Recently, Dr. David Meldrum of Reproductive Partners Medical Group in California had a unique opportunity -- to spend both professional and personal time with a renowned pioneer in the field of fertility treatment, Dr. Robert Edwards. Here, Dr. Meldrum recounts his meeting with a man whose work has resulted in the previously unimagined conceptions and births of millions of children...

An Evening with Bob Edwards

Robert Edwards (of the Steptoe and Edwards team that was first successful with IVF in 1978), and I were invited to give keynote lectures in Nice, France at a symposium sponsored by Serono. Bob covered the past and future role of the laboratory in IVF, while I focused on the role of the clinician.

The theme of my lecture was that identification of technique-specific and patient-specific obstacles to success, and methods to reduce or avoid those obstacles, has played as great a role in improved IVF success as improvements in the laboratory. As we move toward single embryo transfer, ultrasound guided transfer and techniques to maximize retention of fluid in the optimal location for implantation will play a crucial role. If, for example, 20 microliters of medium and two embryos are transferred, and 10 microliters and one embryo end up where the embryo can’t implant, you still might be successful. But if only one embryo is transferred and 10 microliters of medium and the one embryo are misplaced, you have nothing.

My lecture opposite this pioneer in our field was truly the high point of my career, but actually I enjoyed more my evening with Bob the night before over dinner. I’d had the pleasure of having snippets of conversation with Bob over the years when we have spoken at the same conference, but I had never before spent two to three hours with this incredible person. My wife, Claudia, and I were fortunate to have his undivided attention throughout the evening and were able to form a more complete impression than we had from our more brief exposures in the past.

First, one might think that someone who has received the prestigious Lasker award (often the precursor to a Nobel), founded the European Society for Reproduction (ESHRE) and two journals, and has had his picture on a series of British centennial stamps along with Edward Jenner (smallpox vaccine developer), Florence Nightingale (founder of nursing), and Alexander Fleming (discoverer of penicillin), might be aloof and unapproachable. Bob is certainly neither of those and proved to be a very down-to-earth gentleman.

To give you some idea of his vision, during his lecture he pointed out that many years ago he performed the first PGD in animals, harvested stem cells from the blastocyst (and demonstrated their ability to form various tissues), and even used those cells to rescue irradiated mice by infusing them into a tail vein, which then populated the bone marrow. During dinner, he proposed to us his favorite conundrum -- why would evolution have selected women, who ovulate four metabolically or genetically abnormal eggs for every one egg able to form an offspring? He doesn’t have the answer, but this 80 year-old gentleman, still sharp as a tack, knows the important questions still awaiting an answer, and at every opportunity is stimulating other people to provide a solution.

A fascinating story I had not heard before was that he would not have been successful had it not been for an American benefactor who anonymously supported his work. I was surprised that he even mentioned this, since IVF is thought of as a singularly British advance. I suspect it may have been Claudia’s gift for questioning and listening and perhaps the good French wine that let this slip out.

Another interesting insight was that Bob was becoming active in municipal politics in Cambridge and had it not been for Louise Brown’s positive hCG, he would have gone in a different direction. I suspect that someone like Bob would have made an excellent Prime Minister.

Bob has a large country property where he raises goats and trees. He travels every other week to lecture. Claudia and I have never been as impressed with any individual. Bob achieved success in spite of being scorned and criticized from all sides, and particularly by the Pope. He unwaveringly stayed the course and, several million babies later, we are all the recipients of the persistence and vision of this incredible gentleman.

In addition to being a physician, professor, and journal editor, Dr. David Meldrum is co-author with Dr. Arthur Wisot of Conceptions & Misconceptions: The Informed Consumer's Guide through the Maze of In Vitro Fertilization and other Assisted Reproduction Techniques. He and his wife, Claudia, are the parents of four children who are the results of fertility treatment.