1.Beginnings 1
Steps 1 and 2: Sometimes Existing Tools Won’t Do, and Dignity has to Step In 2
Step 3: Usefulness in Hard Cases Suggests Usefulness in Easier Cases 3
Step 4: （a） Dignity’s Substantive Meaning, and （b） a Transactional Model of Deployment 4
（a） What is Dignity? 4
（b） Deploying the Notion of Dignity: a Transactional Model 15
（c） Looking Back at this Pair of Steps 18
Step 5: Dignity is the Bioethical Theory of Everything 19
Step 6: Being Reassured by our Intuitions 21
Assumptions about the Role of Law 22
2.A Short History of Dignity 24
The Emergence of Men 24
The Ancient World 27
Made in the Image of God: Judaeo-Christian Understandings of Human Dignity 28
Subsequent Christian Understandings of Dignity 32
The Middle Ages and the Renaissance 33
More Footnotes on Stoicism: Kant and the Enlightenment 34
The Popularisation of Dignity 39
Dignity Today: an Introduction 40
3.Defining and Dissecting Dignity 43
Feldman 44
Schroeder 45
Killmister 46
Clapham 49
Bostrom 49
Gormally and Lebech 50
Kass 53
Beyleveld and Brownsword 56
Ronald Dworkin 57
4.‘Dignity is Useless’ 58
‘Dignity is too Amorphous to be Useful’ 58
‘Dignity is Intrinsically Religious, and Hence Suspect ’ 62
The Autonomists 62
Can Rights do the Job of Dignity? 66
5.What do Non-philosophers and Non-lawyers Mean by Dignity? 68
The Royal College of Nursing （UK） 72
The Social Care Institute for Excellence （UK） 72
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing （USA） 73
The View from the Ward 74
6.Taking Stock of the View from the Academy and the Ward 80
7.Dignity in the Courtroom: General Overview 85
Dignity in National and International Instruments 85
International Instruments Dealing Speci№ically with Healthcare and Bioethics 87
（a） The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with Regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine: Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine （the Oviedo Convention, 1997） 87
（b） The Additional Protocol to the Oviedo Convention, concerning Biomedical Research 87
（c） The Additional Protocol to the Oviedo Convention, on the Prohibition of Cloning Human Beings 88
（d） The Additional Protocol to the Oviedo Convention, on Transplantation of Organs and Tissues of Human Origin 88
（e） The Additional Protocol to the Oviedo Convention, on Genetic Testing for Health Purposes 88
（f） The UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights 88
（g） The UNESCO Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights 89
（h） UNESCO International Declaration on Human Genetic Data 91
（i） The World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical Principles for Medical Research involving Human Subjects 91
What is Meant by ‘Dignity’ in these and other Instruments? 92
Throwing Dwarfs in France 95
Dignity as the Most Basic Legal Value 97
Dignity in the Bioethics Context: Have the Courts said Definitively what they mean by Dignity? 98
Airedale NHS Trust v Bland 99
Munby J in R （Burke） v General Medical Council 101
8.Consent, Confidentiality, Privacy, Medical Research and Resources 111
Consent 112
Basics 112
How Judges Judge 112
The Problems of Ethical and Legal Pluralism 113
Does Dignity add Anything to the Conventional Ways of Looking at Consent? 114
Confidentiality and Privacy 127
Medical Research 129
Resources 130
9.Human Enhancement and Cloning Technologies 134
Cloning 135
What about the Law? 143
Enhancement 145
（a） We’re all enhancers anyway 148
（b） Some enhancements are dignity-enhancing 150
10.Reproductive Choice and the Unborn 154
Reproductive Choice Generally 154
General Dignity Observations on the Use of Therapeutic Cloning and other Reproductive Technology 156
General Dignity Observations on Abortion 159
11.The End of Life 165
12.The Use and Abuse of Body Parts 173
Epilogue 177
Index 179