This is the accepted version of a commentary published in the Journal of Medical Ethics: URL = https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2022/07/21/jme-2022-108526, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jme-2022-108526. Please cite the published version. FUTURE PERSONS, FUTURE ATTRIBUTES, AND POTENTIAL PERSONS: COMMENTARY ON SAVULESCU AND COLLEAGUES Alexandre Erler National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University alexerler@nycu.edu.tw Savulescu and colleagues propose a distinction between “Future Person Embryo Research” (henceforth FPE research) and “Non-Future Person Embryo Research” (henceforth NFPE research), which they hold can help decision-makers more efficiently discriminate between higher-risk and lower-risk embryo research. The authors’ proposed distinction does point to an ethically significant difference between different forms of embryo research, which they illustrate in an enlightening manner using a series of detailed case studies. In the following, I wish to comment, first, on the substance of the authors’ distinction, and secondly, on the possibility of looking beyond the relatively narrow scope of their argument. A first point concerns the authors’ characterization of FPE research as including “anything which is done to an embryo that will be or could be implanted into a woman’s uterus”. Insofar as they also emphasize the idea of research that can “affect” a future person, this formulation might suggest that the key distinction here is between research procedures that causally impact the characteristics of a future person, and those that do not. However, this is not how the authors’ distinction between FPE and NFPE research should be understood. Indeed, they describe “observational research”, including the first test case they present (Time Lapse Imaging and Embryo Selection), as an exception to the general rule that FPE research is ethically more contentious than NFPE research. On their view, such research counts as FPE research, because it involves the “selection and transfer of an embryo”, even though, being observational in nature, it does not shape the characteristics of the future person. The category of FPE research is therefore meant to include, more broadly, all forms of research applying specific procedures to an embryo that will develop into a future person, regardless of whether or not it has that shaping effect. One might conjecture, however, that the presence or absence of such a shaping effect on the future person is precisely what separates ethically contentious FPE research from the lower-risk instances that the authors want to see regulated less heavily. If so, this might be grounds for re-formulating the contrast between FPE and NFPE research accordingly: the former will include embryo research that we can expect to causally impact the features of a future person (who will develop from an affected embryo), whereas the latter will refer to embryo research that does not have any such foreseeable impact. (This would be distinct from the familiar contrast in philosophy between “person-affecting” and “non-person- affecting” interventions: 1 we will still want to count as FPE research certain non-person- affecting interventions, such as those involving the selection of embryos in ways that