A thirty-year perspective on personhood: how has the debate changed?

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The concept of personhood remains the central and enduring focus of any intelligent discussion of bioethical norms. Whether the perspective is secular or religious, couched in theological discourse or philosophical verbiage, any theory that wishes to show how man should behave must begin with what man is. Indeed, personhood “pops up” in the most unexpected places. Physicist John Polkinghorne claims that a grand, unified “Theory of Everything” must include and reconcile quantum mechanics, general relativity theory, and amazingly,