Idea of personhood

While I was reading Mary's post on her last thoughts about "The Spirit...", one sentence caught my eyes especially. She mentioned that in Western medicine, the idea of "personhood" is still developing. I see it as completely opposite. The idea and the value of personhood is deteriorating in western culture and medicine. When we started to break continuum of human life into before and after birth, different price tag has been put on between the unborn and the born. When we start to make arbitrary distinction on human life, then what stops us from defining personhood by social and economic status, ethnicity and race, intelligence and any other thing that people put values on? As medical science advances, value of human being seems to diminish further and further. advancement of science along with deeply ingrained consumerism puts value on people according to their ability to spend. Therefore people who have no economic power becomes marginalized group with no proper health care and toxic waste that large company or rich countries through away. Also the fast pace of life, which have been brought up several times in class discussion, drive us to leave behind those who cannot follow the pace as quickly due to mental or physical illness. We in Western world, and any other parts of the world that are employing the western consumerism in their economy, are forgetting what personhood is and what are the things that used to make anyone a worthy human being.