"To advance human good and avoid harm, biotechnology must be used within ethical constraints. It is the task of bioethics to help society develop those constraints and bioethics, therefore, must be of concern to all of us."Dr. Edmund D. Pellegrino, Chair (2005-2009)THE PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL ON BIOETHICSWhile “human dignity” is a useful concept in bioethics, one that sheds important light on the whole range of bioethical issues, from embryo research and assisted reproduction, to biomedical enhancement, to care of the disabled and the dying? It does have its “imposters” who may use the concept as a vague substitute for other, more precise notions, or, at worst, a mere slogan for camouflaging unconvincing arguments, unarticulated biases and even the denigration of true human dignity. The President’s Council on the Bioethics, recently disbanded by President Obama, has rightly noted that the “the march of scientific progress that now promises to give us manipulative power over human nature itself – a coercive power mostly exercised, as C.S. Lewis presciently noted in the Abolition of Man, by some men over other men, and especially by one generation over future generations –will eventually compel us to take a stand on the meaning of human dignity, understood as the essential and inviolable core of our humanity.” Adam Schulman, “Bioethics and the Question of Human Dignity,” in Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council on Bioethics (2008) 17. Recognizing that the necessity of taking a stand for human dignity as the ‘essential and inviolable core of our humanity’ is not yet as widely appreciated as it must become, Mr. Casey will use some selected stories of “human dignity” champions to describe the key legal and public policy controversies through which this life-giving understanding of human dignity has been and is being championed around the world against a determined opposition. The goal of the talk will be to encourage everyone in the pursuit of the broad variety of ways and means by which they might be inspired by these “champions” to express the ‘essential and inviolable core’ of their own humanity.