[8] He then met future Nobel Prize-winner Robert Edwards, under whose supervision he would gain a PhD and find a field to which he would commit his life's work.
[11] At Cambridge, Fishel worked with Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe for a number of years before the birth of the world's first IVF baby, Louise Brown, in Oldham in 1978.
[13][14][15] During these controversial early years of IVF, Fishel and his colleagues received extensive opposition from critics both outside of and within the medical and scientific communities, including a civil writ for murder.
In 1981, Fishel, Robert Edwards and other colleagues at Bourn Hall organised the first international IVF conference, which was attended by pioneering clinicians and scientists from around the world.
[32] As the first micro-insemination technique for treating male infertility,[33] SUZI was a novel technology that allowed men with poor semen parameters and no other chance of achieving fertilisation to father their own genetic children.
[42] Together with Steven D. Fleming, in 1992 Fishel established the world's first master's degree courses in assisted reproduction technology at the University of Nottingham, where he had already opened a fertility service.
[45] Fishel has received honorary awards from countries such as Japan, South Africa, Austria and Italy, and has advised numerous international governments, as well as the Vatican.
[46] In 2009, he received an Honorary Fellowship from Liverpool John Moores University for his "outstanding contributions to the field of fertility treatment, including embryology and IVF".
[48][49] In a November 2013 issue of the journal Reproductive BioMedicine Online, Fishel called for the NHS to permit its IVF patients to take part in privately funded trials of new additional techniques, adding that the current position was "preventing progress".