Professor Alan Handyside looks back at his work developing the first genetic testing of pre-implantation embryos. It marks the 30th anniversary of his Nature paper, which reported the first pregnancies involving genetically tested embryos. Reproduction has published a special issue marking this anniversary, that contains a collection of reviews presenting a historical perspective, as well as presenting recent and state-of-the-art developments in this exciting field. This video (http://movie-usa.glencoesoftware.com/video/10.1530/REP-20-0412/video-1) is available from the online version of the article at https://doi.org/10.1530/REP-20-0412.