Putting respect to work : The Lancet

Putting respect to work : The Lancet

The Lancet, Volume 380, Issue 9841, Page 564, 11 August 2012

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doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61330-0Cite or Link Using DOI

Putting respect to work

Edmund Dunstan a

There is an aspect of dignity that Charles Foster (June 2, p 2044)1 does not address. I found the term vague and unhelpful until I heard Gordon Lishman, former Director-General of Age Concern England, remark how whereas professionals often used the term “dignity”, the word older people themselves used was usually “respect”. In Latin the word dignus means “worthy”. Surely, our obligation is to show people the respect, whether in word or deed, that gives them dignity—the subjective experience of their own worth.

We can explore the implications for this in the scenarios Foster describes. In the case of the patient in the vegetative state undergoing vaginal examinations we could reasonably assume that her sense of worth would be impaired if she were aware of what was going on; for the brain-damaged teenager we have the difficult choice of whether to presume that her standards are ours—or accept her apparent behaviour that she does not mind; but the owner of the skull used as a drinking vessel can have no sense of worth—although we might regard the behaviour as in poor taste.

 

I declare that I have no onflicts of interest.

Reference

1 Foster C. Putting dignity to work. Lancet 2012; 379: 2044-2045. Full Text | PDF(150KB) | CrossRef | PubMed