The world's first test tube baby boy has launched a campaign for a "long overdue" award for the scientist who pioneered the IVF process that gave him life.
Alastair MacDonald, 29, said it is astonishing that Professor Robert Edwards has received dozens of accolades from all over the globe but he has had little recognition in his own country.
Mr Edwards, who studied at Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities, pioneered in-vitro fertilisation with Dr Patrick Steptoe, who died of cancer in 1988 aged 75, one week before he was due to receive his knighthood from the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
Mr MacDonald, from Glasgow, has written to the Prime Minister to have the man known to him as an "uncle" properly recognised.
He has the support of experts in the field from all over the world including doctors at Cambridge University, the British Fertility Society, the Society for Reproduction and Fertility, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologist and the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology.
Although Leeds-born Mr Edwards was made a CBE 20 years ago, his peers say his achievements far outweigh that award and he "more than deserves" greater recognition, possibly a knighthood.
Professor Martin Johnson, of Cambridge University Anatomy School, described Mr Edwards as the "father of his subject".
"Prof Robert Edwards is the single most important and influential figure internationally in human reproductive biology.
"It is an indisputable fact that he has contributed more to the treatment of human infertility than any other individual and, in so doing, has made the early stages of our own development accessible to study. This achievement clearly places him in a league on his own. He is truly and uniquely the father of his subject'."
His comments were echoed in other clinics and research centres. They included Dr Key Elder, of the Bourn Clinic in Cambridgeshire, which was founded by Mr Edwards and the late Dr Steptoe, and is still going strong. It sees around 850 or 900 women a year, with an average age of 37, and around one in three cycles results in a successful birth.
Dr David Adamson, president of the ASRM, said: "I strongly support Prof Edwards and hope he will receive a knighthood, which is so justified and overdue."
Both Mr MacDonald, now a systems engineering officer with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, and his mother, Grace, now 62, who separated from his father when he was four, believe Mr Edwards should be recognised for what they said were his "unequalled" achievements.
He wrote to Gordon Brown: "Prof Edwards has been honoured around the world . . . it is a travesty that he has not been honoured by his own country.
"I was born as the second ever IVF baby in 1979 and I have grown up very close to Prof Edwards. I simply would not be alive if it wasn't for Prof Edwards. It saddens me greatly that at his age of 83, he has never been honoured when he has given so much and has never requested anything in return.
"I hope that Prof Edwards can still be alive to see his rightful honour given to him, unlike Patrick Steptoe the co-pioneer with Robert Edwards, who died before he received his knighthood.
"I hope this government does not make that same mistake. I hope you can use your influence to give a truly great man the rightful status he deserves."
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