Fertility Clinic Founder: 'Miracle' That Embryos Survived Explosion, Says He Forgives Perpetrator

Forbes Breaking News

During a press briefing on Thursday, American Reproductive Center founder, Dr. Maher Abdallah spoke about the car bombing that occurred in Palm Springs on May 17.

Transcript

00:00well you know this is not something that you prepare for and honestly I have nothing prepared

00:06I I just want to say that I'm thankful that my staff my patients all the embryos are are safe

00:13and I'm also thankful that they for the first responders and all they've done risking their

00:19lives to save embryos stressing that we all value life as a reproductive endocrinologist in the

00:27United States I assess my success with how many families I helped go home with a child and I'm

00:34very critical myself I look at my pregnancy rates and I always aim for higher and that's really how

00:41I assess my performance my return on the investment is babies it's nothing else so this material loss

00:50over there with destroyed buildings all four of them will need to obviously be demolished and

00:56replaced it doesn't mean much to me life is preserved and that's really all I care about

01:01we will rebuild and I promise you will be on the same site and it will be better than ever before

01:07I have no doubt that we will bounce back better and than anything before and we will succeed I'm very

01:16appreciative of the City Council the mayor and all they've done helping us get a space right away on

01:22Tuesday we'll be up and running again the past couple of weeks one of the local physicians Dr.

01:28Elbegi was gracious enough to allow me to use his office so we can do basic ultrasounds so we continued

01:34seeing patients even on Monday morning after the Saturday attack we served our patients we did not

01:41stop our phone numbers were obviously our phones were destroyed we came up with ways to still help

01:47patients we will return and we will be better than ever before I have no doubt and this did not derail

01:56our project like Amr said 2025 was our best year because we really invested in the that building to

02:04create what we call a perfect vacuum a perfect environment for the embryos and that really should

02:10showed and and what happened and that we had embryos still dividing in the incubators and five days

02:17later we looked at those embryos and through a miracle eight of them were perfect what we call

02:23blastocysts for a perfect embryos I guarantee that the patient that has those embryos will go home with a

02:31child personally guarantee it this is a miracle before buildings were destroyed one building remained

02:38standing even the frames on the wall were not affected how does that happen it's a miracle for

02:44life I'm grateful I'm thankful I can't think of anything more we will rebuild bounce back come

02:52back better than ever before material damage does not affect me in any way and I don't even think

02:58about it as far as the the perpetrator of this I do forgive him I wish his family the best and we all pray

03:05for them and I instructed my staff not to look back but to look ahead no one is allowed to talk about

03:11the person who did this this is about forgiveness this is about life and we'll carry on thank you

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