donation decision.

"If they had a heartbeat, that would make a big difference. But embryos are bunches of cells, and I couldn't throw them down the sink when they could further science," says Marie Dooley, far left, one of the small percentage of parents who, after undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF), donated her excess embryos to stem cell research. Dooley conceived two of her three children through IVF before "helping to make history" with her donation to Harvard.

Nearly 400,000 IVF embryos are in storage in the U.S., but less than 3 percent have been donated for research. Almost as many are designated to be discarded each year. Only a fraction of those that do arrive in the labs are suitable for study.

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By J. S. H.