According to the law of 6 August 2004 relative to bioethics, the Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices (OPECST) must present a report assessing its application (a new global study of the law having to be carried out within five years of its having come into effect). The OPECST chose Alain Claeys and Jean-Sébastien Vialatte, Deputies, to carry out this evaluation. The rapporteurs held several hearings with experts and, on 29 November 2007, organized a public hearing at the National Assembly on "Life sciences and society: tomorrow's bioethics law". The discussions, which gathered together medical, life science and law professors, researchers, representatives of the concerned ministries and national and international ethics authorities, allowed for the identification of several new sets of issues, such as the impact of recent discoveries on the functioning of the human brain and the recourse to presymptomatic genetic testing for other than therapeutic purposes. The rapporteurs decided to hold public hearings on these two themes and on new questions surrounding the status of the fetus, assisted reproduction and the moratorium, as provided by the law of 2004, on human embryonic stem cell research. They have also begun visiting the laboratories concerned by these issues in France and will carry out missions abroad (in particular, in several European Union countries) in order to obtain complementary information and comparisons.