In "The Embryo Question: Biomedical Research and the Moral Status of Nascent Human Life," Robert P. George defends the proposition that human embryos possess the fundamental dignity inherent to human beings and therefore should not be deliberately destroyed even in the cause of biomedical science. He adduces the basic facts of human embryogenesis and early developmental biology to establish the proposition that human embryos are nothing less than human beings at the earliest stage of their natural development. They differ not in kind, but only in degree of development, from human beings at later developmental stages, i.e., fetuses, infants, children, adolescents, and adults. After building the case for the full moral standing of embryonic human beings, George addresses a wide range of arguments that have been advanced by supporters of research involving the killing of human embryos in efforts to show that embryos are not human beings or, if they are, lack the full moral standing of human beings at later developmental stages. Among those whose arguments he addresses are Michael Gazzaniga of Dartmouth College, Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine, and Michael Sandel of Harvard University. George concludes his lecture by commenting on possible alternative sources of embryonic or embryonic-type (i.e., pluripotent) stem cells--sources that do not require the destruction of living human embryos.