Robert Edwards

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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