In my dissertation I argue that bioethics should not continue to hold the concept of `human dignity' in its current esteemed status. The meaning of `human dignity' is rarely elucidated, yet the principle of respecting dignity has been considered the "shaping principle" of bioethics since the Nuremberg trials, and is routinely appealed to in justifying the constraint, condemnation, or approval of controversial biotechnologies and pivotal policy recommendations that often have far-reaching implications. For instance, the President's Council on Bioethics, UNESCO's Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, the Danish Council of Bioethics, and the World Medical Association all hold respect for human dignity as a fundamental moral principle which, in turn, has great bearing in their policy recommendations. In surveying these and other literatures, I show that people have conflicting moral intuitions about (1) what grounds dignity, (2) who are its bearers, and (3) what it means to violate or to safeguard human dignity. After arguing that respect for human dignity is an ineffective action-guiding principle, and should not be considered a foundational principle, I set out to address the following question: What role, if any, should dignity have in bioethics? I put forth a taxonomy of dignity functions, which works to disambiguate dignity language and provide a framework with which we may attend to this question. After this inquiry and reflection, I conclude that dignity is largely beside the point in bioethics and that persons' having interests and corresponding moral entitlements is what's really at stake. While my taxonomy of dignity functions is useful in evaluating the appropriate moral weight of dignity in pre-existing discourses, in looking to the future, bioethics would be better served if it moved away from such heavy reliance upon `dignity.'
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