Human Dignity and Bioethics

298 | Leon R. Kass
language of rights and the pursuit of equality. Among us, the very
idea of “dignity” smacks too much of aristocracy for egalitarians and
too much of religion for secularists and libertarians. Moreover, it
seems to be too private and vague a matter to be the basis for legislation
or public policy.
Yet, that said, we Americans actually care a great deal about human
dignity, even if the term comes not easily to our lips. In times
past, our successful battles against slavery, sweatshops, and segregation,
although fought in the name of civil rights, were at bottom
campaigns for human dignity—for treating human beings as they
deserve to be treated, solely because of their humanity. Likewise, our
taboos against incest, bestiality, and cannibalism, as well as our condemnations
of prostitution, drug addiction, and self-mutilation—
having little to do with defending liberty and equality—all seek to
defend human dignity against (voluntary) acts of self -degradation.
Today, human dignity is of paramount importance especially in matters
bioethical. As we become more and more immersed in a world of
biotechnology, we increasingly sense that we neglect human dignity
at our peril, especially in light of gathering powers to intervene in
human bodies and minds in ways that will affect our very humanity,
likely threatening things that everyone, whatever their view of
human dignity, holds dear. Truth to tell, it is beneath our human
dignity to be indifferent to it.
As part of its effort to develop and promote a “richer” bioethics,
the President’s Council on Bioethics, in its previously published
works, has paid considerable attention to various aspects of human
dignity that are at risk in our biotechnological age: the dignity of
human procreation, threatened by cloning-to-produce-children and
other projected forms of “manufacture”; the dignity of nascent human
life, threatened by treating embryonic human beings as mere
raw material for exploitation and use in research and commerce; the
dignity of the human difference, threatened by research that would
produce man-animal or man-machine hybrids; the dignity of bodily
integrity, threatened by trafficking in human body parts; the dignity
of psychic integrity, threatened by chemical interventions that would
erase memories, create factitious moods, and transform personal
identity; the dignity of human self-command, threatened by methods
of behavior modification that bypass human agency; the dignity