Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President's Council on Bioethics

577 Pages·2008·5.88 MB·English

final_cover.psd
Alice Neel (1900-1984), T.B. Harlem, 1940, American. Oil
on Canvas. 76.2 x 76.2 cm.
Courtesy of the National Museum of Women in the
Arts, Washington, D.C.; gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina
Holladay. © Estate of Alice Neel.
hile most of the art world turned to abstraction towards the
Wmiddle of the twentieth century, Philadelphia-born Alice Neel (1900-1984)
courageously chose to remain a fgure painter. Occasionally she painted the rich
and famous–artists, playwrights, scientists, even a papal nuncio–but mostly her
subjects were the unnoticed, the overlooked, the difcult. Tey were her neighbors
in Spanish Harlem: stay-at-home mothers, pregnant mothers, door-to-door
salesmen, restaurant workers, tradesmen. Nor did she shy away from those most
would rather not confront–a dying, querulous old woman, a middle-aged man in
the late stages of cancer, a young man ravaged by tuberculosis. But whether her
subjects are young, old, famous, unknown, nude or clothed, Neel’s gift was to
reveal their common denominator: an inefable, undefnable, invisible human
quality we call dignity.
T.B. Harlem, completed in 1940, is one of the most well-known of Neel’s paintings.
Gaunt and resigned, the subject could have been a young man dying on a battlefeld
of World War II pinned with a medal of honor. Instead he is a young man in a
Harlem hospital fghting an all too prevalent disease to the death. His badge of
honor covers the wound of thoracoplasty, or surgically induced lung collapse, then
a radical treatment of last resort for tuberculosis. Neel also accurately portrays the
side-efects of both the treatment and the disease: owing to the loss of several ribs
on the afected side, compensatory thoracic and cervical curvatures of the spine
pull it into the opposite directions of an S-curve. Atrophied muscles of the arms
and hands and the lax abdominal muscles suggest that the battle has been a long
one; the atrophy is the result of disuse, the protuberant abdomen indicative of a
long-standing lack of proper nutrition. But Neel’s painting is not a medical treatise
on tuberculosis. It is rather an eloquent essay on the inherent dignity of human
beings that exists quite independently of exterior circumstances.
M. Terese Southgate, MD
Human Dignity and Bioethics
Essays Commissioned
by the President’s Council
on Bioethics

Washington, D.C.
WWW.BIOETHICS.GOV

March 2008
Contents
Letter of Transmittal to Te President of Te United States . . . . . xi
Members of Te President’s Council on Bioethics . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Council Staf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Introduction
1 Bioethics and the Question of Human Dignity
Adam Schulman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
2 Human Dignity and Respect for Persons: A Historical
Perspective on Public Bioethics
F. Daniel Davis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Part I. Dignity and Modern Science
3 How to Protect Human Dignity from Science
Daniel C. Dennett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39
4 Human Dignity and the Mystery of the Human Soul
Robert P. Kraynak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61
Commentary on Kraynak
Daniel C. Dennett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83
Commentary on Dennett
Robert P. Kraynak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89
vii
viii | Table of Contents
Commentary on Dennett
Alfonso Gómez-Lobo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95
5 Human Dignity from a Neurophilosophical Perspective
Patricia S. Churchland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99
Commentary on Churchland
Gilbert Meilaender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122
Part II. Human Nature and the Future of Man
6 Human Uniqueness and Human Dignity: Persons
in Nature and the Nature of Persons
Holmes Rolston III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129
7 Human Dignity and the Future of Man
Charles Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155
8 Dignity and Enhancement
Nick Bostrom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173
Commentary on Bostrom
Charles Rubin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .207
Part III. Dignity and Modern Culture
9 Human Dignity and Public Discourse
Richard John Neuhaus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215
10 Modern and American Dignity
Peter Augustine Lawler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229
11 Human Dignity: Exploring and Explicating the
Council’s Vision
Gilbert Meilaender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .253
Commentary on Meilaender and Dennett
Peter Augustine Lawler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .278
Commentary on Meilaender and Lawler
Diana Schaub . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .284
Table of Contents | ix
Part IV. Te Sources and Meaning of Dignity
12 Defending Human Dignity
Leon R. Kass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .297
13 Kant’s Concept of Human Dignity as a Resource for
Bioethics
Susan M. Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .333
14 Human Dignity and Political Entitlements
Martha Nussbaum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .351
Commentary on Nussbaum, Shell, and Kass
Diana Schaub . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .381
15 Te Irreducibly Religious Character of Human Dignity
David Gelernter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .387
Part V. Teories of Human Dignity
16 Te Nature and Basis of Human Dignity
Patrick Lee and Robert P. George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .409
17 Two Arguments from Human Dignity
Paul Weithman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .435
18 Dignity and Bioethics: History, Teory, and Selected
Applications
Daniel P. Sulmasy, O.F.M.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .469
Part VI. Human Dignity and the Practice of Medicine
19 Human Dignity and the Seriously Ill Patient
Rebecca Dresser. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .505
20 Te Lived Experience of Human Dignity
Edmund D. Pellegrino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .513
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .541
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .545