The Westchester Institute is actively engaged in the moral evaluation of some of the most promising alternatives to embryo destructive research. In a May 2005 white paper the President's Council on Bioethics outlined and offered an initial ethical assessment of 4 proposed means of obtaining pluripotent human stem cells by methods that would not destroy or in any way endanger human embryos in the process. 

"Pluripotent" stem cells are the kind that can give rise to all cell tissue types in an organism. In human beings, the only sure source of these cells is the inner cell mass of 5 to 6-day-old embryos. In obtaining them from embryos, the embryos are destroyed in the process. Since 2005, the Westchester Institute has been very active in promoting alternatives to such research, in particular the two proposals discussed below: altered nuclear transfer and direct cell reprogramming .
 
Today we stand at the threshold of a future in which embryo-destructive research could become commonplace. We are convinced that it is possible to find ethically acceptable alternatives which both avoid such a scenario, and at the same time meet the demands of science and medical research, namely, by producing pluripotent, genetically stable, and long-lived human stem cells that can be immunologically matched to patients.