Both Edwards and Steptoe faced intense publicity and criticism from those opposed to the method, including the Vatican, after Brown's birth, according to the statement.
"It was in the Daily Mirror on 29 June, 1977 with the headline - "What an escort for the Queen - Steptoe joins the parade.
In 1968, Dr. Edwards teamed with Dr. Steptoe to study fertilization and develop methods that would allow the sperm and egg to survive outside the womb.
"Bob Edwards is one of our greatest scientists, " said Mike Macnamee, chief executive of Bourn Hall, the IVF clinic Edwards and Steptoe co-founded, in the statement.
Prof Steptoe said this could be happening because the kind of people who are happy are the kind who take care of themselves and are therefore quite healthy.
The initiative has been warmly welcomed by Mike Macnamee, chief executive of Bourn Hall Clinic - based near Cambridge - which was established by IVF pioneers Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards.
Dr. Edwards and Dr. Steptoe worked with no public funding or direct research support at a time when the concept of a test-tube baby seemed the stuff of Orwellian science fiction.
WSJ: Test-Tube Baby Pioneer Robert Edwards Wins Nobel Prize for Medicine
"It was always the dream of Steptoe and Edwards when they established Bourn Hall as the world's first IVF clinic, that treatment would be available to all who needed it, " he said.
"Bob Edwards is one of our greatest scientists, " said Mike Macnamee, chief executive of Bourn Hall, the IVF clinic founded by Prof Edwards with his fellow IVF pioneer Patrick Steptoe, a gynaecological surgeon.
The paper's authors, Richard Zegers, Andreas Weigl and Andrew Steptoe, reached their conclusion by comparing historical accounts of the maestro's illness - fever, rash, limb pain and swelling - with illnesses prevalent at the time of his death.
Jim Bonham, a lobbyist for Steptoe and Johnson and a former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, says passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program and the Employee Free Choice Act will be other Democrat priorities.
By 1977, when Brown and Steptoe (oh so briefly) discussed whether to proceed with the procedure, medical experts had already reached a consensus that physicians need to inform patients about the risks and benefits of treatments before making treatment choices.
FORBES: The True Immoral Acts Behind The First "Test Tube Baby"
Working in close collaboration with gynecologist Patrick Steptoe, who died in 1988, Dr. Edwards overcame entrenched political and religious hostility, as well as the disapproval of many other scientists at the time, to pioneer the basic techniques of human embryology that led to the birth of the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978.
WSJ: Test-Tube Baby Pioneer Robert Edwards Wins Nobel Prize for Medicine
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