60秒科学:爱德华兹获诺贝尔医学或生理学奖（在线收听）

10月4日，在瑞典首都斯德哥尔摩的卡罗林斯卡医学院，诺贝尔奖评审委员会宣布，英国生理学家罗伯特·爱德华兹获得2010年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖。

85-year-old Englishman Robert Edwards wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his 20-year effort to develop in vitro fertilization. Steve Mirsky reports

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to 85-year-old Robert Edwards of England, for the development of in vitro fertilization. The Karolinska Institute’s Christer Hoog:

“Robert Edwards, working in the United Kingdom, began his fundamental research on the biology of fertilization during the 1950s. He formulated early a vision to develop an in vitro fertilization method to treat infertility. In this method, an egg will be taken out of a woman, fertilized using sperm in a cell culture dish, and then returned to the woman.”

The first so-called test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in England in 1978.

“Since 1978, an increasing number of children, now approximately four million, have been born thanks to IVF. To briefly summarize the status of IVF today, 1 to 2 percent of all newborns in Europe, and America, and Australia and a number of countries, are conceived through IVF.”

—Steve Mirsky