Personhood in bioethics

and biomedical research

Dónal P. O’Mathúna, PhD
VOLUME 7 NUMBER 5
SE P T E M B E R –OC T O B E R 2006

In everyday conversation, person is synonymous with human being. Person has a more technical meaning with- also meant that he or she should be given
in philosophy, and especially within ethics or moral philosophy. The concept of personhood has been of central unique and ultimate moral status.
importance in the history of moral philosophy. This article will describe some of the more common positions
taken on the issue of personhood and the arguments used for and against each. The literature on personhood is More recent discussions of personhood
vast, with many different arguments and counter-arguments raised. Whole books have been written to explore have focused more on determinations of
any one of these points. This article will, of necessity, give only a general survey of the main issues. The goal is
personhood. Ethics is primarily concerned
to give biomedical researchers a general overview of these philosophical issues. with developing positions on the right and
Key words: bioethics, biomedical research, ethics, person wrong ways to act toward others. Why do
we think it wrong to kill another human?
One view is that because humans are per-
We use the term “person” all the time. In everyday sons and have high moral standing they must be
conversation it is synonymous with human being. It is respected by allowing them to pursue their own pur-
another way we refer to “one of us”: another human, poses. Taking their lives makes that impossible.
a member of the species, Homo sapiens. Another view is that as persons they have certain
Person has a more technical meaning within philoso- rights, the most basic of which is the right to life. It is
phy, and especially within ethics or moral philosophy. then wrong to violate that person’s right. But then the
(Throughout this article the terms ethics and morality question arises: Who is a person? Are all humans
will be used interchangeably.) In this context, the term inherently persons, or do only some humans qualify
person designates a being of the highest worth and as persons? If only some humans are persons, what are
value, one having “ultimate, or radically superior, the qualifications?
moral status.”1
The concept of personhood has been of central impor- Personhood and research
tance in the history of moral philosophy. “Nearly
Within research, questions of personhood revolve
every moral theory in the history of (at least Western)
around whether we ought to treat all organisms in the
philosophy has held that persons possess exclusive or
same way. If it is not ethical to kill humans in research,
radically superior moral status, that nonpersons have
why might we think it is ethical to kill mice or dogs or
no or radically inferior moral status, and that there are
chimpanzees in experiments? Why is it generally
no beings existing between the categories of person
viewed as ethical to do research on tissue cultures
and nonperson.”2
grown in the lab, but unethical to grow human fetus-
As can be imagined, however, a topic of such wide- es for similar experiments?
spread importance contains within itself a number of
Such questions have been forced on medical and
different issues. Earlier discussions of personhood were
biotechnological researchers by those concerned
centered around moral responsibility. A person was
about animal rights. However, stem cell research has
generally held to be someone who could reflect on the
once again drawn much attention to the debate over
morality of choices—the rightness and wrongness of
the ethical significance of personhood within the
decisions. Being a person thus made someone morally
research community and the general public. One of
responsible and accountable for his or her actions, but
the controversial issues is whether research that

© 2006 CenterWatch Research Practitioner / VOLUME 7 NUMBER 5

Personhood in bioethics and biomedical research / O’Mathúna
destroys human embryos to obtain embryonic stem
cells is unethical. At the center of the ethical debates is
whether the human embryo should be viewed as a
person. For most people who hold that human
embryos are persons, it follows that human embryos
should not be sacrificed even for the good of others.
Doing so would be treating those embryos merely as a
means toward the ends of others, which is generally
viewed as unethical for persons.
While recent public debate about personhood has
focused on stem cell research, the concept is impor-
tant in many other bioethical debates. Whether the
human embryo is a person has direct implications for
fetal research and abortion. Some of those who view
the human embryo as a person maintain that certain
forms of contraception and infertility treatments are
unethical if they lead to deliberate destruction of
embryos. Some who view all unborn humans as non-
persons maintain that infanticide (putting newborn
babies to death) is ethical in certain circumstances.
John Harris, a member of the British Medical
Association’s ethics committee, holds to this view.
“What do we really think is different between new-
borns and late fetuses? There is no obvious reason why
one should think differently, from an ethical point of
view, about a fetus when it’s outside the womb rather
than when it’s inside the womb.”3
At the other end of life, some claim that people can
lose their personhood before they die (long before
they could be declared brain dead). If having condi-
tions like persistent vegetative state or advanced
Alzheimer’s disease or dementia means such patients
are no longer persons, would it be ethical to end their
lives, remove their essential organs, or carry out exper-
iments on them? Some think it would and base their
arguments on their view of personhood.
