Robert Edwards of Britain, now an 85-year-old professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, lived to see the far-reaching ramifications of his hugely controversial early research.
"Today, Robert Edwards' vision is a reality and brings joy to infertile people all over the world," the Nobel Committee said in Stockholm. It began with the birth on July 25, 1978, of the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, to a couple who had been trying to conceive for nine years. With in vitro fertilization, or IVF, an egg is removed from a woman, mixed with sperm in a laboratory, allowed to divide for four or five days, then implanted in the womb to grow into a baby. Today the odds of a couple having a baby after a single cycle of IVF treatment are about 1 in 5, roughly the same odds as a fertile couple trying to have children naturally.
Edwards and research partner Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988, faced opposition to their IVF experiments. Some religious leaders called it morally wrong. Some government officials thought it more important to limit fertility than treat infertility, and some scientists were worried about the safety of embryos.
"In retrospect, it is amazing that Edwards not only was able to respond to the continued criticism of IVF, but that he also remained so persistent and unperturbed in fulfilling his scientific vision," the Nobel Committee said.
Society still wrestles with issues that arose from his work, such as:
— Is it appropriate to obtain stem cells from embryos — embryos created through IVF? Some people object because the embryos are destroyed to get the cells.
— Should women who donate eggs be paid? The Vatican's top bioethics official, Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, said Monday that Edwards opened "a new and important chapter in the field of human reproduction." But he also said IVF is responsible for the destruction of embryos and the creation of a "market" in donor eggs.
— Should there be an age limit on women using IVF? In 2006, a 67-year-old Spanish woman made headlines when she gave birth after using the technology to conceive twins. The uproar continued when she herself died only two years later.
Even so, Edwards' research deserves a Nobel, said bioethicist Laurie Zoloth of Northwestern University. "For millions of families, it created the possibility of a truly joyful and extraordinary event."
The Nobel is not given posthumously. It was not immediately clear why it took so long to honour such groundbreaking research. Initially, there was concern about the health of test-tube babies, "so it was, of course, very, very important that Louise Brown was healthy and that subsequent babies also were healthy," prize committee member Christer Hoog said.
Despite the absence of Steptoe, committee secretary Goran Hansson said Edwards "deserves a Nobel Prize on his own" because he made the fundamental discoveries that made IVF therapy possible.
A statement from Bourn Hall in Cambridge, England, the world's first IVF clinic, which was founded by the two researchers, said Edwards was too ill to give interviews.
"I spoke to his wife, and she was delighted. And she was sure he would be delighted, too," Hansson told reporters in Stockholm after announcing the $1.5 million (10 million kronor) award.
Lori B. Andrews of the Chicago-Kent College of Law says making embryos in a lab created a host of ethical issues that have never been fully resolved. For one thing, clinics routinely fertilize more eggs than are implanted, at least at first. The resulting extra embryos can be frozen for storage, Andrews noted, but couples can change their minds about what they want to do with them.
These days, she said, a child can have up to five parents: the sperm donor, the egg donor, a surrogate mother who brings the child to term in her womb, and the couple intending to raise the child.
Some laws say the legal mother is the woman who gives birth, but nowadays "we can no longer depend on biology to determine the mother," Andrews said.
As for surrogate mothers, "I think there's ethical issues any time we mix human reproduction and cash payments," Zoloth said. "What does it mean to mix human reproduction and a buyer and a seller and a parent and a child in the same discussion?"
In Bristol, England, Louise Brown, the first IVF success, is now 32. In a statement issued by the Bourn Hall clinic, she said she and her mother are "so glad that one of the pioneers of IVF has been given the recognition he deserves." Brown gave birth in 2007 to a son who was conceived naturally.
The medicine award was the first of the 2010 Nobels to be announced. It will be followed by physics on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday, literature on Thursday, the peace prize on Friday and economics on Monday Oct. 11.
When the police came for Liu Xiaobo on a December night nearly two years ago, they didn't tell the dissident author why he was being taken away again. The line in the detention order for his "suspected crime" was left blank. But Liu and the dozen officers who crowded into his dark Beijing apartment knew the reason. He was hours from releasing Charter 08, the China democracy movement's most comprehensive call yet for peaceful reform. The document would be viewed by the ruling Communist Party as a direct challenge to its 60-year monopoly on political power.
Liu, who over the past two decades had endured stints in prison and re-education camp, looked at the blank detention notice and lost his temper.
"At that moment, I knew the day I was expecting had finally come," his wife, Liu Xia, said recently as she recounted the night of Dec. 8, 2008. Thinking of the Beijing winter, she said she brought him a down coat and cigarettes. The police took the cigarettes away.
Liu was sentenced last Christmas Day to 11 years in prison for subversion. The 54-year old literary critic is now a favourite to win the Nobel Peace Prize — in what would be a major embarrassment to the Chinese government. He is the best shot the country's dissident movement has had in winning the prestigious award since it began pushing for democratic change after China's authoritarian leaders launched economic, but not political, reforms three decades ago.
Last year the prize was won by President Barack Obama. In an indication of Beijing's unease, China's deputy foreign minister has warned the Nobel Institute not to give the prize to a Chinese dissident, the director of the Norway-based institute said this week. In another sign of official disapproval, an editorial on Thursday in the state-run Global Times newspaper called Liu a radical and separatist.
In China, police continue to threaten and question some of the more than 300 people who were the first to sign Charter 08, which was co-authored by Liu. Despite the risk, thousands more have signed it since its release. Charter 08 is an echo of Charter 77, the famous call for human rights in then-Czechoslovakia that led to the 1989 Velvet Revolution that swept away the communist regime. The charter for China calls for more freedoms and an end to the Communist Party's political dominance. "The democratization of Chinese politics can be put off no longer," it says.
Former peace prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and Charter 77 co-drafter Vaclav Havel have joined those calling for Liu to get the award. Scholars inside and outside China have mounted letter-writing campaigns on his behalf.
Liu is rare among government critics in China for being well-known not just among the dissident movement but among the wider public too. "Across the spectrum, Chinese intellectuals and students have high respect for Liu Xiaobo," said Andrew Nathan, a professor at Columbia University in New York who once sponsored Liu as a visiting scholar. "The award of the prize ... would be viewed by most as an act friendly to China."
Liu first drew attention in 1986, when he criticized Chinese writers' "childish" obsession with the Nobel Prize. Two years later, he became a visiting scholar in Oslo, where the peace prize is awarded. There, in his first time outside China, his writings became more political.
Liu cut short a visiting scholar stint at Columbia University months later to join the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing in 1989. He and three other older activists famously persuaded students to peacefully leave the square hours before the deadly June 4 crackdown.
"I remember clearly the difficulty and pain Liu Xiaobo and his comrades-in-arms experienced in reaching this decision. One which only later was understood to have saved the lives of several hundred students," Xu Youyu, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, recently wrote in a public letter supporting Liu for the peace prize.
Liu went to prison after the crackdown and was released in early 1991 because he had repented and "performed major meritorious services," state media said at the time, without elaborating. Still, five years later Liu was sent to a re-education camp for three years for co-writing an open letter that demanded the impeachment of then-President Jiang Zemin. Liu emerged from that sentence in 1999 to find the Internet age. He resisted the new medium of communication at first, but eventually called the Internet "God's present to China."
Now Liu only writes a diary and letters to his wife, which she keeps private. His family can visit him in prison, but they can't talk about his case or world events, and officials stand by taking notes.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Through this ever open gate
None come too early
None too late
Thanks for dropping in ... the PICs