In this Vanity Fair story, Keziah Weir recounts how the Vatican played a role in the science of in vitro fertilization. A 1957 encounter between two men—Bruno Lunenfeld, an endocrinologist, and Don Giulio Pacelli, an Italian prince and one of Pope Pius XII’s nephews—marked the start of the journey toward the first successful IVF pregnancy. The miracle substance that ultimately made it possible? Thirty-thousand liters of urine from 300 postmenopausal nuns, which was used to develop Pergonal, a fertility drug. Weir intertwines religion, science, and politics in this fascinating piece, and enriches the narrative with details and memories from Lunenfeld’s incredible life.
A year later, Lunenfeld sat with Giulio Pacelli and Piero Donini, musing over the design needs of the special toilets they planned to install in the convent. They settled on a teardrop-shaped container akin to a small trash can, lined with a plastic bag. Throughout 1958, elderly nuns hiked up their habits, crouched over the containers, and voided their bladders. Serono employees collected the bags of urine and transported them to the Rome laboratory at Via Casilina, where technicians emptied them into metal tanks for processing. (During a 1930s Netherlands-based urine collection program, the people tasked with picking up donations were called pissmannekes, or “small piss men.”)
By 1959, Serono had harvested enough hMG to begin trials on infertile women. Lunenfeld, back in Israel, where he was working as a visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, wanted to treat his own hypothalamic amenorrheic patients with the drug, hoping to induce ovulation. The head of the hospital instructed Lunenfeld to inject himself with the substance. If he didn’t sustain any major side effects, they’d go forward with treatment.
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