Stockholm prize committee: "His achievements have made it possible to treat infertility."
By ASSOCIATED PRESSEdwards_IVF_311(photo credit: Associated Press)
STOCKHOLM — Robert Edwards of Britain won the 2010 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for the development of in-vitro fertilization, a breakthrough that has helped millions of infertile couples to have children.RELATED:Researcher: Predictive medicine to reduce costsIs there a doctor in the mouse?"His achievements have made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition afflicting a large proportion of humanity including more than 10 percent of all couples worldwide," the medicine prize committee in Stockholm said in its citation.Edwards, an 85-year-old professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, started working on IVF already in 1950s. He developed the technique, in which egg cells are fertilized outside the body and implanted in the womb, together with Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988.
