The role of law in reproductive medicine: a new approach

It is a common feature of debates on the regulation of reproductive medicine to find law portrayed as a crude form of intervention consisting in the imposition of inflexible rules on doctors and medical researchers. This paper argues that this view must be replaced by a more accurate assessment of the law's potential role in the regulation of reproductive medicine. From an analysis of the White Paper on human fertilisation and embryology, and in particular the proposed Statutory Licensing Authority, the author contends that far from being an inflexible method of regulation law can foster discussion and compromise.