Other branches of biomedical research raise questions
about personhood in very different contexts. If artifi-
cial intelligence (AI) continues to develop, will certain
computers or robots be entitled to the status of person?
What will that mean for how we treat them? If xeno-
transplantation is expanded, will non-human animals
become persons after they receive certain proportions
or types of human tissues? Will humans who have had
certain tissues replaced lose their personhood?
Questions like these are being explored in popular cul-
Research Practitioner / VOLUME 7 NUMBER 5
ture through such media as science fiction movies.
One example came up in the recent movie version of
Isaac Asimov’s book, I, Robot.4 The engineer who had
created advanced robots, Dr. Lanning, narrated some
deeper questions about personhood as the robot
Sonny was being decommissioned (or should we say
killed?). “There have always been ghosts in the
machine. Random segments of code that have
grouped together to form unexpected protocols.
Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions
of free will, creativity, and even the nature of what we
might call the soul.” Lanning then described certain
robot behaviors that suggest they may be more like
humans than we might want to admit. Could they
even be persons? He concludes: “How do we explain
this behavior? Random segments of code? Or is it
something more? When does a perceptual schematic
become consciousness? When does a different engine
become the search for truth? When does a personality
simulation become the bitter moat of a soul?”
The notion of the soul is often addressed philosophi-
cally in terms of personhood. This issue will become
more pressing as research in AI and robotics advances.
That research will determine whether or when such
decisions will require something like “roboethics.”
Meanwhile, similar questions are focused on the
beginning of human life. Already, ethical positions
have significant practical impact on research practice,
politics, and funding. A central issue is one’s position
on what it means to be a person. This article will
describe some of the more common positions taken
on these issues and the arguments used for and against
each. The literature on personhood is vast, with many
different arguments and counter-arguments raised.
Whole books have been written to explore any one of
these points. This article will, of necessity, give only a
general survey of the main issues. The goal is to give
biomedical researchers a general overview of these
philosophical issues.
Functionalist approach
The position taken by Dr. Lanning represents what
might arguably be the more common approach to per-
sonhood found in scientific literature. This process
begins when a being’s status as person or non-person
is viewed as uncertain. The behaviors carried out by
 O’Mathúna / Personhood in bioethics and biomedical research

that being are described and compared with those car- Those without such abilities are thereby viewed as
ried out by those we know to be persons (i.e., normal non-persons. Fletcher’s approach is representative of a
adult humans). A decision is made as to whether or group of views united in the underlying assumption
not the being’s behaviors are sufficiently like a per- that a human being is not necessarily a human per-
son’s and, if so, he or she should be given the status of son. Some set of properties or functions are selected to
person. allow the determination of which humans are per-
In the context of more recent bioethics literature, sons. These functions or abilities, not just their poten-
Joseph Fletcher proposed a tentative list of 20 criteria tial, must be present in a human before he or she can
which he said described “what it means to be a truly be declared a person.
human being.”5 The complete list is given in Table 1. Another often-cited adherent to this approach is
The focus, as with most of these proposals, has been Michael Tooley. He stated “that anything that has, and
on psychological characteristics as exemplified by his has exercised, all of the following capacities is a per-
inclusion of such attributes as minimal intelligence, son, and that anything that has never had any of
self-awareness, self-control, a sense of time, curiosity, them is not a person: the capacity for self-conscious-
and neo-cortical function. ness; the capacity to think; the capacity for rational
Fletcher’s criteria received inevitable criticism for mak- thought; the capacity to arrive at decisions by deliber-
ing the requirements for personhood too high. If all ation; the capacity to envisage a future for oneself; the
these traits needed to be displayed, some (if not many) capacity to remember a past involving oneself; the
humans would have been excluded who would other- capacity for being a subject of non-momentary inter-
wise clearly seem to be persons. Fletcher himself later ests; the capacity to use language.”7 Another example
condensed his list to only four: a person should dis- comes from John Harris who declared that “anyone
play self-consciousness, potential for relationships, capable of valuing existence, whether they do value it
ability to experience happiness, and neocortical func- or not, is a person.”8
tion.6 However, he further stated “that neocortical Another general implication of this approach is that
function is the key to humanness, the essential trait, personhood need not be reserved for humans only.
