Discussions concerning whether there is a natural right to health care may occur in various forms, resulting in policy recommendations for how to implement any such right in a given society. But health care policies may be judged by international standards including the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The rights enumerated in the UDHR are grounded in traditions of moral theory, a philosophical analysis of which is necessary in order to adjudicate the value of specific policies designed to enshrine (...) rights such as a right to health care. We begin with an overview of the drafting of the UDHR and highlight the primary influence of natural law theory in validating the rights contained therein. We then provide an explication of natural law theory by reference to the writings of Thomas Aquinas, as well as elucidate the complementary “capabilities approach” of Martha Nussbaum. We conclude that a right to health care ought to be guaranteed by the state. (shrink)

Staggering advances in biotechnology within the past decade have given rise to pharmacological, surgical and prosthetic techniques capable of enhancing human functioning rather than merely treating or preventing disease. Bioenhancement technologies range from nootropics capable of enhancing cognitive abilities to distraction osteogenesis, a surgical technique capable of increasing height through limb lengthening. This paper examines whether the use of bioenhancements falls inside or outside the proper boundaries of healthcare, and if so, whether clinicians have professional responsibilities to administer bioenhancements to (...) patients. After explicating two theoretical approaches to the concept of health, one objectivist and the other constructivist, I contend that clinicians' corresponding professional responsibilities hinge on which philosophical account of health is endorsed, and illustrate how the lack of analytic clarity with respect to this concept can lead to defective positions on the place of bioenhancements in healthcare. With this conceptual framework in place, an account of health as a cluster concept that incorporates both constructivist and objectivist components is developed and defended. (shrink)

The debate over the ethics of radically, technologically altering the capacities and traditional form of the human body is rife with appeals to and dismissals of the importance of the integrity of the human species. Species-integrist arguments can be found in authors as varied as Annas, Fukuyama, Habermas, and Agar. However, the ethical salience of species integrity is widely contested by authors such as Buchanan, Daniels, Fenton, and Juengst. This article proposes a Phenomenological approach to the question of species-integrity, arguing (...) in favor of a phenomenon of species-recognition that carries an ethical pull. Building on Husserl’s Phenomenological account of empathy and the lived-body, as well as Schopenhauer’s concept of compassion as an ethical urphenomenon, I develop a “Phenomenological species concept” , which I argue has the ethical significance that biological species concepts do not. The PSC reorients the debate over human alteration and species integrity. (shrink)

In recent years there has been growing scholarly interest in the relationship between bioethics and human rights. The majority of this work has proposed that the normative and institutional frameworks of human rights can usefully be employed to address those bioethical controversies that have a global reach: in particular, to the genetic modification of human beings, and to the issue of access to healthcare. In response, a number of critics have urged for a degree of caution about applying human rights (...) to such controversies. In particular, they have claimed that human rights have unresolved distributive and foundational problems. Interestingly, however, some of these critics have gone on to suggest that it might be possible to draw on certain bioethical insights to remedy these problems with human rights. This paper evaluates these recent attempts to apply insights from bioethics to the theory and practice of human rights. It argues that while these insights do not constitute an entirely new and original contribution to human rights thinking, they do force human rights scholars and campaigners to reflect on some key issues. First of all, they force us to question the prevalent idea that human rights are always 'inviolable trumps'. Secondly, they demand that we pay close attention to the 'fairness' of the institutions we charge with determining our concrete rights. And finally, and perhaps most radically, these insights challenge the notion that human rights are held exclusively by members of the human species. (shrink)