What Is a Person?

At a time when technology can sustain marginal life, it is ever more         important to understand what constitutes a person. What are the medical,         ethical, moral, mental, legal, and philosophical criteria that determine         protectable human life?       Following immediately on the publication of his highly praised book Choosing         Who's to Live, James Walters addresses with depth and wisdom another         ambitious and complicated matter: determining the nature of personhood.         By providing a much-needed religious/philosophical context for the discussion--examining         contemporary thinking on just what constitutes valuable life--Walters         broadens his inquiry beyond the human to include other animals and deals         with the phenomenon of anencephalic infants, those who are born without         higher brains.       Searching for a measurable and humane standard of personhood, Walters         looks at the current definition of it and declares it inadequate--offering         instead the idea of proximate personhood, with criteria for helping to         determine which individuals possess a unique claim to life.