How Did Thinking About the Future Help Us See Today's Legal and Bioethics Issues Differently?

Reflections from Legal and Bioethics Experts

Transcript of Webinar recording

17 June 2025

Discussed by Nicola Williams and Laura O’Donovan with input from Andrew Darby.

Organised by Zindzi Cresswell   

This work has been supported by the Future of Human Reproduction Programme, which has been funded by the Wellcome Trust under grant reference 222858/Z/21/Z.

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/future-of-human-reproduction/

Please note that this transcript has been edited for clarity and structure, while maintaining the tone and language of the original auto-generated content from Microsoft Teams.

Opening Remarks

Cresswell, Zindzi

Hello and welcome. It's a pleasure to say hello, good afternoon, good evening, or good night, depending on where you are in the world. But a big thank you for joining us for the final of our research showcase series at the Future of Human Reproduction.

So far in this series, we've had four interesting conversations from different members of the team, and I'm really delighted and pleased to be able to welcome Nicola and Laura, who will be talking about how thinking about the future helped us see today's legal and bioethics issues differently. They will be sharing their own reflections as lawyers and bioethicists.

Before I hand over to them, I just wanted to remind everybody that this webinar is recorded, and we will be distributing the content soon after through social media and our contacts list. So if you have signed up, please be aware of that.

I also wanted to prime you, so to speak, because Nicola has kindly let me know that we will be having questions from you, our audience. But we are also going to be posing questions to you, so please have your listening ears and your thinking hats on and be ready for the questions that Nicola and Laura pose to you a bit later in today's session.

We do welcome your contributions in the form of chat, and you are also able to unmute yourselves when we come to the Q&A session as well. So please use whichever means you feel most comfortable with. I will be monitoring the chat function for Nicola and Laura so they can focus on what it is that they want to say and how they respond to you.

A big thank you to Wellcome for funding the research project, and without further ado, I'll hand over to Nicola and Laura for today's interesting conversation.

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Introduction

Williams, Nicola (1:59)

Hello everyone. It's lovely to see you all here. I'm Dr. Nicola Williams, a philosopher, bioethicist, and lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. I work primarily on the ethical questions that are raised by novel biotechnologies, with a particular focus on human reproduction. I'm a co-applicant for the Wellcome project "The Future of Human Reproduction," and I've led a number of our activities related to the ethical questions posed by the future of human reproduction.

I'm joined today by my colleague Dr. Laura O'Donovan, who's a lecturer in law at Sheffield University and also a member of the Future of Human Reproduction team. Her work explores ethical, legal, regulatory, and policy questions regarding healthcare, particularly around emerging reproductive biotechnologies.

It should also be noted, however, that there's an invisible contributor to today's webinar too, and that's our colleague Andy Darby, who is the speculative design researcher associated with the project. He not only created many of the artefacts that we're discussing today but also contributed a great deal to today's presentation.

During today's webinar, we want to explore the question of how thinking about the future and using speculative design or design fiction methods have helped us both individually and as part of a wider interdisciplinary team to see today's legal and bioethical issues differently. In particular, we want to discuss the value that we think engaging with design research methods has added to our own research and how we might use this in the future to inform things like stakeholder and public engagement activities.

Project Background

For those of you who are new to the Future of Human Reproduction project, I'd like to give you a little bit of background. The Future of Human Reproduction is an innovative interdisciplinary research programme which explores the cultural, ethical, legal, and social challenges that will emerge as technological advances fundamentally change the possibilities for human reproduction. It's funded by a £1 million research development award from the Wellcome Trust.

The programme seeks to push academic boundaries by developing new methods, research agendas, and interdisciplinary ways of working to tackle the conceptual and ethical implications of a range of future reproductive scenarios that are likely to be technologically possible within a generation. These include:

- Artificial womb technologies (also known as ectogenesis) - the development of fetuses outside of the human body

- In vitro gametogenesis - new methods of creating eggs and sperm that will allow the creation of children with two same-sex genetic parents, multiple genetic parents, or just one genetic parent

- Genome editing - which will enable a greater degree of control over the genetic makeup of future people

As part of the project, scholars from Lancaster, Sheffield, and Southampton Universities working across disciplines including bioethics, law, philosophy, corpus linguistics, psychology, design, and English literature have been working together to open up debates about reproductive futures and to shape the direction of humanities, social sciences, and bioethics research in this area.

