Due to their understanding of self-management, healthcare team members responsible for depressed older persons can experience an ethical dilemma. Each team member contributes important knowledge and experience pertaining to the management of depression, which should be reflected in the management plan. The aim of this study was to explore healthcare team members' reflections on the ethical dile...

Does the very idea of “human dignity” entail some moral disrespect for nonhuman animals? Put otherwise, does the notion of “human dignity” smack of speciesism (roughly, a view whereby nonhuman, sentient individuals are denied [adequate] moral standing on essentially arbitrary grounds)? Animal advocates, like James Rachels, often allege that there is a serious clash between the traditional view ...

BACKGROUND The regulation of human cloning continues to be a significant national and international policy issue. Despite years of intense academic and public debate, there is little clarity as to the philosophical foundations for many of the emerging policy choices. The notion of "human dignity" is commonly used to justify cloning laws. The basis for this justification is that reproductive hum...

The concept articulated in the title of this conference, ‘death with dignity’ can have many interpretations, which is of course why there is so much debate on a subject that at first sight would appear to be uncontroversial. All participants in the debate will agree that death with dignity is a good to be aspired to for everyone but what is not universally agreed is how death with dignity can b...

Human rights, including the right to health, are grounded in protecting and promoting human dignity. Although commitment to human dignity is a widely shared value, the precise meaning and requirements behind the term are elusive. It is also unclear as to how a commitment to human dignity translates into specific human rights, such as the right to the highest attainable standard of health, and d...

How to cite this article: Körtner, U.H.J., 2011, ‘Human dignity and biomedical ethics from a Christian theological perspective’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 67(3), Art. #953, 8 pages. doi:10.4102/hts.v67i3.953 The argument of human dignity plays an important role in current debates on human rights and their relevance in modern biomedicine. When discussing the contribution of Chri...

As many scholars have noted, the concept of “dignity” has historically been defined in several ways, creating conflict and confusion when the concept is invoked in the present. The concept has also been historically exclusive of various groups of individuals; some contemporary accounts still do not understand certain individuals with disabilities as possessing dignity. I examine the strength of...

Dignity is a key value within healthcare. Technology is also recognized as being a fundamental part of healthcare delivery, but also a potential cause of dehumanization of the patient. Therefore, understanding how medical devices can be designed to help deliver dignity is important. This paper explores the role of empathy tools as a way of engendering empathy in engineers and designers to enabl...

The concept of dignity is the foundation of fundamental rights expressed in international declarations on human rights and bioethics. Sometimes there are collisions of rights, which must be weighed. However, more often dignity is invoked in order to argue for or against the same issue. Is it possible that a concept can be so broad that it becomes meaningless? What do we mean when we argue for m...