On the face of it, one remarkably clever man might have woken on Wednesday and expected, at the very least, a decent slew of plaudits. Professor Karim Nayernia, from the University of Newcastle, announced a world first: the creation, from stem cells, of a human sperm. Strictly speaking, it's not a proper sperm; not yet up to doing the business, as it were. Nevertheless, it's a cute enough tadpole, with the capacity to do a fetching wriggle and the distant future potential to alleviate infertility in men, to increase understanding of the production of sperm and to become a tool to test new drugs. So: three cheers all round?

Not a chance. "Men doomed!" yelped the red-tops. "Profoundly shocking", "a terrifying new era" and "macabre scenario" followed suit. Even the quality end of the news market pointed to "the threat to the future role of men", while by teatime the generally erudite Carolyn Quinn found herself chairing a Radio 4 debate between Toby Young and Fay Weldon entitled: "Are men redundant?" For crissake.

What irks is not just that they are chewing on the wrong end of the stick - though they surely are: if the result is that more men will have children to whom they pass their own DNA, rather than that of a sperm donor, aren't such men going to feel less, rather than more redundant?

But the truly depressing aspect of the brickbats is how thoroughly predictable it all was; how typically people reacted to this medical, technical and scientific advance. It's hard to believe, sometimes, that we once stayed up, agog and proud, to follow, say, the reports of a moon landing. We didn't understand that, either - but progress was as progress did and what we all knew was that we wanted in.

Today, the greatest achievements of the beautiful minds are met with suspicion, cynicism and hostility. Never mind that information technology has transformed our lives, 99% for the better. Let's concentrate, instead, on the 1%: the seduction of our children; the imminent collapse of our universe, courtesy of a belated millennium bug; the bad-guy Google, snooping on our homes. So synonymous has science become with harm that world opinion - well, western opinion - would rather see another million die in Ethiopia than contemplate the genetic modifying of a crop that could survive the arid soil. Better to throw another rock concert; that'll sort it.

But of all the targets enjoyed by the doom brigade, none receives the vindictiveness hurled at reproductive technology. The contraceptive pill, arguably the most powerful aid to the emancipation of women, was predicted to slay an entire generation by embolism. In 1978, when Louise Brown was conceived as the world's first IVF baby, the birth of a freak was widely anticipated. Hormone replacement therapy? Gives ya cancer, baby. Epidural anaesthesia? One slip and you're paralysed. And in the absence of specific threat, feel free to be vague: scans of the unborn? "Can't be good for the baby" will do nicely.

As it turned out, with due acknowledgement of the (very) few who succumbed to the pill, hundreds of millions seized control of their fertility with no ill effect. By Louise Brown's 21st birthday, 300,000 other healthy children had followed her lead. We might not like the idea of a 66-year-old using IVF to conceive, but it's hardly a goldrush, nor likely to be - and one dubious conception in, now, three million should keep nobody awake at night. HRT does not suit everyone, but has reinvigorated the lives of countless women. Epidurals have relieved more suffering than is imaginable; ultra-sound scans have saved heartbreak, be it by cure, by choice or by termination.

There, of course, is the root of the exceptional vitriol shown towards reproductive technology, be it one sliver of a copper IUD contraceptive or Professor Nayernia's nascent sperm: opponents do not wish to allow choice (let alone termination, heaven forbid!) because these opponents have an agenda of their own.

All those who lined up last week to tell newspapers and television inquisitors that the newfangled sperm is "unsafe" (really? how?) these days call themselves "ethicists" but are in fact our old friends from the religious right. Interviewers would show greater diligence if they ended every "ethical" debate with the simple question: now remind me, which is your church?

But they don't and they won't, almost as if to expose fundamentalism has become impolite - and, to be fair, it might not make as much difference as it should, given that the religious zealots are not propagandising in the vacuum one might wish upon them.

The generalised mistrust of all things progressive or futuristic has created an equally generalised, and almost equally zealous acceptance of slippery slopes, thin ends of wedges and a head-shaking, tooth-sucking belief that any step towards the unknown is inevitably a step towards the bad. Almost every scientific advance, no matter its potential, has first to run the dumb-arsed gauntlet of "it's not natural" - and you've only your own breath to waste by pointing out that no, nor is aspirin.

The pity of it is that we already have in place a very adequate control over science: it comes up with the goods and we - collectively and individually - decide whether to buy them. Scientists have, for instance, developed merciful means of assisted suicide; society has collectively, and repeatedly, told them to stuff it. By the same token, once the professor has perfected his sperm, no individuals will ever be forced to avail themselves of his genius.

It would, therefore, be a huge loss if he were to be sidetracked by sci-fi stories of how, for example, women could have babies with sperm created from long-dead men. First: what are the chances? And second: even if, while millions of infertile men found joy in paternity, a strange, solitary woman did dig up a few grams of some old Nazi and have his baby - really, in the great scheme of things, so what?