Today, we're going to talk to you about just one strand of the research we've been undertaking: the use of speculative design methods or design fiction as a vehicle by which to explore the ethical, legal, and social questions raised by artificial womb technology.

With that said, I'm going to now hand you over to Laura, who's going to give you a quick breakdown of the current state of affairs regarding artificial womb technology research.

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Current State of Artificial Womb Technology

O'Donovan, Laura (6:13)

Great. So partial ectogestation refers to the continued development of a fetus outside the uterus after extremely premature birth, using biomedical technologies to simulate aspects of the in-utero environment. Ectogenesis is the broader concept of gestating a human entirely outside the womb, first proposed by J.B.S. Haldane in 1923.

While complete ectogenesis or complete ectogestation remains speculative, partial ectogestation is being explored through biomedical research aimed at improving outcomes for those who are born extremely prematurely. The distinction between the two lies in gestational duration within the device: partial ectogestation assists mid-to-late development, while complete ectogestation refers to gestation from conception to birth entirely outside the human body.

Current developments in artificial placenta research to facilitate partial ectogestation are being led by research teams in:

- Australia and Japan - developing a device called EVE (the Ex Vivo Uterine Environment platform)

- United States - developing the EXTEND (Extra-uterine System for Physiologically-based Extracorporeal Support) system

- Netherlands - developing the PLS (Perinatal Life Support) system

The systems that these teams are developing feature broadly similar technologies and techniques: a closed fluid environment that houses the fetus, an artificial placenta or pump, an arteriovenous circuit, and a technique to connect the premature entity with that technology.

These research programs conduct experimental tests on either animal fetuses (like the lamb you can see in our slide) or they make use of models and mannequins like the PLS team in the Netherlands. Recent technological advancements aim to support extremely premature fetuses. The team in the United States led by Alan Flake have suggested they're aiming to support premature fetuses or pre-viable fetuses from around the 20-21 week gestation mark.

Now in the UK at least, the 14-day rule limits research on human embryos to a maximum of 14 days in vitro, or until the appearance of the primitive streak, whichever comes first. This is enshrined in the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. So this means that if complete ectogenesis was to become possible, then reform of that 14-day rule would be required to facilitate and enable it.

[Brief technical interruption regarding slide visibility]

Why Speculate?

So I'm going to talk a bit now about why speculate - what's the value of speculation? As my colleague Dr. Andy Darby, an expert in speculative design, has explained in a previous presentation that we collaborated on (this was a presentation at the Socio-Legal Studies Association annual conference), design fiction is a speculative design practice that creates fictional scenarios, objects, or narratives to explore possible futures. It blends storytelling, design, and technology to provoke critical thinking and discussion about the implications of emerging technologies and societal changes. The goal is not necessarily to predict the future, but to make it more tangible and debatable.

A design fiction exercise benefits its creators by expanding their creative thinking, allowing them to explore radical ideas beyond current technological and commercial constraints. It helps them consider social, ethical, and legal challenges and question the assumptions shaping innovation. By making abstract futures tangible, it encourages and enhances interdisciplinary collaboration. Engaging with speculative futures also provides a low-risk space to experiment with ideas before real-world implementation.

In the Future of Human Reproduction project, a group of academics from the disciplines Nicola mentioned - including design, law, linguistics, literature, psychology, and philosophy - all collaborated with Andy using the design fiction method to create a series of speculative artefacts exploring some of the social, ethical, legal, and policy ramifications of the adoption of ectogestation across near and far futures.

I should also say that if you're interested in speculative design as an approach that enables thinking about the future, both positively and critically, then please do check out the previous webinar in this series, which goes into that in a bit more detail. Now we're going to move on to briefly introduce the artefacts that we created, and then Nicola and I are going to talk about some of the law and policy themes that we've pulled out of that.

