Monday, October 4, 2010

Nobel Prize Awarded to IVF Pioneer

The scientist who pioneered in-vitro fertilization, Robert Edwards, has been awarded this year's Nobel prize in medicine.

Professor Robert Edwards, the British pioneer of IVF treatment, sits with two of his 'test-tube-babies', Sophie and Jack Emery who celebrate their second birthday in London in this file photo dated Monday July 20, 1998.
Robert Edward wins 2010 Nobel prize in medicine for in-vitro fertizilation 
By KARL RITTER and MALIN RISING
The Associated Press
Monday, October 4, 2010; 8:02 AM

STOCKHOLM -- Robert Edwards of Britain won the 2010 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for developing in-vitro fertilization, a controversial breakthrough that ignited sharp criticism from religious leaders but helped millions of infertile couples in the last three decades have children.
Edwards, an 85-year-old professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, started working on IVF as early as the 1950s. He developed the technique - in which egg cells are removed from a woman, fertilized outside her body and then implanted into the womb - together with British gynecologist surgeon Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988.
On July 25, 1978, Louise Brown in Britain became the first baby born through the groundbreaking procedure, marking a revolution in fertility treatment.
"(Edwards') achievements have made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition afflicting a large proportion of humanity, including more than 10 percent of all couples worldwide," the medicine prize committee in Stockholm said in its citation.
"Approximately 4 million individuals have been born thanks to IVF," the citation said. "Today, Robert Edwards' vision is a reality and brings joy to infertile people all over the world."
Steptoe and Edwards developed IVF from the early beginning experiments into a practical course of medicine and founded the first IVF clinic at Bourn Hall in Cambridge in 1980.
Today, the probability that an infertile couple will take home a baby after a cycle of IVF is 1 in 5, about the same odds that healthy couples have of conceiving naturally.
Prize committee secretary Goran Hansson said Edwards was not in good health Monday when the committee tried to reach him. Bourn Hall said Edwards was too ill to give interviews.
"I spoke to his wife and she was delighted and she was sure he would be delighted too," Hansson told reporters in Stockholm after announcing the 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award.
"Louise's birth signified so much," Edwards said at Brown's 25th birthday celebration in 2003. "We had to fight a lot of opposition but we had concepts that we thought would work and they worked."

2 comments:

Nana and Papa said...

He's always been a prize-winner in *this* family!

xo nana

Maureen said...

He deserves it!!