the human sine qua non.”6 For Peter Singer, the key attribute for personhood is
The neocortex is the center of all higher-brain activi- sentience because this gives people interests. Interests
ties such as thinking, feeling, and communicating. arise when a being has preferences for one thing over
another. This, for Singer, ties personhood to a being’s
ability to experience happiness or suffering. “The
Table 1. Joseph Fletcher’s Essential capacity for suffering and enjoyment is a prerequisite
Indicators of Personhood5 for having interests at all, a condition that must be sat-
Positive Human Criteria isfied before we can speak of interests in a meaningful
way.”9 This leads Singer to conclude that humans are
Minimal intelligence (IQ of above 20) Communication
not the only species to be entitled to view themselves
Self-awareness Control of existence
as persons. “The evidence for personhood is at present
Self-control Curiosity
most conclusive for the great apes, but whales, dol-
A sense of time Change and changeability
phins, elephants, monkeys, dogs, pigs, and other ani-
A sense of futurity Balance of rationality and feeling
mals may eventually also be shown to be aware of
A sense of the past Idiosyncrasy
their own existence over time and capable of reason-
Capability to relate to others Neo-cortical function
ing.”10 This approach also leads him to conclude that
Concern for others
certain types of humans should not be viewed as per-
Negative Human Criteria sons, with controversial implications: “Killing a defec-
Persons are not non- or anti-artificial Persons are not bundles of rights tive infant is not morally equivalent to killing a per-
Persons are not essentially parental Persons are not essentially son. Very often it is not wrong at all.”11
Persons are not essentially sexual worshippers The lists of criteria developed by philosophers in
recent times have almost completely focused on

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Personhood in bioethics and biomedical research / O’Mathúna
psychological qualities.1 Such developments are tied
to the emphasis placed on the distinctiveness of rea-
son and self-consciousness among humans. The psy-
chological emphasis on personhood can be traced
back to John Locke (1632-1704) who defined a person
as a “thinking intelligent being, that has reason and
reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same
thinking thing in different times and places.”12 For
Locke, personhood depends on the ability to think
about oneself and to have memory of that self.
Importantly, this definition does not depend on the
person being embodied. This has become important
in modern considerations about whether a person
could be transferred out of one body and into anoth-
er, or into a machine. A psychological definition of
personhood would suggest that this is possible.
Another important contributor to ethical theory and
personhood in particular is Immanuel Kant (1724-
1804). He held that what separates persons from non-
persons is the ability to critically reflect on moral
actions. Non-personal animals act based on instinct,
desires, and other non-rational reasons. Persons, how-
ever, have the ability to reflect on these first-order
desires and determine for themselves whether to act
upon them. This ability separates persons from the
rest of the natural world and bestows upon its posses-
sors unique moral value. Persons then must never be
treated merely as means to an end, but an end in-and-
of themselves.
Another way that personhood can be recognized is
that all persons have some sense of a moral law with-
in themselves (whether they act according to it or
not). Thus, Kant summarized his view in a famous pas-
sage: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and
increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more
steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above
me and the moral law within me.”13
There is a strong attraction to a psychological defini-
tion of personhood because it coincides with much of
our everyday understanding of a person. When we
recognize an old friend, we may remark that in spite
of significant physical change, through aging or gain-
ing weight or being disfigured in an accident, this in
still the same person—our friend. But if an old friend
looks the same, but has a different personality, we
question whether this is still the same person.
Research Practitioner / VOLUME 7 NUMBER 5
Given the emphasis placed on psychological abilities,
the underlying physical structures required for such
functions have become important in discussions of
personhood. “Whereas the ‘stuff of personhood,’
what ‘matters’ about it, mainly consists in the rele-
vant psychological states, these must be supported by
neurological equipment, otherwise no person can
exist.”1 Knowing that the neocortex is necessary for
self-consciousness and sentience, it has been seen as
necessary for personhood also. In the context of stem
cell research, discussions about whether a human
embryo is a person usually focus on whether the
embryo has developed sufficiently to be regarded as a
full human being. Various developmental points are
taken as providing a morally significant line before
which a non-person exists and after which a person
exists. Among the points proposed are conception,
implantation, viability, birth, or social acceptance.
For example, Michael Lockwood states that, “When I
came into existence is a matter of how far back the rel-
evant neurophysiological continuity can be traced.
