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fertieg58 · Informatyk

I count, at the Nobel Foundation website, 27 winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in the last ten years. That’s two or three a year, every single year, since 1999 through last year. But in a rarity this morning one man’s household, in England, got the morning call from Stockholm. That would be Robert Edwards,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], a retired University of Cambridge man. He is the grand old man of in vitro fertilization. He helped shepherd the birth of the first ‘test-tube’ baby, Louise Brown, in 1978, with whom he’s shown in the pic. He gets all the prize money and would also have all the sudden interruptions in his routine to himself – except that,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], reports say, his wife told the Nobel man that her husband is ill, would be delighted to get the news, but not able to take the phone or greet media today.
Brit Press Stories:
- Charlie Petit
This entry was posted on Monday, October 4th, 2010 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Grist for the Mill: Nobel Foundation Medicine Prize page ;
NY Times – Nicholas Wade: Pioneer of In Vitro Fertilization Wins Nobel Prize ; A focus on the history of ethical worry that greeted the method,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and has waned considerably “except on the part of the Catholic church.” He also points out that the Lasker Foundation, a rather reliable oracle of Nobels of this stripe, awarded Edwards its prize nine years ago.
AP – Karl Ritter, Malin Rising: In vitro UK pioneer Edwards wins medicine Nobel ; These two, as did many outlets, relied on Louise Brown, now a mother herself and a postal worker, for the happy quotes of a traditional Nobel Prize story.
LA Times – Thomas H. Maugh II: IVF Innovator Robert G. Edwards wins Nobel ;
NPR (blog) Scott Hensley: Contentious Fertility Research Traveled Long Road To Nobel ;
Washington Post – Rob Stein: Robert Edwards wins 2010 Nobel prise in medicine for in-vitro fertilization ;
The Scientist – Vanessa Schipani: IVF pioneer earns Nobel ; He earned it, didn’t merely win it, the hed says. It fits the story – which vividly, if briefly, described the achievement as particularly remarkable given both technical and social-political obstacles. Also mentioned here is that some Swedish newspapers correctly “guessed” the winner – leading to suspicion of a leak from within the selection committee.
…. much more

One wonders – in the absence of any direct evidence either way – whether? the delay in this award is due to the ethical storm around IVF in its earlier years and perhaps a Nobel Foundation lack of nerve long after it became clear the transformative method was a keeper.
In a perfect world this would also have been a split prize. His partner in the field’s birth, gynecological surgeon Patrick Steptoe, was better known to the public but died in 1988. His heirs may this morning be feeling a wee extra melancholic that he could not have hung on. There are no posthumous Nobels. Each is worth ten million Swedish kronor, or about $1.4 million.
More important, the winning feat is a highly? practical applied bit of medical science rather than an arcane breakthrough in embryology, genetics, evolutionary microbiology,? or hard-to-grasp dicipherment of metabolic legerdemain.
In the meantime, this news received the standard burst of reporting, congratulations, responses except for the winner’s giddy gratitude, and such all. I won’t try to analyze much of this individually except to remark should something stand out as I fly past. (Scroll down after your fill of this post to the next one to read of a conveniently pertinent, second spot of entirely new news today).

Reuters – Mia Shanley: IVF pioneer wins medicine Nobel prize ;
BBC – Michelle Roberts: The birth of IVF ;
New Scientist – Andy Coghlan: Test tube baby pioneer wins medicine Nobel ;
The Economist - The 2010 Nobel prizes: Medicine ; Good recap, nice closing kicker too.
The Manchester Evening News – Tom Brooks-Pollock: Test tube baby pioneer wins Nobel Prize ; A shorty.
Guardian – Alok Jha: British IVF ioneer Robert Edwards wins Nobel prize for medicine ;
Wired-UK – Duncan Geere: British IVF pioneer wins Nobel Medicine Prize ;
A few other stories:
Note: not a test tube in sight