Human Dignity and Bioethics

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Dignity and Bioethics:
History, Theory, and Selected
Applications
Daniel P. Sulmasy, O.F.M.
T
he word “dignity” has become something of a slogan in bioethics,
often invoked by both sides of debates about a variety of scientific
and clinical issues, supporting contradictory conclusions. For
instance, in arguments about assisted suicide, those who favor the legalization
of the practice base their conclusion on a moral imperative
to provide “death with dignity,” while those who oppose legalization
do so because they see intentionally rendering a human being dead,
even out of mercy, as a direct assault on human dignity. 1 Certainly
this suggests that dignity is a concept in need of clarification.
Ruth Macklin has noted this lack of conceptual clarity surrounding
the use of the word “dignity” in the bioethics literature and has
concluded that dignity is a “useless concept,” reducible to respect for
autonomy, and adds nothing to the conversation. 2 This hasty conclusion,
casting aside thousands of years of philosophical writing, ignoring
the contemporary bioethical discourse of continental Europeans,
and sweeping away a whole body of international law, can be justified
only by begging the question. If one defines a word completely in
terms of another concept more to one’s liking, it will always follow
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