Gametes, law and modern preoccupations.

This article surveys a range of recent media stories about human gametes, pinning them to a series of wider preoccupations within late modern life. Three preoccupations are singled out: first, kinship and relational identity; secondly, Nature and globalization; and finally, sexual difference and equality. Each one of these preoccupations has been characterised as iconic; debates about them are said to crystallize who we are, especially our uncertainties, and what we will be in the future. By indexing these preoccupations to the stories about human gametes, the article aims to upset both the increasing attempts to present assisted reproduction technologies as 'familiar' (as Nature's 'helping hand', for example) and the recurring assumptions about this technology's alleged 'novelty' and 'anomaly'. The article concludes that treating reproduction technologies, and their regulation, as 'familiar' risks complacency: equally, assumptions about their 'novelty' narrows the search for effective explanatory tools and regulatory mechanisms. The upshot is that it might be best for us to view reproductive technologies as both less 'familiar' and less 'novel'.