%0 Journal Article %A Pengbo Liu %T Dignity and equality in healthcare %D 2018 %R 10.1136/medethics-2017-104665 %J Journal of Medical Ethics %P 651-652 %V 44 %N 9 %X This paper critically examines Barclay’s conception of dignity proposed in her ‘Dignitarian Medical Ethics’. According to Barclay, a subject S enjoys dignity if and only if S is reliably treated as having equal social status. I argue that Barclay’s view faces a number of practical and theoretical problems. First, it is not obvious that failing to treat someone as a social equal is incompatible with respecting her dignity. Second, it is not always clear what treating someone as a social equal amounts to in practice. To be more compelling, her conception of dignity needs to be supplemented with a more principled and substantive account of the content of equal treatment. %U https://jme.bmj.com/content/medethics/44/9/651.full.pdf