STOCKHOLM, Oct 4 British physiologist Robert Edwards, whose work led to the first “test-tube baby”, won the 2010 Nobel prize for medicine or physiology, the prize-awarding institute said on Monday.

Sweden's Karolinska Institute lauded Edwards, 85, for bringing joy and hope to the more than 10 per cent of couples worldwide who suffer from infertility.

Known as the father of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), Edwards picked up the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns for what the institute called a “milestone in the development of modern medicine”.

As many as 4 million babies have been born since the first IVF baby in 1978 as a result of the techniques Edwards developed, together with a now-deceased colleague, Patrick Steptoe, the institute said.

“Bob Edwards changed the way we think about having babies,” said Dr Alan Thornhill, scientific director of the London Bridge Fertility, Gynaecology and Genetics Centre.

The Roman Catholic Church strongly opposes IVF as an affront to human dignity that destroys more human life than it creates because scientists discard or store unused fertilised embryos.

“In-vitro fertilisation has led directly to the deliberate destruction of millions of human embryos,” said Professor David Albert Jones, director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre.

Nevertheless, Edwards and Steptoe, a gynaecologist, pursued their work despite opposition from churches, governments, many in the media and scepticism from scientific colleagues.

Working at Cambridge University, they began replacing embryos into infertile mothers in 1972.

In 1977, they tried a new procedure which did not involve hormone treatments and relied instead on precise timing. On July 25 of the next year, Louise Brown, the first IVF baby, was born.—Reuters