The next discussion of the Journal club de bioéthique will take place from 12 noon to 1 p.m. (Eastern time), on Monday, October 2, in room 3014-7 of the École de santé publique de l’Université de Montréal (ESPUM). You can also participate remotely via this Zoom link.

Journal club discussions are open to anyone interested in bioethics and the topic of the featured article. In our next discussion, we’ll be looking at Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby’s target article “The End of Personhood”.

Abstract:

The concept of personhood has been central to bioethics debates about abortion, the treatment of patients in a vegetative or minimally conscious states, as well as patients with advanced dementia. More recently, the concept has been employed to think about new questions related to human-brain organoids, artificial intelligence, uploaded minds, human-animal chimeras, and human embryos, to name a few. A common move has been to ask what these entities have in common with persons (in the normative sense), and then draw conclusions about what we do (or do not) owe them. This paper argues that at best the concept of “personhood” is unhelpful to much of bioethics today and at worst it is harmful and pernicious. I suggest that we (bioethicists) stop using the concept of personhood and instead ask normative questions more directly (e.g., how ought we to treat this being and why?) and use other philosophical concepts (e.g., interests, sentience, recognition respect) to help us answer them. It is time for bioethics to end talk about personhood. ScholarOne Manuscripts (manuscriptcentral.com)