ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some possible new developments in human embryo research, based not on crystal ball gazing but on existing knowledge or on the current understanding of areas of ignorance. It includes any research on gametes which logically requires or strongly demands that an embryo be created to test the outcome of the gamete manipulation. The chapter is organized according to a set of generalized research objectives rather than by particular experiments or techniques. By looking at more general objectives and strategies, and illustrating them with examples, it provides a context or framework for further reflection and development. The changing practices and possibilities for regulating fertility and manipulating reproductive outcomes have themselves changed social attitudes and challenged ethical thinking. The impact of these emergent technologies on attitudes to gender, sexuality, the nature of the family, and the relative roles of inheritance, intra-uterine environment and post-natal experience on the development of human traits has been and continues to be profound.
