After a successful series of infertility treatments, Kristen Cohen and her husband, Lee, had two sets of twin boys, now ages 6 and 2. They also had about a dozen embryos that they no longer needed but could not imagine going to waste. “We went through so much to create these embryos,” says Kristen. “This was much more than blood, sweat and tears.” The Cohens had also benefited firsthand from medical research; Lee, who has cystic fibrosis, has been helped by advanced treatments. So in 2006, when Kristen saw an article about the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, she contacted it and began the process of donating their embryos, which could be used to create new lines of embryonic stem cells. After five months of paperwork and counseling for the couple, the Cohen embryos were in the hands of researchers. “We know they might be destroyed without making a single stem-cell line,” Kristen says. “I don’t need to know that my embryo helped save patient X. It’s the greater good.”<\/p>\n