Human Dignity and Bioethics

512 | Rebecca Dresser
disruption, this new vulnerability? These matters are fertile ground
for the inquiry into human dignity. They deserve a high priority in
bioethics scholarship and teaching.
Notes
1
Miles R. Bore, “Dignity: Not Useless, Just a Concept in Need of Greater Understanding,”
BMJ Rapid Responses, February 17, 2004 (available online at http://bmj.
bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/327/7429/1419).
2
See Rebecca Dresser, “Precommitment: A Misguided Strategy for Securing Death
with Dignity,” Texas Law Review 81 (2003): 1823-1847.
3
See Ruth Macklin, “Dignity is a Useless Concept,” BMJ 327 (2003): 1419-1420,
and Timothy Caulfield and Audrey Chapman, “Human Dignity as a Criterion
for Science Policy,” PLoS Medicine 2 (2005): 736-738 (available online at www.
plosmedicine.org).
4
Macklin, op. cit.
5
Mary C. Beach, Patrick Duggan, and Gail Geller, “Don’t Confuse Dignity with
Respect,” BMJ Rapid Responses, January 21, 2004 (available online at http://bmj.
bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/327/7429/1419).
6
Anthony Staines, “What is Dignity?” BMJ Rapid Responses, December 25, 2003
(available online at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/327/7429/1419).
7
Exceptions are Deryck Beyleveld and Roger Brownsword, Human Dignity in
Bioethics and Biolaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), and Leon R. Kass,
Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (San Francisco,
California: Encounter Books, 2002). See also Richard E. Ashcroft, “Making Sense
of Dignity,” Journal of Medical Ethics 31 (2005): 679-82; Matti Häyry, “Another
Look at Dignity,” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 13 (2004): 7-14; and
“Dignity at the End of Life (Thematic Issue),” Journal of Palliative Care 20 (2004):
133-216.
8
Ann Gallagher, “Defending Dignity,” BMJ Rapid Responses, January 12, 2004
(available online at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/327/7429/1419).
9
Caulfield and Chapman, op. cit., p. 738. See also Häyry, op. cit, pp. 11-12.
10
Gallagher, op. cit.
11
Bore, op. cit.
12
Alexander M. Capron, “Indignities, Respect for Persons, and the Vagueness of
Human Dignity,” BMJ Rapid Responses, December 31, 2003 (available online at
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/327/7429/1419).
13
Hilda Bastian, “An Offensive Slogan,” BMJ Rapid Responses, December 19, 2003
(available online at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/327/7429/1419).
14
Stanley M. Giannet, “Dignity Is a Moral Imperative,” BMJ Rapid Responses,
December 25, 2003 (available online at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/
327/7429/1419).