Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his pioneering work with in vitro fertilization (IVF), the Nobel committee announced Monday. The procedure allows a human egg to be fertilized outside of the body and then reintroduced to the female. It can now be completed with just a single implantation, thus avoiding multiple births.
Edwards, a professor emeritus at Cambridge University, began research on the problem of infertility in the 1950s. The first "test-tube baby," Louise Brown, was born in 1978, an event that the Nobel expert panel called "a paradigm shift." Since then, approximately 4 million babies have been born worldwide via IVF, many of whom now have children of their own.
Some studies have investigated whether IVF children are at a higher risk for rare diseases and malformations, but the Nobel Committee asserted that IVF babies are just as healthy as those who are naturally conceived, in a press conference Monday morning held in Stockholm. Edwards had not been predicted on an annual short list offered by Reuters for Nobel predictions. He had, however, received the 2001 Lasker Award, a medical research prize that has often preceded a Nobel.
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