Presumably, then, my life began somewhere between
conception and birth.”14 Walter Glannon is more spe-
cific. “A person begins to exist when the fetal stage of
the organism develops the structure and function of
the brain necessary to generate and support conscious-
ness and mental life. This is when the fetus becomes
sentient, at around 23-24 weeks of gestation.”15
Most adherents to the psychological approach to per-
sonhood conclude that the human embryo could not
possibly be a person since it has not developed the
necessary biological structures. Since the embryo is
not a person, destroying it while removing stem cells
is seen as ethical within this framework, especially
when done for such a potentially beneficial reason as
developing new therapies.
Critics of this approach raise a number of points that
will be considered below when alternative approaches
are discussed. Two general claims are made. One is
that declaring any point along the continuum of
human life, from embryo to infant to deteriorating
adult, is arbitrary. There is no clear-cut dividing line
between any of these stages. Making a declaration of
personhood based on such unclearly demarcated
points is therefore arbitrary and unwarranted given
the significance of personhood.

The second general criticism is that none of these
approaches have explained why the chosen attribute
or biological structure warrants a change in moral sta-
tus. There is nothing inherently moral about the
appearance of the primitive streak or even cognitive
abilities. Why should the ability to use language be
viewed as morally more significant than the ability to
run fast, fly far, or dive deep? The connection is always
assumed, not demonstrated.16 Critics maintain that
the range of attributes chosen by these approaches
points to the inadequacy of all of them to defend the
underlying assumption that moral status can be based
on any attribute. Therefore, they argue, it should not
be based on any attribute, biological or psychological,
but rather be viewed as something inherent that all
humans are endowed with.
Inherent personhood approach
Often referred to as the traditional personhood view,
some hold that a human becomes a person at fertil-
ization. This approach rejects the notion that some
humans are non-persons. It claims that personhood is
not dependent on any particular ability or attribute,
but is an inherent quality of being human. This
approach does not necessarily require that only
humans can be persons. Many adherents would accept
that non-human persons could exist on other planets
or in the spiritual realm. However, the literature tends
to focus on defending the idea that all humans are
persons.
This approach at first appears to be difficult to recon-
cile with modern biological findings. Thus, for exam-
ple, a Catholic theologian and ethicist disagreed with
his church’s view of personhood when claiming: “The
idea of a little cluster of stem cells being a person …
makes no sense at all.”17 However, this conclusion
arises from the focus within all the functional
approaches on physical or psychological attributes
that point to personhood. Biologically, the embryo is
clearly not like a human baby or adult. It is not able to
do what we typically understand that persons are able
to do.
One approach to dealing with the biological findings
is that even if a human embryo does not act like a per-
son, it has the potential to become a person.
Therefore, it ought to be treated as if it was a person.
O’Mathúna / Personhood in bioethics and biomedical research
This issue itself has generated a large literature and will
not be examined in depth here. Many of the argu-
ments that follow here are used to defend this
approach also.
The view that personhood begins at fertilization is
defended in part by an argument based on biological
findings and by an ensuing philosophical argument. A
very general description of the main points will be pre-
sented here.
The biological dimension begins by noting that a dis-
tinct human life comes into being at fertilization (or
when a zygote is made by some other technological
means such as in therapeutic cloning). Patrick Lee
points out “that a new cell is produced that is geneti-
cally distinct from the cells either of the mother or of
the father. This fusion, or fertilization, is a complicat-
ed process, and usually takes seven to 10 hours, but at
its completion there plainly exists a new, distinct
organism.”18
This organism is clearly human, it is an individual
(though it might later become more than one individ-
ual through twinning), and it is living. It is a complete
organism, which distinguishes it from a sperm or egg.
“But unlike a colony of human cells in a culture dish
or a beating human heart outside the body, the
embryo or fetus has in itself all of the positive reality
and information to develop itself actively into a
mature human organism, and so is a whole human
being.”18 Many who do not accept that the embryo or
fetus is a person will acknowledge this as the case, as
does James Walters. “We all begin our lives as single-
celled organisms the size of a pencil dot. And each of
those pencil dots is a human being. That is, each of us,
just after conception, is indisputably human in our
genetics, and each of us at that primitive stage is a
being—a living thing.”19
More recent developments in systems biology are said
to support this understanding of human life.
“Fertilization is the moment when most human life
begins, but not all. Implantation cannot be the
moment that human life begins. Systems biology,
instead, provides a definition for the beginning of
human life that is complete and applicable to natural
or artificial processes. It also shows the continuity of
an organism in early development with a mature
organism. Human life begins at the moment when it
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Personhood in bioethics and biomedical research / O’Mathúna
first appears a distinct embodied process.”20 The ensu-
ing continuity of development is then taken to be
highly significant in defending the claim that person-
hood must begin when human life begins.
