Bioethics and human rights: Curb your enthusiasm

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics

Volumn 19, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 127-133

  Fenton, Elizabeth ^a   Arras, John D ^b,c  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Department of Biomedical Ethics ^*  (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BIOETHICS; ETHICS; GENETIC ENGINEERING; GENETIC ENHANCEMENT; HUMAN; HUMAN RIGHTS; INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION; SOCIAL JUSTICE;

BIOETHICAL ISSUES; BIOETHICS; GENETIC ENGINEERING; GENETIC ENHANCEMENT; HUMAN RIGHTS; HUMANS; INTERNATIONALITY; SOCIAL JUSTICE;

EID: 76249085475     PISSN: 09631801     EISSN: 14692147     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0963180109990326     Document Type: Review

References (19)

1. Annas GJ. American Bioethics: Crossing Human Rights and Health Law Boundaries. New York: Oxford University Press; 2005:24.
2. See note 1, Annas 2005:24.
3. Baker R. Bioethics and human rights: A historical perspective. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 2001;10:241-52.
4. Roberto Andorno shares this view, calling human rights "the last expression of a universal ethics," and "a 'lingua franca' of international relations"; Andorno R. Biomedicine and international human rights law: In search of a global consensus. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2002;8012:959-963
5. For example, the United Nations' International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966)
6. and the corresponding Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
7. See note 1, Annas 2005:40.
8. Lomasky L. Persons, Right, and the Moral Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1987:3.
9. Arras JD, Fenton EM. Bioethics and human rights: Access to health-related goods. Hastings Center Report 2009:39(5):27-38.
10. This section of the paper is drawn largely from Fenton EM. Genetic enhancement-A threat to human rights? Bioethics 2009;22(1): 1-7.
11. See note 1, Annas 2005:37.
12. See note 1, Annas 2005:51.
13. Warren MA. Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1997:19.
14. Griffin J. First steps in an account of human rights. European Journal of Philosophy 2001;9: 306-327
15. Nussbaum MC. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, nationality, species membership. Cambridge, MA:The Belknap Press; 2006.
16. See also Nussbaum M. Capabilities and human rights. In: de Greiff P, Cronin C, eds. Global Justice and Transnational Politics: Essays on the Moral and Political Challenges of Globalization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2002.
17. Some level of physical similarity is assumed in claiming that two individuals stand in a relationship of justice to one another. But genetic enhancement technology will not produce humans so different from us that this relationship of justice will not obtain. We may be more different from an unenhanced and severely mentally disabled individual than we are from an enhanced individual with a better memory, yet, because we recognize the severely disabled person as standing in the relationship of justice to us, then we will also recognize the enhanced individual as a subject of justice.
18. Not all fictional accounts of a genetically engineered future are pessimistic. The XMen comics, for example, portray the social and political conflicts between humans and "mutants," who are said to represent the next stage of human evolution. Importantly, the nonhumans and X-characters are portrayed, like the humans, as full agents, and peaceful coexistence among them all is viewed as possible and desirable in spite of prejudice against the mutants on the part of the unmodifiedhumans.
19. Wikler D, Brock DW. Population-level bioethics: Mapping a new agenda. In: Dawson A, Verweij M. Ethics, Prevention, and Public Health. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press; 2007.