Howard W. Jones

Howard Wilbur Jones, Jr. (born December 30, 1910) is a retired gynecological surgeon. Jones and his wife, Georgeanna Seegar Jones, were two of the earliest reproductive medicine specialists in the United States. They established the reproductive medicine center that was responsible for the birth of the first test tube baby in the U.S. He has written articles and testified before legislators on the subject of the beginning of human personhood.

Early life

Jones was born in Baltimore to Howard Wilbur Jones, Sr. and Edith Ruth Marling Jones on December 30, 1910. Even though he lived in the city, Jones was educated for a few years in a rural public school to avoid the city public school system. When Jones was a child, he went on house calls and hospital visits with his father, who was a physician. Jones's father died when he was 13 years old. Jones's mother moved him to a private school after the death of his father.^[1]

He earned an undergraduate degree from Amherst College in 1931 and a medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1935.^[2] Jones completed a residency in surgery and then joined World War II, leading an Auxiliary Surgical Group team in Patton's Third Army. After the war, Jones was invited to complete a second residency in gynecology.^[1]

Career

Henrietta Lacks, circa 1945

Jones and his wife joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins on a part-time basis in 1948.^[2] He was the initial treating physician of Henrietta Lacks when she presented to Johns Hopkins with cancer in 1951.^[3] Jones took a biopsy of Lacks's tumor and sent samples to his laboratory colleagues. The cells, later known as HeLa cells, grew at an astonishing rate in the lab and were shipped and sold to researchers for various purposes. Research with the cells helped to facilitate medical breakthroughs, including the vaccines for polio and human papillomavirus, though controversy later arose because the cells were being utilized in lab settings without the knowledge of Lacks or her family.^[4] Jones's role in the Lacks case was described in the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.^[3]

In 1960, the Joneses left private practice to join the Johns Hopkins faculty full-time.^[2] While there, Howard Jones participated in sex reassignment surgeries. In 1967, when sexual identity specialist John Money recommended sex reassignment for a child named David Reimer, Jones performed the surgery. Reimer, who had suffered a severe penile injury during a circumcision, was 22 months old when Jones removed his testicles, shaped his scrotal tissue to look like labia and repositioned his urethral opening. Money declared the procedure a success.^[5] The case became controversial when Reimer experienced gender identity problems and ultimately committed suicide at the age of 38.^[6]

In the 1960s, he was able to participate in experiments involving sperm and oocytes with Robert Edwards, the doctor whose work later created the world's first test tube baby.^[7] In 1978, Jones faced mandatory retirement from Johns Hopkins.^[8] The Joneses moved to Virginia and established the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine at the Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS). They created an in vitro fertilization (IVF) program at EVMS, which resulted in the 1981 birth of Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the first test tube baby in the country.^[9] Before his first successful IVF treatment, the clinic experienced 41 failed attempts at IVF.^[8]

After his wife developed Alzheimer's disease in the late 1990s, Jones officially retired from his institute so that he could care for her. However, as of 2013, Jones still spends a few hours per day at EVMS and is writing his twelfth book.^[9] In February 2012, Jones successfully appealed to Virginia legislators to stop a bill that would have declared life to begin at conception. Jones said that the bill would have interfered with medical treatment for infertility.^[3]

Personal

In 2011, Jones wrote an article for The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine on his keys to a long life. "First, I am the result of a tremendous shuffling of genetic material, which included some 3 billion potential variables. I got lucky. My combination seems to confer longevity," he said. He also wrote that his career and his family life had been enjoyable and rewarding, which had enhanced his longevity.^[10]

Jones was married for 64 years before his wife's 2005 death.^[11] A son, Howard Jones, III, became the chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2009.^[12]

Selected publications

Articles

• Jones Howard (2005). "Twenty-Five Years of In Vitro Fertilization: A Look Back and a Look Forward". Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey 60: 75–6. doi:10.1097/01.ogx.0000153993.45283.e8. 
• Jones Howard W., Toner James P. (1993). "The Infertile Couple". The New England Journal of Medicine 32: 1710–1715. 

Books

• Jones, Howard W., Jr. (2013). Personhood Revisited: Reproductive Technology, Bioethics, Religion and the Law. Minneapolis: Langdon Street Press.
• Crockin, Susan L., and Jones, Howard W., Jr. (2010). Legal Conceptions: The Evolving Law and Policy of Assisted Reproductive Technologies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

References