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Readdressing Our Moral Relationship to Nonhuman Creatures: Commentary on “A Dialogue on Species-Specific Rights: Humans and Animals in Bioethics”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Peter J. Whitehouse
Peter J. Whitehouse
Affiliation:
is Professor of Neurology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Director of the Alzheimer Center at University Hospitals of Cleveland, Ohio.
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Extract

Community discourse about the moral status of animals is critical to the future of bioethics and, indeed, to the future of modern society. Thomasma and Loewy are to be commended for sharing thoughts and trying to attain some common ground. I am grateful to them for fostering discussion and allowing me to respond. I cannot endorse the negative tone of the end of their conversation, however. They end with serious concerns about the possibility of any agreement between themselves. Even though I perceive some moral differences between them, I do not believe that they are moral strangers. In this commentary I review the ways in which I agree and disagree with Thomasma and Loewy and conclude with some thoughts about the kind of broad ethical thinking we need to do to address our moral relationship to nonhuman, living creatures.

Type
Special Section: Expending the Boundaries of Bioethics
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , Fall 1997 , pp. 445 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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