Welcome to Think Biblically. Conversations on Faith and Culture, a podcast from

Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. I'm your host Scott Ray,

Dean of the faculty and professor of Christian ethics. We're here today with a very distinguished guest,

Dr Gilbert Maylander, who is Senior Research Professor

of Theology at Valparaiso University

and held a long time endowed share in Christian ethics

at Valparaiso.

He also served on President George W Bush's National Bioethics Advisory Commission.

He's the author of more books and articles than we have time to list here but his most recent book

entitled Bioethics and the character of human life I described it and I think Gill agreed

with me that it was a collection of Dr. Maylander's greatest hits throughout his academic career.

And he has done in my view what professors of theology ought to be doing, which is putting their theology to work in the service of ethical issues

and particularly in service of things that have to do with public policy and the pursuit of the common good in the broader

culture. So Gil, thank you so much for being with us and I really appreciate your

new book and look forward to getting into some of the some of the topics that are discussed.

Thank you. Good to be here.

You know, the first part of your book has to do with your time on President George W Bush's

Bioeth Commission and the early to to mid part of the 2000s.

Tell us, I think our listeners I think will be very interested in that experience.

So I'm curious to know what did you learn from that experience and what were some of the best contributions in your view of

the Commission to the bioethics community? Well I learned it's very hard to make people

happy. The President's Council was formed because of the issue of embryonic stem cell research.

...