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Indicators of Humanhood:
A Tentative Profile of Man
It 's time to spell out the "which " an d "what" and "when "
M by JOSEPli FLETCHER
ark Twain c.omplained that peo•
pie are always talking about the
agent-in biology and medicine as
much as f.n law, government,education
bearing, obviously, on decision n1Wng
in gynecology, obstetrics and pedfa,
weather but they ne"'r do anything or anything else. tries> as Y.
'ell as in general surge{yand
ubout it. The same is true or the To that end, then. fOf the purposes medicine.
humanhood agenda. In biomedical of bio,nedic;al ethics, I am suggestinga Self -awareness. Self-consciousne-ss,
ethi cs writers constantly say that we ··profile of man" in concrete and as wt know, l.$ the quality we watch
need to explicate humanness or discrete terms. As only one man's developing in a baby; w, watch it. with
humaneness, what it means to be a reflection on man, it 'NiUno doubt fasdnation :md glee. Its es.ential role
t,uly human being, but they new:r invite adding and subtracting by ln personality development is a basic
follow their admission o f the need others, but thi$ is the road to be datum of psychology. Its existence or
with an actual inventory or profile. no followed if we mean business. As a dog function in animals at or below the
matter how ten tatively offered . Yet is said to '\1-•orry" a bone, ltt me primate levtl is debatablt; it is clearly
this is wha1 must be done, or at Jeas1 worry out loud and on paper, hoping absent in the lower vertebrates., as well
attempted. for some agreement and. at the least, as In the nonvtrtebrates. In psyc.J10-
Synthetic concepts such as human consldernlio11.There is space only to lher-apynon-self-awareness is patholog•
and man and person require opera• itemize it , not to enlarge-upon ii, but I ical; in medicine, unconsciousness
tional terms, spelJing out the which have fifteen positive propositions and when it is incorrigible• at once- poses
and what and when. Only in that way five negative propositions. Let me set quality-of-life j udgments- for example,
can we- get down to cases- to nom1a- them out, in no rank order at all , and in neurosurgical cases of irreversible
tive decisions. There arc- always some as hardly more than a ti.st of criteria or damage- to the brain cortex.
people who prefer to be visceral and indicators, by simple title. Self-eontrol. If an individual is not
affective in the ir moral choices, with only not controllable by others (unless
no desire to have any rationale for Positil·e Human Criteria
what they do. But ethics ls precisely Minimal intelligtncc. Any indivi-
the business of rationa1>critical rcflec• dual of the species Jiomosapienswho ALSO IN TH IS ISSUE:
tion (eneephalic and not merely vis- falls below the I.Q, 40-mark In a
ceral) about the problemsof the moral standard Stanford-Binet test, amplified The Other Drug Problem,
if you like by other tests, is question• by Pet er St e lnfe ls
ably a person; below the 20-mark, not
The DIiemma or a
Dr. J()$eph Rtt cht r is Vi#ting Profdso, a person. Homo is indeed sapiens. in
Prison Doctor, by Frank
of Medical E thics ot the Uniwn ity of order to be home. The ratio, in
another tum of spc<ch, is what makes Rund le, M.D.
Virginia Schoo l of Medicine. Excerpted
from a (JQPN presented o, the Nalio,,aJ a person of 1.hevita. Mere biological That Virginia 'Brain Deatll'
Co.nfeun.c« on the Tuchlnz of Mtdi<ol life, before minimal intelligence is
Ethia. co-sp<>nsortd
by the Jnt1it111e1111d
Case, by Rob ert M . Veatch
Columbi,a University College of Ph)'• achieved or after it is lost irretrfovably,
.ri.CUuu
and Swgr:om. is without pcrSQr'la l status. Th.is has
Page 2
by force) but not controliJlble by the up. The assertion here Is that men are
Individual himself or herself, a low typically teleological. although oer-
level or life is reached about on a par tainly not cschatological.
v.'lth a paramecium. If the c.on<Ution A ,en,e of the past. Memory. Un- it is a
cannot be rectified medicaUy. so that like other animals, men as a species
means-ends behavior is out of the have reached a unique level of neuto· sense of the past
question, the individual is not a per- logic development, particutarty the
son- not ethically, and certainly not in cerebrum and especiallyits neo-<:ortex. which n1akes man,
the eyes. of the law- just as a fetus is They arc linktd to the past by
not legally a person. conscious recall- not only, as with
A sense of time. Time conscious- subhuman anUTU1ls , by conditioning alone a,nong species,
ness. By th.is is meant clock time or and the reactivation of emotions (reac•
chronos, not timeliness or kairos. i.e., tivated , that is, externally rather than a cu/ruralcreature
not the "fulnes.s of time" or the autonomously). It is this trait, in
pcegnant moment (rcmc-mber Paul particular, that makes man, alone
Tillich?). A sense, that I$, of the among all species, a cultural instead of
passage-of time, A colleagueof mine at an instinctive creature. An existential-
the University of Virginia. Dr.Thomas ist focus on •·nowness" truncates the ineparablc, is de-humanization.This is
Hunter, remarked recently. " Life is natute of man. not so much a matter of not being
the allocation of time." We can dis• disposed to receive and send mes..0