London, England, Oct 5, 2010 / 04:08 am
A British pro-life group has objected to the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Medicine to a co-inventor of in vitro fertilization on the grounds that the technique is an abuse of scientific knowledge and has caused the abuse and deaths of embryonic human beings.
The Nobel Committee granted the $1.5 million honor to Robert Edwards, 85, a professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge. He developed the IVF technique with British gynecologist Patrick Steptoe.
"IVF had moved from vision to reality and a new era in medicine had begun," commented the Nobel Committee, according to AOL News. It said Edwards’ vision had brought “joy to infertile people all over the world.”
The IVF technique involves mixing human eggs and sperm to conceive an embryo and then placing the embryo in a woman’s womb. The technique drew ethical criticism both from those who worried children conceived in IVF would have abnormalities and from those who recognized the technique puts human embryos at risk of death and separates human reproduction from marital love.