Who should be included in the human community and on what basis should

embryos, fetuses, the severely demented or persons in a vegetative state?

Should they count as human persons?

What does our view of a person suggest about how we care for people at the end of life?

We'll discuss these questions and more with our guest, Dr. Merrittu Gutta, and he and I have edited a new book entitled Taking Persons Seriously,

where philosophy and bioethics intersect.

I'm your host Scott Ray.

And I'm your co-host Sean McTow. This is Think Vivically from Talbot School of Theology

at Biola University. Merrettu, welcome. Really glad to have you with us.

Meretzu was a student in our philosophy program years ago has gone on to distinguish himself with a number of very, very

influential publications and I'm delighted to have been involved in this project with him.

So, Meretu, welcome, great to have you with us and tell us a little bit about how this project, this book project, got started.

Thank you so much, Scott and Sean, for having me for the second time so it's delight to be here.

The genesis of this book actually will take us back to my graduate student years

and I was in Scott Rees class in J.P.'s class and I was able to make some kind of weird

observations. The more I learned about bioethics and the more I learned about bioethics, there was a kind of a hall in bioethical discussions,

metaphysical assumptions were not really clear.

There wasn't a clear link between metaphysics and bioethical issues.

So I made a suggestion to you know Dr Scott Ray he still refers to me somewhat respectfully.

I was that a hint at me just for the record? I made a suggestion to him because I took a

number of classes with him and I was really really impressed by the courses that I

took with him and one day would you mind teaming up with me to

...