Human rights in bioethics – theoretical and applied

Abstract

This special issue on Human Rights in Bioethics features four thought-provoking articles dealing with important issues in the current debate on human rights in the domain of bioethics. For example, Baranzke is concerned with a thorough examination of the history of the notion of sanctity of life and concludes that one should not view it as an “obscure property of physical life” but, rather, see it as a particular “mode of acting”. Cochrane examines some important recent attempts to apply insights from bioethics to the theory and practice of human rights; Ram-Tiktin suggests seeing the right to health care as a right to basic human functional capabilities within a framework of distributive justice in health care; and, finally, Schroeder forcefully shows that a human rights approach should not rely on human dignity as its foundation. It is fair to say that these and related issues are right at the frontiers of current research and will certainly deepen and enhance the discussions.