Medical Nobel goes to developer of IVF
Robert Edwards receives prize for work that led to 4 million births
By Nathan Seppa
The 2010 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine goes to British researcher Robert Edwards for pioneering in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a process that has led to roughly 4 million births since it was first successfully done in 1978.
Human IVF treats infertility caused when sperm and egg fail to meet within a prospective mother. A woman undergoing IVF is stimulated with hormones to produce eggs, and multiple eggs are removed from her ovaries and fertilized with sperm from a donor. Healthy fertilized eggs, or embryos, are then transferred back into the woman’s uterus. When successful, a pregnancy ensues.
Edwards began research on IVF in the 1950s and later worked with gynecologist Patrick Steptoe in refining the process of egg removal, fertilization and reimplantation. Early work had shown this could be done in rabbits. In the late 1960s Edwards was the first to try human egg removal and fertilization in vitro, a Latin term meaning “in glass.” Ultimately, this gave rise to a now outdated term, test-tube babies.