Human Dignity and Bioethics

522 | Edmund D. Pellegrino
by non-syllogistic inference in Newman’s sense. In any case, as John
Crosby has so aptly pointed out, it is not just the external qualities or
behavior that carry worth or admirability but the particular human
person who has them: “When we speak of the dignity of the human
person we do not speak of a goodness for the human person but of a
goodness human persons have in themselves.” 21
Dignity and the Clinical Experience
Some of the more complex experiences of dignity are those most
relevant for bioethics. They are epitomized in the clinical encounter.
The central relationship is the one between patient and physician,
though nurses and other health professionals also participate to varying
degrees. The person in need, the being around whom the drama
centers, is a patient, someone literally bearing a burden, suffering and
in distress, anxious, frightened, and no longer able to cope without
professional help.
The clinical encounter is a confrontation, a face-to-face encounter
between someone who professes to heal and someone in need of
healing. Its locus is the doctor-patient, or nurse-patient, relationship.
It is a phenomenon of intersubjectivity, and it is in this sense that it is
a locus for the experience of human dignity and its loss. The doctorpatient
relationship is paradigmatic for other “healing” relationships,
those that involve humans in states of need and vulnerability. The
same perceptions of threats to or loss of dignity accompany those
myriad encounters in which one person seeks the help of another. In
all these relationships there are always the silent questions: How will
my plight be perceived? Has my vulnerability diminished the respect
I deserve as a fellow human being? Is my need for help perceived as
a manifestation of a physiological or psychological weakness? Does
that perception erode my dignity in the eyes of the one whose help
I need?
It is especially as a petitioner that the person’s dignity is “on the
line.” Consciously or unconsciously, merely admitting the need for
help places a person in a state of vulnerability. The patient’s perception
of his or her independence and freedom are exposed, by necessity,
to the full view of another person. How another person responds