Losing Our Dignity: How Secularized Medicine is Undermining Fundamental Human Equality

by Charles C. Camosy

Publisher:

New City Press

, 2021

Overview

An urgent and timely release from the award-winning author of Resisting Throwaway Culture

There is perhaps no more important value than fundamental human equality. And yet, despite large percentages of people affirming the value, the resources available to explain and defend the basis for such equality are few and far between.

In his newest book, Charles Camosy provides a thoughtful defense of human dignity.

Telling personal stories like those of Jahi McMath, Terri Schiavo, and Alfie Evans, Camosy, a noted bioethicist and theologian, uses an engaging style to show how the influence of secularized medicine is undermining fundamental human equality in the broader culture. And in a disturbing final chapter, Camosy sounds the alarm about the next population to fall if we stay on our current trajectory: dozens of millions of human beings with dementia.

Key Features

• Provides a thoughtful defense of human dignity.
• Uses an engaging style to show how the influence of secularized medicine.
• Sounds the alarm about the next population to fall if we stay on our current trajectory.

Praise for Losing Our Dignity

Human nature being as it is, and human societies being as they are, there is never a time or place when prophetic witness to the inherent dignity and radical equality of each and every member of the human family is out of place. In our society today, such witness is sorely lacking and desperately needed. That is why I am heartened to read Charles Camosy’s powerful new book Losing Our Dignity: How Secularized Medicine Is Undermining Human Equality. Professor Camosy gives us what the Greeks called parrhesia—blunt speech, plain talk, bold truth-telling—about the consequences of abandoning a principle that is foundational to any sound account of medical ethics.

--Robert P. George. McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University

We are on the brink of a great precipice concerning human rights— do all persons matter equally because of who they are as members of the human family? Charles C. Camosy’s powerfully insightful book explores one reason why some members of society have fallen out of our moral sphere of concern—the rise of secularized medicine and its view that only certain members of the human family are truly worth saving. Using poignant examples, Dr. Camosy issues a heart-felt call for us to find a path forward that reclaims an anthropology in which human beings are viewed as inherently valuable because they are the image bearers of God.

--Kristin M. Collier, MD, FACP. Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Director, The University of Michigan Medical School Program on Health, Spirituality and Religion

Product Details

• Title: Losing Our Dignity: How Secularized Medicine Is Undermining Fundamental Human Equality
• Author: Charles C. Camosy
• Publisher: New City Press
• Print Publication Date: 2021
• Pages: 224
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• ISBNs: 9781565484719, 1565484711
• Resource ID: LLS:LSNGRDGNHMNQLTY
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-06-17T23:20:02Z

About Charles C. Camosy

Charles C. Camosy, is associate professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University. His work on ethics and policy moves beyond stale and lazy arguments which artificially pit liberals and conservatives against each other. Instead, Camosy finds common ground by unpacking the real complexities of some of today's most passionately debated issues. He is the editor of the Magenta series.