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The Speculative Artefacts

Williams, Nicola (12:23)

Speculative artefacts are tangible manifestations of speculative design, and they tend to embody diverse characteristics and forms. They can include things like objects, documents, and interfaces such as websites, apps, etc., that exist in a fictional world. As part of this project, we created 12 speculative artefacts focused on possible futures in which artificial womb technology is no longer on the horizon. Let me briefly describe these 12 artefacts now.

The Twelve Artefacts

1. Museum Exhibit - A historical overview of developments in materials that offered wearable artificial womb technologies, using the option to make the fetus visible or invisible at will using thermochromic coverings and flexible electrochromic films for both medical and social purposes.

2. NHS Web Page - Offered prospective parents considering artificial womb technology an overview of the medical assistance available to them. This included the routes to parenthood for cisgender women under 40 and also additional hurdles that are set for older women and trans people. It highlights the policy obstacles that people currently face when attempting to access NHS fertility treatment in the UK and costly private treatment alternatives, imagining that these continue in the future.

3. Executive Summary of Policy Review - Detailed the results of a UK government initiative which aimed to increase the skilled workforce by leveraging artificial womb technology's potential to bypass gestational labour and extend the window of maternal fertility to counter a shortage of skilled workers in the UK labour market that's been created by low birth rates among professionals and limited immigration quotas. This design sought to highlight and spark discussions regarding the ways in which assisted reproductive technologies can be used by governments to fulfil policy goals.

4. Not-for-Profit Website - Run by a US-based Christian ministry, which offered believers the opportunity to glorify their God by financially supporting the use of artificial womb technology to bring to birth and adopt the spare and unused embryos created by a widespread increase in the use of fertility treatments. This piece was inspired by both existing religiously-framed embryo adoption websites and agencies in the US, questions surrounding the moral status of the human fetus and embryo, and recent trends towards reproductive conservatism worldwide that have seen increasingly restrictive policies regarding pregnancy termination in certain countries.

O'Donovan, Laura (15:48)

5. Commercial Advertisement - Offers prospective parents using transparent home-based artificial placenta technologies custom-made amniotic fluids as a solution to the problem of visible fetal excretion, with claims also made about how different fluids may be able to enhance fetal development.

6. NHS Web Tool - Offers prospective parents using artificial placenta technology the opportunity to determine their fetus's auditory experiences to improve its psychological development.

7. Priority Seating Poster - Offering pregnant women and wearable artificial placenta technology users the same access to priority seating on public transport, with the aim of lessening the physical burden of carrying the fetus around.

8. NHS Health Campaign - Targeting Black women exclusively, offering them artificial placenta technology in response to the high mortality rates during childbirth experienced by that demographic within healthcare in the UK.

9. Promotional Leaflet - For a retirement community in which early retirees starting a family using artificial placenta technologies can live, supported by a wide range of health and community programs to help them cope with childcare.

10. Corporate Blog Post - By a guest blogger with personal experiences of birthing rituals, helping prospective parents planning an artificial placenta technology birth navigate the available options.

Williams, Nicola (18:06)

11. Company Web Page - Offered potential users of their artificial womb facility a range of services to help improve and assure successful maternal-fetal bonding during ex-utero gestation, motivated by concerns raised regarding the welfare of offspring gestated in artificial wombs as well as worries about bonding with an external uterus.

12. Newspaper Spread - Reported a case of ex-utero gestation fraud and described how a male couple's luxury reproductive tourism vacation was in fact a scam that played on their desire for a child and cost them financially and emotionally.

The speculative artefacts that we created describe a range of futures in which the near-term adoption of complete ectogenesis or artificial womb technology sits alongside some more radical and long-term societal shifts inspired by and/or related to it. The number and variety of possible, plausible, and probable futures create a rich description of the potential futures ahead. This, as our colleague Andy has previously stated in other presentations, can be most easily thought of as the possibility space that's generated by the development of artificial womb technologies.

With that said, let's now draw out some of the thematic relationships between these speculative artefacts and the possible worlds that they suggest. While we could have discussed many themes, given time constraints today, let's briefly discuss three that relate to law, ethics, and policy: reproductive conservatism, commercialisation and exploitation, and funding and access.

