 The issue of moral status, and which beings have full moral status, has become important because of its bearing on the rights and treatment of those beings. “Moral status” and “full moral status” are not intended as honorifics; their ascription to a being entails that it enjoys rights that other beings, lacking that status, do not. The particular rights entailed by full moral status may, however, differ on different moral theories. Two theories with the same concept of moral status and the same criteria for assigning it (see  Sec. 2.2)  may associate full moral status with different rights or rights of different strength. One theory might, for example, hold that beings with full moral status may never be used as mere means, whereas another might hold that they may be so used in certain emergencies. There is, though, only partial independence between the formal character of and criteria for moral status, on the one hand, and the rights entailed by such status, on the other. For example, it would seem implausible for a theory to recognize a categorical notion of moral status while rejecting any notion of rights. An account of moral status need not deny all rights to beings falling below the threshold it sets; they will merely lack the same package of rights possessed by beings above that threshold.