Surveying the foundations of medical law: a reassessment of Glanville Williams's the sanctity of life and the criminal law.

Much of the confusion in the current debate about embryonic stem-cell research is generated by the advocates of stem-cell research who use controversial and misleading terminology about what it involves and who evade or misrepresent the central moral argument against such research, namely, that it involves the destruction of innocent human beings. This essay points out that such failings are not new to bioethical debate and exposes them in one of the earliest and most influential books on the law and ethics of medicine: The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law by Professor Glanville Williams.