News

The Henry Box School Historical Association Great Debate Competition local winners!

The Social Sciences faculty are proud to share that on Thursday 18^th Feb Zak in Year 12 attended the local round of the Historical Association's national 'Great Debate' competition and won! This means he moves to the second of three national rounds. This exciting competition was held at Oxford University in Trinity College where Zak had to deliver a 5 minutes speech answering the question 'Which historical place or person from your local area deserves greater recognition?'. Zak chose to focus on Patrick Steptoe, a former Henry Box School student and one of the pioneers of IVF. Zak was guided through this process by Miss Parker and he was supported on his research by Rowan, who is also in Year 12. Further information on the competition can be found here: https://www.history.org.uk/secondary/categories/514/news/3886/the-great-debate-2024

This is just one of the many extra curricular opportunities run by the history team within the Social Sciences faculty, if you are inspired by Zak's success then pop along to take part in the 'Historical Association's Young Quills' competition, join our archive club or drop in on Horrible Histories.

Zak - Great Debate Speech Jan 2024

I would like to talk to you today about another Henry Box student called Patrick Steptoe who is known, or unknown, for being the co-creator of in-vitro fertilisation, otherwise known as IVF. On the 25th of July 1978, Louise Brown was born. Despite only being minutes old, she was already a monumental miracle of science, and that was all thanks to her conception using IVF. This was a herculean step in reproductive medicine that quite simply revolutionised the field. Now an estimated ten million babies and adults, maybe even one or two of you in this room, owe their lives to this discovery. Yet, unlike other medical giants such as Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, and Jenner, the father of vaccinology, the creators of IVF have not become household names. If I were to ask someone here who created IVF, the chances are, you would not be able to answer. Some more knowledgeable among us might be able to say Sir Robert Edwards, but even fewer would also say his partner and subject of this speech, Patrick Steptoe. Steptoe led quite the remarkable life. He was born in Oxford in 1913 and grew up in the town of Witney, attending the local Henry Box grammar school - the very school that I have come from today. He went on to study in London and graduated from St George’s Hospital Medical School in 1939. However, the outbreak of the second world war forced him to put his nascent career on hold. He signed up to the military, entering service in the mediterranean as a naval surgeon. His ship was sunk in the Battle of Crete in 1941 and Steptoe narrowly escaped drowning, which resulted in his capture and internment in an Italian prisoner of war camp. There he assisted in the escape of his fellow POWs, which landed him in solitary confinement until his release in 1943. By the end of the war, he had risen to the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and earned the respect of those around him. His release from service in 1945 enabled him to pursue his medical career, studying obstetrics and gynaecology, and becoming an early advocate and pioneer of laparoscopy. This, alongside his increasingly reputable career, drew him to collaborate with physiologist Robert Edwards in a new cutting-edge medical project – IVF. Steptoe used his laparoscopic experience to recover oocytes from patients with tubal infertility. His partner Edwards then developed the human cultures from the cells Steptoe collected. The creation of IVF took the pair almost a decade of work, and it was by no means smooth. They faced set back after setback, ranging from failed lab attempts to endless and merciless lawsuits from disgruntled and disgusted people. The UK Medical Research Council even refused to fund their work, describing Steptoe and Edwards as ‘publicity hounds’ and denouncing their research as completely irrelevant in a world where, in their opinion, curbing the growing global population was a fundamental priority. They were thus forced to search for private funding, which they would eventually obtain, allowing them to complete their revolutionary work and to create the first testtube baby. This was a major step for, not only science, but society. The ability to manipulate the fertilisation process has opened thousands of doors in the scientific realms of genetics and reproduction, and it still has a powerful influence on modern science today. It is an underrated step in the equal rights movement of the twentieth century, as it further bolsters women’s reproductive rights by breaking the convention of who can have children and when, giving women more choice and freedom over their bodies. The question you’ve asked me is “Which historical person from your local area deserves greater recognition?” Well, I say Patrick Steptoe. I won’t lie to you by saying that Steptoe isn’t unknown, for, to an extent, he is, and I won’t lie to you by saying that he hasn’t won any awards, for he has, but it’s at nowhere near the scale that he deserves. Millions owe their lives to this man, yet the majority do not even know his name. Even in Witney and Henry Box School, where both he and I are from, there is almost no mention of him. He not only worked to create IVF and babies like Louise Brown, but he fought tooth and nail for it, and the only recognition Witney gave him was a small blue plaque tucked away on his childhood home. To conclude, from ferocious naval battles to cutting edge medical research, from daring prison escapes to court cases to the birth of Louise Joy Brown and his work beyond, to answer your question of does he deserve more recognition? Most definitely and irrefutably yes.