Thomas W. Merrill is a political theorist in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, DC. He was a senior research analyst at the President's Council on Bioethics and is the co-editor of Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver: Honoring the Work of Leon R. Kass and Human Dignity and Bioethics. He has held fellowships from Princeton University, Harvard University, and the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.