Dr. Edwards got his Nobel Prize for getting this to work in a Petri dish.
The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was given to Dr. Robert Edwards for his work on in vitro fertilization (IVF). Basically, he pioneered the fertilization of human eggs with sperm in a Petri dish.
IVF has obviously had a huge impact on society. Millions of infertile couples have been able to have children. And families that have severe genetic diseases in their family tree have been able to have children without these diseases partly because of IVF. (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis or PGD is the other part of that equation.) IVF has also provided a steady supply of embryonic stem cells for research.
Of course, there have been some downsides as well. Millions of frozen embryos will eventually be thrown away. This is mass murder to people who believe these embryos are a life. And being able to select embryos without genetic disease opens up the possibility of selecting embryos for more troubling, trivial traits like gender or hair, skin, and eye color.