Taking the "human" out of human rights

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics

Volumn 20, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 9-20

  Harris, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

VACCINE;

ANIMAL; ARTICLE; CONSCIOUSNESS; DIET; ETHICS; EVOLUTION; FOOD; HORIZONTAL GENE TRANSFER; HUMAN; HUMAN RIGHTS; MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY; REPRODUCTION; SOCIAL JUSTICE; XENOGRAFT;

ANIMALS; BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION; BIOMEDICAL ENHANCEMENT; CONSCIOUSNESS; DIET; FOOD; GENE TRANSFER, HORIZONTAL; HUMAN RIGHTS; HUMANS; REPRODUCTION; SOCIAL JUSTICE; TRANSPLANTATION, HETEROLOGOUS; VACCINES;

EID: 79952463151     PISSN: 09631801     EISSN: 14692147     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0963180109990570     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Too universal because there are many humans to which it cannot and does not apply (see Harris J. The Value of Life. Routledge: London; 1985)
2. and not universal enough for reasons also examined in that book and, inter alia, in my Enhancing Evolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 2007).
3. And indeed the "dignity" out of human dignity. Analogous arguments show that the concept of human dignity is equally vacuous and redundant. See also R Macklin. Dignity is a useless concept. British Medical Journal 2003;327:1419-20. (Pubitemid 38045809)
4. See note 1, Harris 2007.
5. Greely H, Sahakian B, Harris J, Kessler RC, Gazzaniga M, Campbell P, Farah MJ. Towards responsible use of cognitive enhancing drugs by the healthy. Nature 2008;456:702-5.
6. For examples of this traditional approach see Nickel J. Making Sense on Human Rights. Oxford: Blackwell; 2006:38;
7. Tasioulas J. The moral reality of human rights. In: Pogge T, ed. Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2007;
8. Gewirth A. Human Rights: Essays on Justifications and Applications. Chicago: Chicago University Press; 1982:41;
9. Jones P. Human Rights. In: Craig E, ed. The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy; available from http://www.rep. routledge.com/article/S105.
10. Raz J. Human rights without foundations; available from http://josephnraz.googlepages.com/HumanRightswithoutFoundations.pdf (last accessed 15 Jan 2010.
11. Forthcoming in Besson S, Tasioulis J, eds. Philosophy of International Law. New York: Oxford University Press.
12. See note 6, Raz 2009:3.
13. See note 6, Raz 2009:12 and 11, respectively.
14. Although Raz's account is consistent with the one developed in this paper.
15. Gandhi was once asked, allegedly by a reporter, what he thought of Western Civilization. He replied that he thought "it would be a very good thing." I believe this was after a tour of London, but I have been unable to find an authoritative source. See, e.g., http://en. wikiquote.org/wiki/ Gandhi.
16. The idea of species barriers I have criticized in Harris J. Transhumanity: A moral vision of the twenty-first century. In: Davis NA, Keshen R, McMahan J, eds. Ethics and Humanity: Themes from the Philosophy of Jonathan Glover. New York: Oxford University Press; 2009.
17. In this section, I borrow from my "Transhumanity: A moral vision of the twenty-first century"; see note 11.
18. Academy of Medical Sciences. Inter-Species Embryos: A Report by The Academy of Medical Sciences 2007; available at http://www.acmedsci.ac.uk/p99. html. The present author acknowledges his coauthorship of this report and thanks fellow members of the Academy Working Group for many useful insights.
19. See note 13, Academy of Medical Sciences 2007:3, 33.
20. See note 13, Academy of Medical Sciences 2007:3, 33.
21. See note 13, Academy of Medical Sciences 2007:34.
22. See note 13, Academy of Medical Sciences 2007:34.
23. See Linvall O, Kokala Z. Stem cells for the treatment of neurological disorders. Nature 2006;441:1094-6.
24. I use here words also used in "Inter-species embryos"; see note 13, Academy of Medical Sciences 2007.
25. In this section I have, with his permission, borrowed extensively from the work of my friend and colleague Giuseppe Testa. We have worked together on the ethics of humanimals, but this section on context belongs to Giuseppe. I do not quote him verbatim because I draw these sections from an unpublished paper we authored together.
26. Hyun I, Taylor P, Testa G, Dickens B, Jung KW, McNab A, et al. Ethical standards for human-toanimal chimera experiments in stem cell research. Cell Stem Cell 2007;1:159-163 at p. 159.
27. It is true that humans are less sanguine about being eaten by other organic creatures than they are about eating them, but either way we end up with humanimals.
28. See note 20, Hyun et al. 2007:159.
29. See note 20, Hyun et al. 2007:159.
30. See note 20, Hyun et al. 2007:160.
31. See note 20, Hyun et al. 2007:160.
32. Halder G, Callaerts P, Gehring WJ. Induction of ectopic eyes by targeted expression of the eyeless gene in Drosophila. Science 1995;267:1788-92;
33. Oliver G, Gruss P. Current views of eye development. Trends in Neuroscience 1997;20:415-21;
34. Quiring R, Walldorf U, Kloter U, Gehring WJ. Hormology of the eyeless gene of Drosophila to the Small eye gene in mice and Anividia in humans. Science 1994;265:785-9. (Pubitemid 24266138)
35. In Dawkins R. The Devil's Chaplain. London: Phoenix; 2004:23-31. I use the summary of Dawkins that appears in my Enhancing Evolution; see note 1. I apologize for my frequent recourse to this wonderful example.
36. See Fukuyama F. Our Posthuman Future. London: Profile Books; 2002:160.
37. Shakespeare W. The Tempest. Act 5. Scene 1.
38. An epigram that came to me via Frank Cioffi, my undergraduate philosophy tutor in 1966. I don't know where he found it, but Internet sources suggest that Kurt Vonnegut may have borrowed it from him or vice versa.
39. Harris J. Intimations of immortality. Science 2000;288:59; (Pubitemid 30203025)
40. Harris J. Intimations of immortality: The ethics and justice of life extending therapies. In: Freeman M, ed. Current Legal Problems. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2002:65-97.
41. In describing synthetic biology, I draw heavily on the ideas and research of my colleague John McCarthy, Director of the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre, University of Manchester.
42. To lightly adapt The Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights published by UNESCO as a pamphlet December 3, 1997, which absurdly endorses "[t]he preservation of the human genome as common heritage of humanity."
43. For a detailed defense see note 1, Harris 2007, on which book I draw in this section. See also note 4, Greely et al. 2008.
44. It is perhaps another irony that unsocial hours are parasitic upon the concept of social hours, themselves the by-product of the leisure that technology has facilitated.
45. Statistics from Eurotransplant seem to suggest that waiting lists do still exist in Belgium and Austria (Eurotransplant does not extend to Spain), although they may be greatly reduced.
46. See note 2, Harris 1985;
47. Harris J. The concept of the Person and the value of life. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 1999;9:293-308.
48. Eliot TS. The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. T. S. Eliot Collected Poems. London: Faber and Faber; 1963.