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  • Chapter 7 - Moral Status

  • David DeGrazia, George Washington University, Washington DC, Joseph Millum, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda
  • Book:
    A Theory of Bioethics
    Published online:
    17 August 2021
    Print publication:
    26 August 2021, pp 175-213
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  • Summary

    Our account of moral status embraces equal consequentialist consideration for all sentient beings while ascribing the stronger protection of rights to those with narrative capacity. Individuals with the capacity to have narrative self-conceptions or identities have full-strength rights, while individuals with nontrivial temporal self-awareness that falls short of narrative capacity have partial-strength rights. This account of moral status is neutral with respect to species, which means that membership in Homo sapiens is neither necessary nor sufficient for moral status or rights. The final three sections explore ethical implications for research involving human embryos, rodents, and great apes. We defend a very liberal position with respect to embryo research, a relatively restrictive approach to rodent research (granting equal consequentialist consideration to rodents’ interests while permitting their use on utilitarian grounds), and a prohibition of invasive, nontherapeutic research involving great apes.