Leading article: Personal ethics, not state prescription

To assert that the laws governing fertility treatment and embryo research need updating is to state the glaringly obvious. In recent decades, science has advanced more quickly in this area than in almost any other. Social attitudes have, over the same period, undergone little short of a revolution. The arrival of the contraceptive pill, the evolution of IVF treatment and the emergence of more liberal attitudes towards homosexuality, divorce and abortion have all played their part. It is high time that the law, scientific progress and current social mores were more closely aligned.

The consultation paper published by the Government yesterday is intended to launch a comprehensive debate about the future of legislation on the whole gamut of issues relating to fertility. As such, it is both timely and welcome. These are precisely the sort of questions on which ministers should solicit as wide a range of opinion as possible.

This is not to say that reaching a consensus will be simple. Few of the 70 topics covered in this paper are uncontroversial, and several have already been the subject of fiercely contested court cases. One was brought by parents claiming the right to produce a "saviour sibling" in the hope of being able to treat a terminally-ill elder child. It raised the prospect of "designer babies" - the possibility that embryo selection would be used not only for therapeutic purposes, but to choose a child's sex or enhance the chances of particular physical characteristics, such as blonde hair, blue eyes or athletic physique. Other questions have been raised in the courts by the application by a widow, Diane Blood, to become pregnant using frozen sperm from her deceased husband, and a dispute about what should happen to frozen embryos when the couple who conceived them split up: does the woman have the right to try for a child, or does the man have effective right of veto?

So far the judges have tended to err on the side of caution, and not always to great effect. Mrs Blood, for instance, was tacitly encouraged to seek assistance abroad, which she successfully did. Until recently, there might have been merit in having such cases heard on an individual basis. The more frequently they arise, however, the stronger the argument becomes for legal principles to be set down.

Among the issues on the horizon is genetic screening of embryos for inherited diseases. Screening for haemophilia and muscular dystrophy is already permitted under licence, but the number of diseases to which a predisposition is detectable in the womb increases all the time. Is there a difference - ethical or legal - between selecting the healthiest from a number of embryos and choosing to abort a foetus after a negative amniocentesis?

The provision of IVF treatment is another minefield. Should lesbian couples be afforded the same access to treatment as heterosexuals? Should age be a consideration? What about women with no partner? Should there be a statutory right to fertility treatment and, if so, who should pay? What should the law have to say, if anything, about internet sperm and egg services?

In an interview yesterday, one of the pioneers of IVF treatment, Lord Winston, may have sounded cavalier when he argued that most restrictions on IVF should be lifted and that banning sex selection, and probably other sorts of selection, would prove impracticable. But he was right. This is a realm where scientific progress is rapid and where personal ethics should take precedence over state prescription. The legislative hand should be as light as it can reasonably be - and that means considerably lighter than it is at present.