Law & bioethics: from values to violence.

The relationship of law of bioethics always complex, has shifted post 9/11. Instead of looking to law as protector of rights and liberties, the new bioethics approach, exemplified by the President's Council on Bioethics, deploys law as aggressor. Thus we see a call to get tough, to prohibit a range of biomedical practices, with the prospect of not only civil but criminal enforcement. Bioethicists face a grave choice, whether to embrace the use of state force to resolve bioethics debates.