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Key Themes

1. Reproductive Conservatism

The Genesis Ministries website, which details the use of artificial womb technologies as part of embryo sponsorship and adoption programs organised by a religious organization in a future USA where the destruction of IVF embryos is no longer permitted, was explicitly designed in response to both current trends in nations worldwide towards reproductive conservatism and questions arising regarding the moral status and right to life of the human embryo or fetus when gestated outside of the human body, as well as the way in which artificial womb technology has been positioned by some in the ethical legal literature as providing a solution to what some view as the problem of abortion or a compromised position between so-called pro-life and pro-choice individuals.

The former can be seen in the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in 2022, which led to a wave of abortion restrictions or near-total bans in several U.S. states, signalling significant rollbacks of reproductive rights, as well as the implementation in Poland in 2020 of a near-total abortion ban which restricted the already highly limited circumstances in which pregnancy termination can be legally performed to include only circumstances where pregnancy endangers the life of the woman or is the result of rape or incest.

The latter can be seen in discussions of artificial womb technology going back to the 1980s, which suggest that the right to terminate a pregnancy does not entail a right on the part of a woman to the death of a fetus, and that as a result, if it becomes feasible to safely transfer a fetus to an artificial womb, forms of pregnancy termination which necessarily result in fetal death will become morally impermissible.

Those who forward this kind of argument thus distinguish between two aspects of pregnancy termination which are currently but not necessarily linked: extraction and termination. They suggest that while the former might be justified by appeals to an individual's reproductive and bodily autonomy, the latter is not.

This is a view which echoes those of a number of prominent scholars earlier on in the abortion debate who, while forwarding various arguments in favour of the moral permissibility of abortion, suggested that if it were possible to safely end a pregnancy without the death of the fetus, to insist upon its death may not so easily be justified. Key scholars who've made this claim include Peter Singer and Deane Wells, Blackshaw, Roger, and Thompson.

Through the Genesis Ministries website, which was also heavily influenced by religiously motivated embryo adoption agencies and websites in the US and debates within various Christian denominations regarding the ethics of this practice (which is supported by certain evangelical groups in the US but condemned by the Catholic Church), I wanted to encourage exploration of questions related to the potential ways in which artificial womb technologies could be harnessed by groups that might be less commonly thought to support the use of this technology, as well as motivate consideration of questions regarding moral status and viability in a context in which artificial womb technologies allow for the gestation of human fetuses outside of the body from gestation until birth.

2. Commercialisation and Exploitation

O'Donovan, Laura (24:15)

The bespoke amniotic fluid, the auditory environment tool, and the birthing ritual service highlight issues regarding the commercialisation of assisted reproductive technologies, the regulation of add-on services, procedures and treatments, and the market's compliance with consumer law.

The inspiration behind my speculative design artefact - the commercial poster for "Water of Life," a customised amniotic fluid product for use in transparent home-based ectogestation devices - was grounded in a critical reflection on current fertility practices, particularly the proliferation of IVF add-on treatments in the UK.

These add-ons, which include services like embryo glue or time-lapse imaging, are often expensive and marketed with the promise of improved outcomes, despite there being limited or no scientific evidence supporting their effectiveness. They remain largely unregulated, placing the burden of decision-making and financial risk on patients who are often in highly vulnerable emotional and psychological states.

In 2022, a review by the Competition and Markets Authority notably raised compliance issues by some fertility clinics with consumer law. It found that privately paying patients were not always getting the information they needed to make informed decisions. Having long been concerned about how some clinics were offering their services, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (the body that regulates fertility treatment in the UK) introduced a traffic light system for rating treatments.

Given its limited regulatory powers in this area, the HFEA's traffic light system aims to provide patients with information about the claims of and evidence for existing private sector IVF add-ons. However, a 2024 survey of 1,500 IVF patients found that 73% of patients had at least one clinic-recommended optional, non-essential treatment - a figure that includes some add-ons that are also unproven or red-rated on the traffic light scale, meaning that they may actually reduce treatment effectiveness.

