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Kai Ryssdal: The first Nobel Prize of the year was announced this morning: Robert G. Edwards has won the Nobel for medicine. It comes with a cash award of about $1.5 million. But the economic and human impact of his work has been much larger. In the 32 years since the world’s first test tube baby was born, in vitro fertilization has become a multi-billion dollar industry., as Marketplace’s Steve Henn reports.

Steve Henn: More than four million babies have been born thanks to Edwards’ research. It’s made biological parenthood possible for same-sex couples and families who couldn’t conceive. It’s also created an enormous global industry.

Art Caplan: The treatment of infertility in the United States alone generates billions of dollars.

Art Caplan is the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Caplan says despite the industry’s size…

Caplan: In vitro fertilization in the U.S. is completely unregulated. It’s really a field that has grown according purely to market forces.

By some estimates, close to 15 percent of the world’s population is infertile. Already close to 3 percent of all live births in developed countries are possible because of IVF. And Caplan thinks this is just the beginning.

Caplan: In the future with new genetic knowledge coming, what was a technology that once was only of interest to the infertile is going to become in the 21st century a technology that could be used to design our descendants.

There’s already a market for elite egg donors. Debora Spar is the president of Barnard College and author of “The Baby Business.”

Debora Spar: Generally if you are talking about “Ivy League eggs,” we’re talking anywhere between $10,000 to $25,000 per harvest.

Overall, there are few health guidelines for young egg donors and there often there are no guarantees for parents.

For the Innovation Desk, I’m Steve Henn for Marketplace.