HERE & THERE: A well deserved prize
I don’t know if irony is the right word, but it
does give me pause when I reflect on the fact that the male equivalent
of the pill that freed women from the fear of conception is a little
blue diamond shaped pill that prolongs men’s ability to seek
satisfaction in the act of conception. But just the other day, one half
of the duo that made it possible for couples to meet in the middle and
achieve that ultimate joy of union for most- the birth of a child – was
awarded the Nobel prize in medicine.
Robert G. Edwards, an Englishman with his compatriot, the late Patrick Steptoe, developed the procedure for helping infertile couples to
fulfill their hopes. Edwards is a physiologist now aged 85, who spent
years working on getting eggs and sperm to grow and unite outside the
body. The late Steptoe, who died in 1988, ten years after the first
successful test tube baby, was a gynaecologist who pioneered the
concept of laparoscopic surgery, the method by which eggs are extracted
from a womb.
The duo were a dogged and determined pair who
withstood ostracism, hostility, and denial of funds from the medical,
scientific, and religious establishment.
According to the UK Guardian, they were spurred
on, Edwards said in 2008, by their patients. “Nothing is more special
than a child. Steptoe and I were deeply affected by the desperation
felt by couples who so wanted to have children. We had a lot of
critics, but we fought like hell for our patients.”
Louise Brown, the daughter of Lesley and John
Brown, that lucky first couple was understandably excited and happy at
the news of the prize, but many of Edwards and Steptoe’s supporters
felt the Nobel Committee had been very tardy indeed in recognising this
achievement.
Steptoe is no more, and Edwards is too old to
grasp what has just happened to him. To date, 4 million people around
the world have been born through IVF and the procedure has led to the
development of new ways to treat forms of male infertility, a condition
that, to some Nigerians, does not exist.
Which brings us to the strongly held beliefs that
can make the pursuit of happiness so hard for some. The idea that a
person is incomplete without this or that can create a real blight on a
life that could, left alone, find other paths to fulfillment. You must
marry, you must have children, then you must have sons, because
daughters don’t mean as much…It is unending and sometimes it is
nonsensical.
Happily, even in Nigeria, some of that is giving
way to the recognition that there are alternatives, one of which is
providing a loving home to children in need through adoption, an act
that is a two fold gift of giving and receiving that keeps on growing.
Looking back though, there were days when almost every aspect of the act of conception was fraught with fear. Lack of the kind of medical
knowledge and the tools we have today meant that giving birth was a
risky process that could take you to the brink and beyond. If something
went wrong, there was little to choose from between the act of trying
to extract the child with the crude and rudimentary tools available and
saving the mother. Both usually died so that when child was
successfully delivered and the mother lived to share the joy, it was a
triumph of grace and providence.
“I have been and back’ is the chorus of one of the traditional songs announcing the birth of a child.
There was surviving childbirth and there was the
fear of conception, the strain of a child each year, the pressure of
more mouths to feed, the drudgery of a life of constant physical work
farming, childbirth, housework or in between some petty trading, just
to keep something coming.
For schoolgirls, it was a rocky terrain. Teenage
pregnancy meant the end of a chance at education and a career. And
then, with a working life, babies meant no career or one where
advancement was limited, especially if the babies kept coming. Those
were dark days of back street abortions of lives wasted in hidden fear
and misery.
The advent of the contraceptive pill changed all
that. One tiny little tablet freed women up to make choices and plan
their lives, to pursue pleasure without fear, to plan for the
responsibilities young men did not spare a thought about as they went
about sowing the wild oats society entitled them to.
Two inventions have made the pursuit of happiness possible in such fundamental ways
and yet, we still continue to perpetuate the same
problems. Teenage pregnancy is till an issue in many countries, despite
the availability of sex education, and free contraception. Ordinarily
it should be an anathema that HIV AIDS should still continue to spread
when the message of how it can be prevented is so basic and simple:
protect yourself always or abstain and you can live free of the virus.
It is a big puzzle how the human condition simply refuses to change.
Or maybe it is just that freedom without education, and that in its
truest sense, is as bad as no freedom at all.
