklustre 25th birthday celebration, the significance of their birth is enough to make them a bit philosophical at times.
"Hundreds of thousands of babies are born through IVF every year, and it's crazy to think we were one of the first," Colin said.
"But if you think about it, anybody being born and turning out the way they are is a one-in-a-million chance, so I think Greg and I being born is just one out of a billion -- just a few zeros away."