These design fictions also raised the issue of the regulation of add-on treatments in the future. As noted, these issues already exist in relation to IVF. However, these artefacts raise questions regarding how this issue might become both more acute and a problem on a bigger scale, depending on the kind of add-ons that are developed alongside ectogestation technologies.

Through the "Water of Life" poster, I wanted to explore how similar dynamics of commercialisation and exploitation might evolve in the context of future reproductive technologies such as ectogestation devices. In this imagined world, companies capitalise on parental anxieties by marketing bespoke, colourful amniotic fluids that not only mask the aesthetics of fetal waste but also claim to enhance fetal development, mirroring the persuasive marketing language of today's fertility industry.

In addition to raising a potential future problem requiring regulatory intervention should this world ever come to pass, this also forces us to question whether our current approach to dealing with fertility add-ons and protecting vulnerable patients is adequate.

Additionally, the design fictions raise other questions with regards to exploitation and the regulation of innovative medical treatments. For example: When do we decide that research shows that a particular procedure or treatment is successful and will bring benefit to patients? Who decides and how do we decide? And at what point does a procedure or treatment become an unnecessary service?

3. Funding and Access

The third law and policy theme that we want to highlight is that of funding and access to ectogestation technology. The NHS web page offering prospective parents an overview of treatment and funding policies, the summary of the UK government initiative to use ectogestation to solve labour shortages, the NHS campaign targeted at Black women, and the news story about reproductive tourism fraud all highlight the uneven and potentially exclusionary and coercive ways that this technology might be distributed.

These examples reveal how access to ectogestation in the future could be shaped by factors beyond clinical need or individual circumstances. Instead, restrictive eligibility criteria, racially targeted health interventions, and the instrumentalisation of fertility to achieve economic objectives reflect how structural inequalities embedded within current healthcare systems may carry over into and be exacerbated by emerging reproductive biotechnologies.

As these design fictions demonstrate, access to ectogestation may come to be influenced by geography, race, socio-economic status, and broader political agendas. These artefacts prompt us to consider how such technologies might reinforce existing disparities in reproductive healthcare and to critically examine the frameworks that will govern their distribution.

These issues of access and exclusion also reflect broader patterns of inequality identified by anthropologist Shellee Colen, for example, in the concept of stratified reproduction. This framework captures how reproductive labour and access to reproductive support is distributed unequally according to inequalities of class, race, ethnicity, and gender.

In the context of ectogestation, the speculative scenarios suggest that some groups, typically those with greater privilege, may be prioritised in the development and distribution of ectogestation, while others may face systemic barriers or targeted interventions that mirror existing hierarchies. While such dynamics are already present in current reproductive healthcare, emerging reproductive technologies risk entrenching them further.

By drawing attention to these potential futures, speculative design invites us to critically examine how technologies like ectogestation may sustain or deepen existing inequalities in reproduction. Ultimately, they raise a pressing ethical and policy question: Who will be granted access to ectogestation technologies in the future, and what does this reveal about who is already being excluded within our current reproductive healthcare system?

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The Value of Design Fiction

I want now to reflect a bit more on the value of design fiction for thinking about these ethical, legal, and policy questions. Design fictions and speculative artefacts can be a useful tool for speculation about biomedical futures. They provide a richer alternative to legal or bioethical thought experiments and case studies through which we might discover new ethical, legal, and social questions regarding the development and use of new reproductive biotechnologies like ex-utero gestation.

On speculation in bioethics, Schick in 2016 considers that once we distinguish the temporal subject of speculative bioethics (the future) from its actual point of influence (the present), we begin to notice that speculative discourse has become a framework in which technological visions are transformed into a set of probable facts demanding proactive ethical scrutiny. We would extend this notion also to the value of speculation in legal discourse.

In this sense, speculation about future legal and ethical dilemmas has two advantages in the present. First, it enables the discovery of new legal and ethical questions which we might at some point be required to confront, and it allows us to develop guiding principles for dealing with them in advance - the idea that being forewarned is forearmed.

