The right not to be subjected to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is invariably associated with ‘human dignity’. The idea of dignity plays some role in this right’s interpretation, although the content of the idea in this context, as in others, is unclear. Making sense of the dignity idea involves a number of challenges. These challenges give rise to the methodological-type question at the heart of this article: how should human rights lawyers go about articulating the content (...) of ‘dignity’? The article proposes, and models, a methodological approach in response. Its core argument is that human rights law needs the vocabulary provided by theorizations of dignity but that these theorizations should be anchored in authoritative human rights jurisprudence. It argues that this approach can help make sense of the dignity idea in a way that facilitates a richer understanding of its influence on interpretation. (shrink)

Although it does not appear on many traditional lists of the virtues, respect for human dignity is an important virtue in its own right that is characterized as much by emotions as by other mental states and actions. The virtue of respect for human dignity essentially involves the dispositions to feel the emotion of respect for the dignity of others and an emotional sense of one’s own dignity. As exemplified by Nelson Mandela, this virtue also involves a keen perceptual sensitivity (...) to humiliating and degrading treatment, along with dispositions to protest, correct, and prevent such treatment. The person with the virtue of respect for human dignity also will be disposed to feel indignation toward willful violations of human dignity, compassion for those whose dignity is violated, and various positive emotions in response to victories for human dignity. Although this virtue closely resembles other, more widely recognized, virtues, such as justice and love, it nevertheless is appropriate to treat respect for human dignity as a distinct virtue, as well as an emotion. (shrink)

In Memory of Ed PellegrinoEuthanasia in Belgium is not limited to terminally ill patients. It may be applied to patients with chronic degenerative diseases. Currently, people in Belgium wish to make it possible to euthanize incompetent patients who suffer from dementia. This article explains the Belgian law and then explores arguments for and against euthanasia of patients with dementia. It probes the dementia paradox by elucidating Dworkin’s distinction between critical and experiential interests, arguing that at the end-of-life this distinction is (...) not clearcut. It argues against euthanasia for patients with dementia, for respecting patients’ humanity and for providing them with more care, compassion, and good doctoring. (shrink)

There is all over the world a sort of fever affecting all the research fields related, closely or somewhat loosely,with human health issues. Some of them – cloning, therapeutic cloning, stem cell therapy, human enhancement, etc. – arise fierce and controversial public debates. At the same time, a concern can be felt worldwide that tomorrow’s medicine might well become more and more « dual », the advanced health devices threatening to become the privilege of a small whealthy minority, or at (...) least excluding the vast majority of the poor and the low middle class. Furthermore, there are even greater disparities between wealthy and poor nations in access to health care and in the level of protection available to members of the latter’s population in a medical context. The theme of rationing health care has been ongoingly gaining in prevalence over the two to three last decades in the public debates, causing many to express worries about the ability of our health system to provide both efficiency and justice in health care. But, among all the new health care devices, are there not some which could be efficient both in terms of improvement of the management of patients’ health and of a just allocation of care ? Besides, not only emerge concerns linked with the development of new technologies in health care, but also in connection with the impact of social-political transformations onto the medical relationship : what are in this context the doctor-patient relationship in regard to autonomy and gender ? Should we be free to use or not to use these new technologies ? Might not the « quest for perfection » develop into a duty of perfection ? And, with the improvement of the therapeutic power to prolong human life, are we to think of assisted suicide as the future of death ? These are some of the issues that this conference wants to adress from an ethical perspective and with rigour. To enrich our discussions also medical and life science praticioners willing to reflect ethically on moral questions of health issues in their professional life and politicians faced with ethical decisions in the domain of health are welcome to participate. (shrink)