Robert Edwards Quotes & Sayings

“I wanted to find out exactly who was in charge, whether it was God Himself or whether it was scientists in the laboratory. It was us.”

“It struck me what we should be trying to do was pluck the egg from the ovary and fertilise it in the laboratory. We could do this in animals increasingly... this was the way to go in the human species.”

“Louise Brown's birth marked the end of the beginning of human IVF, acclaimed at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. This event was snubbed by some clinicians now styled as 'pioneers', who shouted that the test-tube claim was a fake! They did not matter.”

“Increasingly committed to human studies, I sought to collect several immature human oocytes from pieces of excised ovarian tissue, mature and fertilize them in vitro and transfer the resulting embryos into infertile women to help them conceive. Some gynecologists approached about this project candidly responded they thought the idea preposterous.”

“The most important thing in life is having a child. Nothing is more special than a child.”

“My first ideas of human in vitro fertilization (IVF) arose with my Ph.D. in Edinburgh University in the early 1950s. Supervised by Alan Beatty, my research was based on his work on altering chromosomal complements in mouse embryos.”

“My genetic interests persist in the area of the control of human development. Something must be fundamentally flawed with a reproductive system that allows only 20% of embryos to implant, even in younger couples. Why are so many human spermatozoa immotile or formed abnormally, and why do up to one-half of embryos carry chromosomal anomalies?”

“Soon it will be a sin of parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children.”