CHENNAI: As news of a British researcher winning the Nobel prize for pioneering in vitro fertilization spread through the Indian scientific community on Monday, there was introspection about a lost opportunity which may have brought recognition for the work of Indian researchers.
On October 3, 1978, barely two months after the birth of the world's first IVF baby Marie Louise Brown, India had also produced its own — Durga alias Kanupriya Agarwal. Brown's scientific father, Robert G Edwards, professor emeritus at University of Cambridge and hailed as the father of IVF, has now been honoured with the Nobel prize in medicine.
But the West Bengal-based Dr Subhash Mukhopadhyay went on to face an inquiry by the West Bengal government in December 1978, before committing suicide on June 19, 1981, after the state refused to recognize his achievement. Senior scientists and gynaecologists across the country mourned his death on Monday and many urged the centre to correct a historical error by honouring him.
Mukhopadhyay devised the same technique as Edwards without knowledge of the parallel research in UK. The difference was that Edwards was 67 days ahead of him. Besides, the Indian did not have any collaborators nor did he document his work. "While Dr Edwards had documented every step right from animal studies, Dr Subhash had nothing. And in science, no claims can be proved without documents," said Dr Jayashree Gajaraj, former president, Federation of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Society of India (FoGSI).
"It hurts to see that the efforts of an Indian have gone unrecognised," said former Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology chief Dr P M Bhargava, who was part of the committee that formulated the IVF lab guidelines
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