But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, these potential future technological capabilities may never come into fruition, or at least not for many decades. In this sense, speculative design can deepen our ethical understanding of issues located in the present context. In other words, it has the capacity to reveal to us something about our present selves and values.

There's clear value to be found in work that might expose inconsistencies or gaps in the law before those problems become a reality with real-world consequences for individuals and wider society. This seems to be particularly important in the area of reproduction, where much has been written about the inability of the law in various jurisdictions to remain connected to developments in science and to keep up with the dizzying pace of scientific progress.

Finally, design fiction has significant value for public and stakeholder engagement because it makes unfamiliar or emerging technologies accessible and relatable. By embedding speculative technologies into everyday scenarios, it helps diverse audiences, including those with no prior knowledge about particular scientific developments, to imagine how these innovations may come to affect their lives. This approach invites reflection, raises awareness, and fosters more inclusive conversations about the social and ethical implications of future developments.

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Conclusions

Williams, Nicola (35:56)

I hope that this webinar has served as an introduction to how we've used the design fiction method in our work to explore some of the ethical, legal, and social questions raised by artificial womb technologies throughout the Future of Human Reproduction project.

Through our engagement with this method, we've discovered new, creative, and potentially more inclusive ways of motivating critical reflection on current social trends and potential future uses of artificial womb technologies. We do seek to expand the use of this method further in future research, perhaps involving both publics and stakeholders.

We hope that the presentation has provided you with some insights into the potential value that this method holds for scholars engaging with the messiness of technologically mediated biomedical futures. We have, through our work, been particularly struck by the ways in which engagement with concrete and tangible objects can motivate deep and meaningful discussions about the use of novel reproductive biotechnologies by encouraging their audiences to suspend their disbelief and accept speculative, imaginary, or future scenarios as plausible enough to engage with them seriously.

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Questions for Reflection

With that said, we'd now like to both invite questions from you and also ask you to reflect on the following questions:

1. How can speculative design encourage public imagination and dialogue around possible futures?

2. What are the limitations of traditional public engagement methods that speculative design might overcome?

3. How can speculative design projects be co-created with communities to ensure meaningful participation rather than passive observation?

4. How can speculative design ensure inclusivity, especially for marginalised or underrepresented groups, in public discussions about the future?

5. How can speculative design responsibly challenge societal norms and assumptions without reinforcing harmful or negative stereotypes?

Thank you.

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Q&A Session

Cresswell, Zindzi (38:32)

I don't know if you can see that, Nicola and Laura, but you've had a round of applause emojis come up here - more than one, a couple now coming through. I won't continue to count, but you're getting rounds of applause from everybody here, and I wanted to say it was a fantastic and really interesting presentation that you've given us.

I've put in the chat a prompt to anybody if they had any questions, and you are welcome to unmute yourselves and contribute vocally if you wish. To kick us off, I've got a question for either of you or both of you, however you feel, so people have a little bit of time to think of something they may want to put into the chat.

My question to you is: for a lot of people, and I believe for yourselves, this might be one of the first times that they've come across these speculative design artefacts. There's clearly lots of benefits for using them, and it was really interesting to hear you talk about those. But I wondered, how did it feel to first engage with this process? And if you were going to introduce it as a public engagement technique (because my background is public engagement, that's why I'm in the team), how would you go about doing that? What would be the artefact of choice that you would use?

Williams, Nicola (39:52)

For me, I think my first experience of using speculative design was quite uncomfortable. I've always been a writer rather than a creator of things, so it was quite an alien process to design, for example, the website that I designed. But in doing it, it made me think really clearly about what kinds of questions I wanted to prompt in the audience, and I suppose I found it quite useful because it wasn't suggesting to those who view it particular answers to those questions, but suggesting that they needed to reflect on those questions. So I suppose I found it to be a slightly less directive form of work.

In terms of how I would use speculative design for public engagement, what's important to note here is that these designs that we created were not designed for the purpose of public engagement. If we were to be creating designs for that purpose, we would need to think very, very carefully about the kinds of messages that they send and how they might be received. So I suppose that's one key difference.

