The Procedural Morphing of the Person

Abstract

We in bioethics have long grounded our discussions about persons and the importance of personhood in terms of “human subjects.” From its earliest days as a discipline, bioethics has reacted against the abuses of research subjects found in the Tuskegee experimentation on syphilis, the Nazi medical experiments and the Willowbrook State School experiment on infectious hepatitis, to mention only a few. Bioethics has focused upon patients as persons with dignity, as subjects who decide about their own bodies and who act as significant others in the unique relationship between patient and caregiver, researcher and subject. Debate continues to rage about whether research subjects in Third World countries can give adequate, uncoerced consent; about whether children can decide about their own quality of life; about whether any patients can understand enough about their options to make adequate choices. Consent seems to hinge upon what we mean by persons, the dignity of persons and the self-determination of the subject. We might well claim personhood (characterized variously by embodiment, soul, reason, will, autonomy, sentience, communication, interpersonal relating, etc.) to be synonymous with subject-hood. To speak of human subjects and human persons seems doubly redundant.