Hi all,

I am working on the role that the concept of dignity plays in human rights 
and bioethics documents, and would be interested in participating in the 
rights panel, if you think such a talk would complement the existing papers. 
My focus would be on the etymological and philosophical origins of dignity; 
how a word that initially described hierarchal relationships has been 
appropriated by those wishing to advance equality; and whether a word that 
means all things to all people can be given enough content to mean something 
at all. In short, can the notion of dignity do meaningful work in 
discussions about health, social justice, and women's rights? This might be 
a nice follow-up to Mary's paper on UNESCO, and I imagine might raise some 
of the universalism issues Rosie will hit on. Let me know what you think...

Best wishes,
Leslie

Leslie Meltzer, J.D., M.Sc.
Visiting Scholar in Bioethics
University of Pennsylvania
Ph.D. Candidate in Ethics
University of Virginia
215.573.2604 (office)




On Tue, 14 Feb 2006 11:30:56 -0500
  "Mary C. Rawlinson" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear All,
> Sorry I couldn't pariticpate in these exchanges yesterday: Monday's a big 
> teaching day  and I didn't get a chance to read the mail until late in the 
> evening.
> It sounds like we have at least two panels here, maybe three.
> Seems like Lisa and Helene, and maybe Anne, have a topic in justice and 
> caregiving.
> Laura's focus on the impact of religion on women's rights, especially 
> reproductive rights, could be folded into a panel on women's rights but 
> that might lose the focus on religion, and given the contemporary 
> importance of that force, maybe it needs a panel in its own right. 
> I was thinking of a panel that might focus specifically on the debate 
> about rights that was the crux of UNESCO's recent effort to draft 
> "universal norms" for bioethics. Women's rights were absorbed in the idea 
> of human rights and this is very much reflected, for example, in the lack 
> of attention to reproductive rights. Moreover, the process evolved into a 
> struggle between those (led by the Andean countries) who thought bioethics 
> should focus on the link between health and social justice, securing a 
> right to health or health care, and those (led by Germany and the US) who 
> insisted on defining bioethics narrowly as focusing only on the regulation 
> of new knowledge and new technologies, particularly in genetics, as well 
> as issues of property rights to those new technologies. It was all very 
> much a debate about rights and about whose rights matter and who gets to 
> define the rights that are central to bioethics.  Observing the process, I 
> thought the discourse of rights and the proclamations of "the fundamental 
> equality of all human beings in dignity and rights" in fact covered over 
> the real global social inequities that determine health.  So, I was 
> thinking of a panel that might focus on these very practical issues 
> regarding the function of rights discourse in bioethics. 
> We could certainly organize a panel on rights to address both these 
> questions and Laura's concerns, but again the issue of religion per se 
> might not get the attention it deserves.
> What do you think?
> All the best, Mary 
> Professor Mary C. Rawlinson
> Department of Philosophy
> Stony Brook University
> Stony Brook, New York
> U.S.A 11794
> (631)632-7590