I'm proud of the fact that, while my main calling card is the neuromuscular junction and the synapses in general, my own research branched out and we published in areas of glial cell development, especially oligodendrocytes, which are so important these days in the brain, at least the realization is. Stem cell biology, especially at the NIH, when this was tremendously controversial. When many of the negative members of Congress and the public were opposed to any kind of stem cell research, felt this would be killing people.

I testified once before Congress, when the person who testified before me, a very prominent woman politician, said she could look down the microscope and see little people in the embryos. It's very hard to contradict that. I can't just stand up and say, 'That's bullshit, madam.' But she said it and the congressmen were all nodding their heads, we have to protect those little fellows and girls. So, for a long time there was no research allowed on [embryonic] stem cells, and a whole area of science was excluded because of that. But gradually it came to be realized that a fertilized egg should not be considered a human, at least that's the case that I made, and others. That it's at least several weeks before that fertilized egg is viable. I don't think that's still uniformly accepted and it's going to raise [concerns] for a while, but I wrote about it, I testified about it, and put myself on the line about it. And so did Ruth, from a bioethics point of view. We wrote a very important paper together, mostly her input, which pointed out the ethics of denying someone stem cell therapy.