O'Donovan, Laura (41:21)

I also found it uncomfortable, and I've realised I'm really not very creative, so that was tricky for me. I think it was about having a hook - I needed something to anchor things to in the present. So I was thinking about issues I was currently thinking about: IVF add-ons, patient vulnerability. I thought, "OK, let's start there and then let's expand from there." So I needed that real-world hook to then be able to start thinking about incremental development that got us to that end point.

Williams, Nicola (41:56)

That's also the case for me. My design was very much motivated by my engagement with embryo adoption agency websites in the US and the so-called "Snowflake Babies." That's how I modelled the language, how we modelled the imagery - it was all very much based in existing things, but just extrapolated to this novel technology.

O'Donovan, Laura (42:30)

I think that was the method that most of us adopted, right? I'm thinking even about Sara Fovargue's poster, which is about gestation technologies targeted at Black women in particular. I think the inspiration for Sarah's piece was the data that shows that Black women are four times more likely to die during childbirth than white women. So it was about having that thing to anchor yourself to in the present and then developing from that.

Questions from the Audience

Cresswell, Zindzi (42:55)

I'll read the comments that came through. The first comment was from Molly Gray: "A very interesting presentation. Did you test out the stimulus materials of the different speculative futures with members of the public? And can you elaborate on how to balance presenting future scenarios that encourage creative thinking with ensuring those scenarios remain realistic and plausible?"

Williams, Nicola (43:36)

We did cover that in the sense that these designs weren't created for the public and they haven't been displayed or used for public research. But it's definitely very important to strike that balance and to ensure that the futures that are being discussed are plausible, especially given that what we're interested in is discussing potential future ethical, social, and legal questions. If our designs aren't plausible, then the exercise loses its value.

O'Donovan, Laura (44:20)

I think also the risk there - and we spoke about it at our milestone event last week - is that Ecto Life video by Hashem Al-Gaily, the science communicator, that people believed. I think that's the risk, isn't it? Creating something that's so far out there but that people believe it. So I guess the balance there is not wanting to contribute to any kind of misinformation and making it clear what the parameters are when people are able to engage with the artefacts.

No, Molly, we haven't used the artefacts with the public, but I think it is something we've all spoken about and something we'd like to do. It's about carefully thinking about the parameters of that - how we go about that and whether we can use these artefacts or we make some new artefacts.

Amy also commented: "Thank you for a fascinating presentation. I wonder if you have any anxieties about releasing these speculative artefacts into a world of AI and alternative facts on the Internet?"

Williams, Nicola (46:12)

Before we were even to consider releasing these types of artefacts, we would speak to people that know a lot more about it than Laura and I. That would include our speculative design colleagues who know much more about the best ways to present these things. But yes, it's always a worry with the current information age that things might be taken out of context, that they might be misunderstood. So it's really important to protect against that.

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Final Comments

Williams, Nicola (47:13)

Just thank you to everyone for coming and listening to us talk about what we found to be a really interesting and enriching experience.

O'Donovan, Laura (47:48)

At the beginning I was uncomfortable, but it's been really interesting, and it's another method I think now that we're keen to utilise to explore ethical and policy questions and legal questions further. I think there's definitely more work to be done in this space. Thanks very much for attending.

Cresswell, Zindzi (48:15)

Excellent. Just getting some comments coming in saying thank you very much for a fascinating presentation. Federica did have a question, but she says thanks a lot - she was on mute and couldn't unmute herself. So perhaps we'll catch up with her another time.

Lots of thank yous coming through: "Brilliant presentation," "A nice one to send us off with. Having spent most of many years of my life doing a thesis on this very area, I thought this was a very interesting way forward in 21st century development."

Federica says she'll reach out with her questions. Yes, so thank you to Nicola and Laura for a really interesting presentation today. Lots of rounds of applause emojis coming through as well.

We will, as I say, be sharing this recording soon after, hopefully in the next couple of days. A blog will be available on the Future of Human Reproduction website. With thanks to everybody for attending and thank you very much to the Wellcome Trust for funding the research project. We hope to see you all again soon.

Thank you very much.

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Transcript ends

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