Test Tube Baby Finally Gets The Nobel Nod!!!

The 85 year old British scientist, Professor Robert Edwards, who helped create the first test tube baby and thus transformed the lives of millions of couples plagued by infertility, was finally awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine, 2010. The person happiest to hear the news was Louise Brown, now 32, who on July 25, 1978, became the first ever child born through in-vitro fertilization (IVF), to her mother Lesley, who was seeking tretament for infertility.

Professor Edwards along with his research partner Dr PatrickSteptoe, had been resarching on taking eggs out of a woman’s body after stimulating the ovary, and fertilizing it with sperms from a donor, in a petri dsh, allowing it to multiply a few times, and then putting it back into the womb of the woman. Their first success came with Lesley Brown who gave birth to Louise by natural delivery.

Dr Steptoe, with whom Dr Edwards had started his infertility research and clinic in Cambridge, died in 1988. As the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously, Dr Steptoe could not receive it, leaving many across the world feeling that the recognition for the scientific work should have been much earlier.

The “test tube” often causes confusion. “I was never inside a test tube nor could I get in to one if I tried” says Louise. Only the fertilization of the egg is done in the laborartory, the subsequent growth of the baby in the mother’s womb occurs as in normal pregnancy.

Infertility is a common problem with 10% couples being unable to conceive naturally.  IVF has come as a boon for them. Although still costly and with a 25% chance of success, it has changed many lives across the world. Around four million children have been born by IVF till date and many like Louise, have gone on to get married and have children by the natural way.

India has had its brush with IVF too. A Bengali doctor Subhash Mukhopadhyay was two months late in announcing the birth of Durga or Kanupriya Agarwal - India’s first test tube baby created by him on October 3, 1978. While Edwards, was lauded for his effortsin UK, Mukhopadhyay was fighting a hostile state government that rubbished his findings. Ridiculed and ostracised, Mukhopadhyay was also not allowed to publicise his work in the international arena.He was invited by the Kyoto University in 1979 to present his findings during a seminar in Japan but denied a passport by the Indian government. The depressed physician committed suicide in 1981.

 The Catholic Church has been vehement in its opposition to reproductive research and IVF terming it “duhamizing”.  IVF does pose potential ethical problems as that of a Spanish woman who conceived and delivered at 67 and died 2 years later. Also it is possible for a child now to have 5 parents: the egg donor, the sperm donor, the surrogate mother in whose womb the foetus grows, and parents who rear the child, posing serious issues of parental rights and responsibilities.

 As published in HT City ( Hindustan Times) dated 14 november , 2010.