Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper: New Definitions of Human Dignity in Novel and Film

My starting point is that bioethics and the problems connected tohuman rights and human dignity are the logical evolution of the principles ofequity. My paper aims at analysing Jodi Picoult’s novel My Sister’s Keeper (2005)in the light of the connections existing between Literature and the interdisciplinaryfields of Bioethics and Biolaw. Bioethics examines the moral and ethicaldimension of biological sciences, with particular reference to health-relatedcontexts, whereas biolaw takes into account their more and more evident legalimplications. Picoult’s literary production is chiefly devoted to inspect howmodern technology applied to medicine has affected our lives, bringing onevident threats to the consistency of our rights and undermining our interpersonalrelationships as well. Throughout this compelling novel, life, love andcompassion, science and the law indissolubly merge together. The extremelycomplicated context of boundary medical situations the author presents, forceus to open our eyes to alarming current scenarios, and to their future possibledevelopments as well. Her fictional characters call for a reassessment of theconcept of human dignity and for the necessity for law to defend the integrity ofthe body