President, Board of Directors
George Delgado, M.D., is the president and founder of Steno Institute. Since 2005, he has been the Medical Director of Culture of Life Family Services (COLFS) in San Diego, California. He was also the founder of the Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) program, now called Abortion Pill Rescue. The APR program provides a medically safe protocol, using progesterone, to reverse the effects of the drug mifepristone, which is now used in over 70% of the one million annual abortions in the U.S. Since 2008, over 5000 women have given birth to healthy babies thanks to the use of the APR protocols developed, studied and promulgated by Dr. Delgado and his team.
In 2018, because of the APR success, Dr. Delgado partnered with Heartbeat International, the largest pro-life organization in the world, including over 2500 affiliated pregnancy centers, maternity homes, and non-profit agencies on six continents. Heartbeat International assumed responsibility for APR operations, and global outreach. Dr. Delgado retained directorship of APR research and has founded the Steno Institute to serve as the platform for broader pro-life research, including abortion pill reversal.
He was the author of the two most important articles in the medical literature describing and evaluating the successful reversal of mifepristone medical abortions. Additionally, Dr. Delgado was a co-author on Dr. Mary Davenport’s high-impact paper reviewing the mifepristone literature to establish an historic control of embryo survival of mifepristone abortion, if no treatment is offered.
Board certified in both family medicine and hospice and palliative medicine, Dr. Delgado received his medical degree from the University of California, Davis, and completed his residency at Santa Monica Hospital/UCLA. Dr. Delgado is certified in Health Care Ethics through the National Catholic Bioethics Center and is a Natural Family Planning Medical Consultant, having completed the NaProTECHNOLOGY physician training program.
Dr. Delgado is nationally recognized for his pro-life medical expertise. He received the St. Gianna Molla Pro-Life Award at the 2017 Walk for Life West Coast, was awarded the Servant Leader Award in 2018 by Heartbeat International, and was granted the Pro-Life Innovator Award by Solidarity HealthShare in January 2019. The Catholic Medical Association presented him with the Evangelium Vitae Award at its annual conference in 2021.