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Taking the “Human” Out of Human Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2010

JOHN HARRIS
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Human rights are universally acknowledged to be important, although they are, of course, by no means universally respected. This universality has helped to combat racism and sexism and other arbitrary and vicious forms of discrimination. Unfortunately, as we shall see, the universality of human rights is both too universal and not universal enough. It is time to take the “human” out of human rights. Indeed, it is very probable that in the future there will be no more humans as we know them now, because the further evolution of our species, either Darwinian or more likely determined by human choices, will, we must hope, result in the emergence of new sorts of beings better able to cope with the intellectual and physical challenges of the future. One example of the ways in which this is already happening is the sorts of cognitive enhancement that are already coming on stream. Another is signaled by stem cell research and the birth of regenerative medicine.

Type
Special Section: Open Forum
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 9 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1. Too universal because there are many humans to which it cannot and does not apply (see Harris, J.The Value of Life. Routledge: London; 1985)Google Scholar and not universal enough for reasons also examined in that book and, inter alia, in my Enhancing Evolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 2007).Google Scholar

2. And indeed the “dignity” out of human dignity. Analogous arguments show that the concept of human dignity is equally vacuous and redundant. See also Macklin, R. Dignity is a useless concept. British Medical Journal 2003;327:1419–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

3. See note 1, Harris 2007.

4. Greely, H, Sahakian, B, Harris, J, Kessler, RC, Gazzaniga, M, Campbell, P, Farah, MJ. Towards responsible use of cognitive enhancing drugs by the healthy. Nature 2008;456:702–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

5. For examples of this traditional approach see Nickel, J.Making Sense on Human Rights. Oxford: Blackwell; 2006:38Google Scholar; Tasioulas, J. The moral reality of human rights. In: Pogge, T, ed. Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2007Google Scholar; Gewirth, A.Human Rights: Essays on Justifications and Applications. Chicago: Chicago University Press; 1982:41Google Scholar; Jones, P.Human Rights. In: Craig, E, ed. The Routledge Encyclopaedia of PhilosophyGoogle Scholar; available from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/S105.

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7. See note 6, Raz 2009:3.

8. See note 6, Raz 2009:12 and 11, respectively.

9. Although Raz's account is consistent with the one developed in this paper.

10. Gandhi was once asked, allegedly by a reporter, what he thought of Western Civilization. He replied that he thought “it would be a very good thing.” I believe this was after a tour of London, but I have been unable to find an authoritative source. See, e.g., http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gandhi.

11. The idea of species barriers I have criticized in Harris, J. Transhumanity: A moral vision of the twenty-first century. In: Davis, NA, Keshen, R, McMahan, J, eds. Ethics and Humanity: Themes from the Philosophy of Jonathan Glover. New York: Oxford University Press; 2009.Google Scholar

12. In this section, I borrow from my “Transhumanity: A moral vision of the twenty-first century”; see note 11.

13. Academy of Medical Sciences. Inter-Species Embryos: A Report by The Academy of Medical Sciences 2007Google Scholar; available at http://www.acmedsci.ac.uk/p99.html. The present author acknowledges his coauthorship of this report and thanks fellow members of the Academy Working Group for many useful insights.

14. See note 13, Academy of Medical Sciences 2007:3, 33.

15. See note 13, Academy of Medical Sciences 2007:3, 33.

16. See note 13, Academy of Medical Sciences 2007:34.

17. See note 13, Academy of Medical Sciences 2007:34. See Linvall, O, Kokala, Z.Stem cells for the treatment of neurological disorders. Nature 2006;441:1094–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. I use here words also used in “Inter-species embryos”; see note 13, Academy of Medical Sciences 2007.

19. In this section I have, with his permission, borrowed extensively from the work of my friend and colleague Giuseppe Testa. We have worked together on the ethics of humanimals, but this section on context belongs to Giuseppe. I do not quote him verbatim because I draw these sections from an unpublished paper we authored together.

20. Hyun, I, Taylor, P, Testa, G, Dickens, B, Jung, KW, McNab, A, et al. . Ethical standards for human-to-animal chimera experiments in stem cell research. Cell Stem Cell 2007;1:159–163 at p. 159.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

21. It is true that humans are less sanguine about being eaten by other organic creatures than they are about eating them, but either way we end up with humanimals.

22. See note 20, Hyun et al. 2007:159.

23. See note 20, Hyun et al. 2007:159.

24. See note 20, Hyun et al. 2007:160.

25. See note 20, Hyun et al. 2007:160.

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27. In Dawkins, R. The Devil's Chaplain. London: Phoenix; 2004:23–31.Google Scholar I use the summary of Dawkins that appears in my Enhancing Evolution; see note 1. I apologize for my frequent recourse to this wonderful example.

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29. Shakespeare, W. The Tempest. Act 5. Scene 1.Google Scholar

30. An epigram that came to me via Frank Cioffi, my undergraduate philosophy tutor in 1966. I don't know where he found it, but Internet sources suggest that Kurt Vonnegut may have borrowed it from him or vice versa.

31. Harris, J. Intimations of immortality. Science 2000;288:59CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Harris, J. Intimations of immortality: The ethics and justice of life extending therapies. In: Freeman, M, ed. Current Legal Problems. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2002:65–97.Google Scholar

32. In describing synthetic biology, I draw heavily on the ideas and research of my colleague John McCarthy, Director of the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre, University of Manchester.

33. To lightly adapt The Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights published by UNESCO as a pamphlet December 3, 1997, which absurdly endorses “[t]he preservation of the human genome as common heritage of humanity.”

34. For a detailed defense see note 1, Harris 2007, on which book I draw in this section. See also note 4, Greely et al. 2008.

35. It is perhaps another irony that unsocial hours are parasitic upon the concept of social hours, themselves the by-product of the leisure that technology has facilitated.

36. Statistics from Eurotransplant seem to suggest that waiting lists do still exist in Belgium and Austria (Eurotransplant does not extend to Spain), although they may be greatly reduced.

37. See note 2, Harris 1985; Harris, J. The concept of the Person and the value of life. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 1999;9:293–308.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

38. Eliot, TS. The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. T.S. Eliot Collected Poems. London: Faber and Faber; 1963.Google Scholar