As life and health cannot be contained within strict and narrow limits, neither can the ethics of life and health be so contained. Precise rules, however carefully formulated and useful, are not enough. Moreover, which is the next point I want to develop, a narrow application of ethics to humans only does violence to ethics; it undermines the very ground by reason of which we humans do have our moral significance. Neither the bio aspect nor the ethics aspect of bioethics can stop at narrow boundaries or human boundaries, except arbitrarily. Back at the beginning, I somewhat arbitrarily undertook to center my discussion on human bioethics, and I cannot claim to have fully covered that topic. No one could cover it all. Still, to restrict our discussions to human bioethics, and to that only, implies a distortion. We humans are not the sole inhabitants of the moral universe. For one thing, there are animals, and these are widely used in biomedical research. For another, as I hope to show, there is more to it than just humans and animals. Moreover, a consideration of the reasons why nonhumans have moral significance sheds light on why humans do and vice versa. This is true either if we restrict our attention to individuals or if we recognize wider entities, such as the human race as a whole, as having moral significance. It is also arbitrary to restrict our discussion to specifically biomedical applications. Life and health, even if we are considering only human life and health, go far beyond biomedical boundaries, however broadly construed. These are not matters that can be thoroughly canvassed here; Nor shall I attempt to do so. However, I do offer a discussion of some of the wider issues in order to both better center our discussion of human bioethics and at least sketch some of the onward possibilities.

On the Moral Status of Animals

These days, it is widely, though not universally, held that at least some animals do have some level of moral significance, though there is no consensus concerning why this might be so or concerning what (if any) limitations this might impose on human freedom of action. Reference to the cruelty of pulling the wings off flies has become a cliché – but why should one not do this? I suspect that for most of us, it not primarily a matter of respect for the feelings of flies, who probably lack any such thing, but rather of disgust at the motives of those who would do such a deed. One assumes they have sadistic motives, even if their cruel aims are vitiated by a lack of sensation or consciousness in their intended victim. We also might feel disgust at those who are unkind to cats, dogs, or horses. In these latter cases, a respect for the very real feelings of the animal presumably would be a factor in addition to our disgust at cruelty or callousness per se. We might ponder whether rats, rabbits, or battery chickens are or ought to be on a similar moral footing. Here I would pose the question of whether any nonhumans are entitled to our moral consideration.