This is where the more philosophical argument for
this position comes into play. One of the problems
with this argument is that it can become technical and
abstract very quickly. However, coming to understand
it is necessary to understand why it has had such emi-
nent proponents over the centuries. The core of the
argument is that if any entity is to be regarded as hav-
ing intrinsic moral worth, it must be an entity of a dif-
ferent kind to other things that do not have such
worth. But if such an entity does exist, it must be of
intrinsic value during all of its existence. What makes
it valuable cannot be one or more properties that
come in different degrees or that may or may not be
present. Otherwise, its value would be based on that
property and personhood would not be intrinsic.
In less abstract terms, such an argument underlies
human equality and human rights.21 All humans are
held to be equal, not because they are equal in intelli-
gence or abilities, but because they are all human
beings. Because of that, every human being is viewed
as being entitled to the same human rights. Again, this
is because they are human beings, not because they
have certain abilities or attributes. In philosophical
terms, those characteristics that are intrinsic to human
nature are called “essential,” whereas variable abilities
or attributes are called “accidental.” In this view, then,
all humans possess “equal and intrinsic dignity by
virtue of what (i.e., the kind of entity) they are, not in
virtue of any accidental characteristics, which can
come and go, and which are present in human beings
in varying degrees.”21 Accidental characteristics would
include intelligence, height, communication skills,
and many others.
The next step is to identify the essential characteristics
of a human person. In this perspective, the essential
characteristics “will be properties such that to lose any
of them is to go out of existence.”18 Brain function is
not viewed as essential because human life exists dur-
ing early phases of fetal life before the brain has devel-
oped. In contrast, being an organism is an essential
characteristic of a human being. If a human ceases to
be an organism, it ceases to be. However, the organism
Research Practitioner / VOLUME 7 NUMBER 5
that is a mature adult is the same organism that was a
fetus and an embryo. It is therefore the same type of
being. “Being a person is not a result of acquired acci-
dental attributes; rather, it is being a certain type of
individual, an individual with a rational nature…. If
we are persons now, we were persons then. We were
never ‘human nonpersons.’”21
The New England Journal of Medicine asked two mem-
bers of the President’s Council on Bioethics to address
the ethics of funding stem cell research that destroys
human embryos. Michael Sandel sought to reject the
above continuity argument using a frequently cited
analogy. He pointed out that “although every oak tree
was once an acorn, it does not follow that acorns are
oak trees, or that I should treat the loss of an acorn
eaten by a squirrel in my front yard as the same kind
of loss as the death of an oak tree felled by a storm.
Despite their developmental continuity, acorns and
oak trees are different kinds of things. So are human
embryos and human beings.”22
Another member of the President’s Council, Robert
George, pointed out problems in this analogy.21 If the
acorn is analogous to a human embryo, then the
mature oak tree should be compared with a mature
adult human—not human beings in general. The flaw
in the analogy can be seen if we envision how people
would feel about the loss of young members of each
category: the death of an oak sapling compared to the
death of a child. The loss of saplings would probably
have an effect similar to that of the loss of acorns,
whereas the loss of a child would be more similar to
the loss of an adult. This serves to point out that what
is valued in the mature oak is very different from what
is valued in the mature human. Oaks are valued
because of accidental characteristics, properties such
as beauty or shade. They are not valued in-and-of
themselves because of the kind of entity they are.
Sandel’s argument actually supports this conclusion.
In contrast, humans and children are valued because
of their kind, and this means that they should be val-
ued from when they first come into existence. The
only other option, one George assumes that Sandel
does not advocate, would be to “reject the principle
that all human beings possess equal moral worth.”21
Those who claim that all humans are persons main-
tain that moving to the functionalist view will under-

mine the value placed on human life. Since that
approach is based on determining who is and who is
not a person, we will become less tolerant and caring
toward those humans whom we declare to be non-
humans. Leon Kass, former chairman of the
President’s Council on Bioethics has asked how it will
affect us “to look upon nascent human life as a natu-
ral resource to be mined, exploited, commodified. The
little embryos are merely destroyed, but we—their
users—are at risk of corruption.”23
Gradualist approach
Such concerns about the functionalist approach have
led to another approach attempting to find a middle
ground. While noting that the functionalist perspec-
tive seems to have much support from common sense,
it has serious problems. Walters, for example, notes
that the way the functionalist approach lends support
for infanticide goes against a widespread reaction that
there is something wrong with killing infants.19 In
general, many of the groups of humans this approach
declares to be non-persons are vulnerable and in need
of all the protection that personhood can afford them.
