Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Robert Edwards with Lesley Brown, Louise Brown and her son, Cameron |
The Nobel prize for physiology or medicine for 2010 has been awarded to the British scientist who pioneered in-vitro fertilisation, a procedure that has helped in the conception and birth of 4 million people around the world since the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown in 1978…
Edwards developed the IVF technique in a research career that started in 1958 at the National Institute for Medical Research in London and continued at the world’s first IVF centre, the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge, founded with the English surgeon, Patrick Steptoe…
Robert Edward’s wife, Ruth, and his family said in a statement today that they were “thrilled and delighted” at the award of the Nobel Prize. “The success of this research has touched the lives of millions of people worldwide. His dedication and single-minded determination, despite opposition from many quarters, has led to the successful application of his pioneering research…”
“Opposition from many quarters” means the same religious fanatics, political opportunists and cowards who have always rallied together in vain attempts to halt knowledge. Whatever the science, the fearful, the indoctrinated, those afraid to venture out into this good night try their best to stop progress, censor understanding, disallow choice.
Speaking in 2008, Edwards recalled the moment he first created a fertilised human embryo in 1968. “I’ll never get forget the day I looked down the microscope and saw something funny in the cultures. I looked down the microscope and what I saw was a human blastocyst gazing up at me. I thought: ‘We’ve done it.’”
“The most important thing in life is having a child,” he said. “Nothing is more special than a child. Steptoe and I were deeply affected by the desperation felt by couples who so wanted to have children. We had a lot of critics but we fought like hell for our patients…”
Three decades on, IVF is an established technique to help infertile couples have children. There have been many advances on Edwards’ initial research: a single sperm can now be injected directly into an egg and the extraction of eggs from ovaries has been improved so that it causes less trauma. IVF is also at the centre of a technique, called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), that screens fertilised embryos for genetic conditions such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease…
Martin Johnson, professor of reproductive sciences at the University of Cambridge, said he was delighted. “This is long overdue…Bob’s work has always been controversial but he has never shrunk from confronting that controversy. He was a real visionary, and always ahead of his time on so many issues – not just IVF – but also on PGD in the 60s, stem cells in the 70s, and the whole process of thinking ethically.”
Bravo!
Good man.
Now, who’s going to start the “too many people” “if can’t have it naturally, you shouldn’t have it” wackos…
Much more deserved than the BS NP for the EX VP GW BS.
Much more deserved.
Congrats!
@#1 I am of “if can’t have it naturally, you shouldn’t have it” wackos… sort. Because of the Science. And Evolution. Inability to have offspring is natural evolutionary dead end to particular specimens in a species. It is Nature saying: your genes are not fit to compete. You lose. Meddle with that and you are applying anti-evolutionary forces. Possible result? – Watch movie Idiocracy for best case scenario. Worst scenario: species losing ability to procreate completely (even with the aid of these good meaning doctors).
@dusanmal
I’m the same about Cholera, Typhoid, Polio, Diphtheria, Tetanus etc.
If my body can’t cure it naturally then it should evolve into something that can.
#1 Named asked:
Now, who’s going to start the “too many people” “if can’t have it naturally, you shouldn’t have it” wackos…
Well, you could start with wacko Paul Ehrlich who wrote The Population Bomb. He warned of the mass starvation of humans in 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation.
Spoiler Alert: Louise Brown’s donor was the late, great Chris Farley.
#6 trirnoth
Good one!
Oh, brother.
Yea. More people. That’s what we all fucking need.
What is they say about non-native species? Isn’t that what the humans are on every Continent except Africa? And what do people try to do to “non-native species”? Why, or course…..EXTERMINATE THEM. But, of course, we are fucking SPECIAL. Like David Crosby. We need more like him.
Read much Dylan Thomas Eideard?
We are on the cusp of controlling our own genetic evolution, IVF will be a large part of that.
Hold on to your socks.
Great, give an award to a vaginally obsessed creep who gets people that should never have kids pregnant, and not just a single kid, but crazy ass trailer-park bitches like the Octomom.
Sure, the science is fascinating, but just because we can DOESN’T mean we should, like screwing a fat chick.
The Vatican’s comment on this is strangely restrained, complementary and it hits the mark as far as the unspoken argument goes of how is the financial exploitation of human reproduction of benefit to Mankind?
So we are going to end up with a population that can only reproduce in a petri dish.
Of course sperm count for young American males in the prime of life is no so low that nearly all of them would have been considered infertile based on the same sperm count in about 1945. Most likely this is due to way to much exposure to pseudo estrogen, insecticides, herbicides, etc. Of course the Official word from the EPA is that just because its happening to animals doesn’t mean its happening in people but the fertility studies make it clear humans have a huge problem.
#4 The nasty joke is antibiotics, due in large part to stupid over use including in livestock feed, are going to end up being worthless. That will put us back to you, your vaccinations, and your immune system.
He obviously didn’t get it for weight loss by looking at that mammoth on the right.
A Nobel prize for the original “Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning”? See http://www.huxley.net/bnw/ for how this turns out…
This is why the incidence of twins in so much higher now. Not to mention triplets, quadruplets, etc.
One other downside, just look at that picture up top.
Are you telling they actually give these things to people that actually did something to earn it?
Amazing!
Well… i guess in light of the mockery and fraud that the nobel has become, they had to..
On down the line…somehow i am reminded of some movie (maybe a stallone movie) in which a future is portrayed where everyone is born via IVF or some such and sex is considered offensive or “unclean” and no longer practiced for any reason.
Just as Humanity was and still is a child when it played with its atomic bombs, we are but infants when playing with our genome.
Do you really want to trust so called genetic experts who to this day, still think over 90% of Human DNA is junk, -with tinkering with your genome, let alone Humanity’s genome at large?
Given that mainstream religious interests (not to mention ideologues) still dictate much of what science (and society) is allowed to study and subsequently, reveal to the masses, “modern” genetics and science on the whole is nothing more than a powder-keg in a burning building.
Matter based science has no business claiming anything as mastered until it is freely allowed to embrace the energy side of the equation.
-be careful what you wish for.
-s
I used to work with Louise Brown at Mercury Communication in Manchester (UK). She’s a really nice person.
As for the rest of you life hating sons of bitches. If you want to drop the human population of the Earth, start with yourselves.
Cheers
22 Rob Leather,
“If you want to drop the human population of the Earth, start with yourselves.”
They never take up that challenge… cowards all.