GEORGE QUENTIN DALEY, MD, PhD
Associate Director, Stem Cell Program at Children’s Hospital Boston
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital Boston
Associate Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School
“Science certainly cannot define when in the gradual course of human development we deserve individual and autonomous rights. I do not agree with the premise that the single celled zygote should be given the same considerations as living persons and I do not view the embryo as a human being, particularly when it is frozen in a freezer. As a physician and as a scientist and as a father I live in a practical world of choices, and a world in which disease is a grim reality. Unless we want to turn back the clock, and outlaw in vitro fertilization, then we as a society have already accepted that many more embryos are created than will ever become children. I feel it is morally justified to derive benefit from these embryos through medical research instead of relegating them to medical waste. And unless we are willing to argue the biological absurdity that our humanity can be defined by a particular signature of gene expression that exists in the totipotent cells of the early human embryo, then we must support the vitally important applications of embryonic stem cells to medical research.”
“If my wife and I carried a genetic disease we would accept the risk of the embryo biopsy procedure to insure we could have the healthiest child possible, but if we were simply infertile and using IVF to assist us in reproduction, we would not consent to having our healthy embryos biopsied; we would chose instead to donate our excess embryos to stem cell research.”
Taken from the testimony by George Q. Daley, MD, PhD to the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Hearing on “An Alternative Method for Obtaining Embryonic Stem Cells” July 12, 2005
Read the complete testimony via Children’s Hospital Boston website here.