One of the ways humans have made it easier to com-
mit atrocities and cruelties against others is by declar-
ing that the victims were fundamentally different
from them, that they were something less than fully
human.24 Historically, viewing some humans as non-
persons has always been used “as a permissive notion
that takes the moral heat off certain quandaries raised
by modern medicine.”25 Interestingly, even in the
movie I, Robot, the discussion of personhood arose in
the context of a decision to terminate Sonny, the
robot who seemed to have developed personal charac-
teristics.
The gradualist position seeks to avoid the all-or-noth-
ing situation by claiming that personhood strength-
ens and then fades as various attributes develop and
later deteriorate. James Walters accepts a functionalist
perspective of personhood, but adds that “the more a
fetus, a newborn, or an infant approximates—or is
proximate to—personhood, the greater his or her
moral value and hence the greater the implicit claim
to life.”19 Similarly, as patients lose personal attributes
through diseases like Alzheimer’s or dementia, they
lose their personhood and eventually their rights,
O’Mathúna / Personhood in bioethics and biomedical research
including their right to life.
However, this approach is even more vulnerable to
one of the serious criticisms of the functionalist
approach. The declaration of personhood becomes an
arbitrary decision based on the evaluation of functions
that are very difficult to quantify. For example, it is
very difficult to determine precisely when cognitive
abilities have reached some threshold that warrants
the granting of personhood. Given the many attrib-
utes that could be chosen, it seems arbitrary to pick
one over the others. Also, many of the cognitive
capacities suggested as requirements for personhood
show little development in the womb and require
months if not years to develop in a child. For example,
if self-awareness or self-consciousness is used as the
determinant of personhood, where happens when
people go to sleep? This apparently simple example
has led to a huge amount of literature on the topic
which some take to reveal inherent weaknesses in this
general approach.
The gradualist approach adds another complication
with its assumption that various levels of personhood
are possible. Even if this is accepted, it provides little
guidance for practical decision-making. In fact, an
additional criterion must now be determined. For
example, if it is viewed as ethical to give a lethal injec-
tion to patients who have lost 90% of their person-
hood, it will be very difficult to determine that level of
personhood.
Conclusion
At the core of the personhood debate are two funda-
mentally different approaches. On the one hand is a
belief in the inalienable and intrinsic value of human
life. By definition, this value is not dependent on any
attribute or functional ability but is inherent to all
human beings. Logically, then, “if the thing itself is
intrinsically valuable, then it is intrinsically valuable
from the time it begins to be, not just when it acquires
a state or property such as sentience.”18
The other approach insists that personhood is depend-
ent on the existence of one or more attributes or abil-
ities. If humans do not have the biological capability
to carry out that function, they are not (yet) persons.
As such they are not entitled to the same rights as per-
sons and may be treated differently.
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Personhood in bioethics and biomedical research / O’Mathúna
Given the widespread debate over almost every aspect
of personhood, some question whether the concept
really helps in ethics.16 Part of the problem has been
the recent focus on using the concept to determine
who is a person. Historically, the focus was more on
what it means to be a person. The functionalist
approach applies itself more directly to the first ques-
tion. It then sets out to answer the second question in
a variety of ways, but often with the acceptance that it
is ethical to end the lives of those humans viewed as
non-persons. The approach that personhood is inher-
ent focuses much less on the first question. Instead, it
accepts the view that being a person means not treat-
ing other human lives as means toward ends, even
very good ends. That, at the very least, means not end-
ing their lives.
Both approaches can be argued logically, but underly-
ing each is a very different world view. As Walters has
stated, “a thinker’s position on the moral status of
human life is profoundly influenced by his or her
antecedently held moral values. That is, one’s view of
a human and what one selects—or inherits—as crite-
ria for determining the presence of moral status is
largely determined by preexisting personal, religious,
or philosophical views.”19
Nonetheless, it is important to dialogue on the issues
so that we can learn from one another’s perspectives.
Given the importance of this topic for human worth,
it is crucial to find the best possible answer.
Dónal P. O’Mathúna, PhD
Lecturer in Health Care Ethics
School of Nursing
Dublin City University
Dublin, Ireland
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