FYI, posted from ADAPTLA List.
Now we can email him regarding the fine detail of his beliefs.
Frank Hall-Bentick
Disability Australia
------------------------------------------------------
[log in to unmask] wrote:
> From: [log in to unmask]
>
> From: [log in to unmask] (dianne piastro)
>
> Each of us can make a call to Princeton and/or send an e-mail to Peter
> Singer and let them know how we feel. The following information is
> publicly available from the Princeton web site: www.princeton.edu
>
> Princeton Center for Human Values: 609-258-4798
> Princeton University President's Office: 609-258-6101
> Peter Singer:
> Phone: 609-258-2202
> Fax: 609-258-1285
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> =====================================================================
> >From Not Dead Yet:
> DISABILITY ACTIVISTS PROTEST SINGER APPOINTMENT
>
> Members of Not Dead Yet, a national grassroots disability rights
> organization, will be demonstrating in Princeton, New Jersey, on
> September 21, 1999, as Peter Singer begins his first day of teaching.
> His seminar is expected to address Singer's contention that it is
> sometimes morally right, and should be legal, to directly and
> deliberately kill disabled
> infants, as well as children and adults with severe cognitive
> disabilities.
>
> "We're here at Princeton because Princeton has seen fit to
> recruit a professor who advocates openly that laws should be changed
> to allow some people with disabilities to be killed merely because it
> is convenient to their families or to others," says Diane Coleman, the
> group's founder and president. "In doing so, Princeton has ignored
> its own hate speech rules, which forbid the sorts of things he teaches
> about people with disabilities."
>
> But the concern about Singer goes beyond what he will teach in the
> classroom. "He is also acting as a bioethicist," says Stephen Drake,
> NDY's research analyst. "He's urging that we make policy decisions
> based on his ethical theories. That means that this isn't just an
> academic issue - it's about real people in the real world. It's about
> justice." Drake, whose parents were urged - and refused - to let him
> die after he sustained brain damage during birth, continues, "We know
> that today, hospitals are ignoring Section 504 of the Rehabilitation
> Act, the Baby Doe rules, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and
> withholding life-saving treatment from disabled infants. And there is
> a series of cases in which people are claiming that it is
> acceptable to withhold food and water from people who have acquired
> cognitive impairments and where there is less and less consensus as to
> how disabled they are. Singer is saying that we should make these
> people easier to kill."
>
> Singer's work is too shoddy to support the kinds of policy
> decisions he urges, according to NDY bioethics specialist Cal
> Montgomery. "He starts with extreme cases, and paints a picture that
> tends to convince readers," she says. "But he's talking about drawing
> a line based on cognitive ability. He's talking about making it policy
> that human beings judged to be on one side of that line be denied
> civil rights. And he treats as almost unimportant the question of who
> makes those judgments, and how."
>
> For Coleman, who has been an activist in the disability rights
> movement since 1982, the question of who makes those judgments, and
> how, is central.
>
> "We've always said, 'Nothing about us, without us,'" she says.
> "And this is certainly about us. He makes judgments about the quality
> of disabled lives and the capabilities of disabled people. And at the
> same time that he is trying to shape policy that will affect us, he is
> claiming that, as an ivory tower academic, he should not have to
> include us in the discussion. He can't have it both ways."
> ======================================================================
> Published Saturday, October 2, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News
>
> Scholar under fire for euthanasia view BY LORI HINNANT Associated Press
>
> PRINCETON, N.J. -- Two weeks into the school year, Princeton Professor
> Peter Singer works in an unmarked office, posts no office hours and
> teaches bioethics in a guarded classroom.
>
> The 53-year-old scholar has come under fierce criticism because of his
> view that parents should be able to euthanize severely disabled infants.
> His appointment as a tenured professor at the university's Center for
> Human Values has led to threats, a barrage of e-mail messages and
> demonstrations.
>
> Last week, about 250 protesters -- many in wheelchairs -- barricaded
> entrances to the administration building and demanded the university
> rescind its offer to the Australian scholar.
>
> ``I think it's a good thing to stimulate people to think,'' Singer said
> in an interview in his office Thursday. ``You can't separate debate and
> learning.''
>
> Even presidential candidates are being drawn into the controversy.
> Republican Steve Forbes, a member of Princeton's board of trustees, has
> said he will no longer donate to his alma mater as long as Singer
> teaches there.
>
> The wealthy publisher and his late father, Malcolm, have been among the
> university's most generous donors; an undergraduate residence hall at
> Princeton is named after the younger Forbes.
>
> Advocacy groups for the disabled are calling on Democratic presidential
> hopeful Bill Bradley, also a Princeton alumnus and trustee, to condemn
> Singer's hiring. So far, Bradley has not commented on the issue.
>
> Singer's views on euthanasia were first detailed in his 1979 book
> ``Practical Ethics.'' He has written that children less than a month old
> have no human consciousness and that parents should be allowed to kill a
> severely disabled infant to end the child's suffering and to increase
> the family's happiness.
>
> ``Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a
> person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all,'' he has written.
>
> In ``Animal Liberation,'' which Singer considers his most important
> work, he argues that the life of a person is not necessarily more
> valuable than that of an animal. The 1975 book led to the founding of
> People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and turned Singer into the
> philosophical father of the animal-rights movement.
>
> Some opponents liken his views to those of the Nazis.``He provides a
> convenient ethical framework for bigotry and cost-saving measures that
> cut lives,'' said Stephen Drake of the Forest Park, Ill., disability
> group Not Dead Yet. ``I really don't think there's room for this kind of
> discussion.''
>
> Singer, who is married and has a daughter, says he has actually received
> support from some parents of disabled children.``There's no unanimity
> among those who live with disabled children,'' he said. ``If people
> attack me because of that belief, why aren't they going to clinics that
> offer prenatal testing and protesting there?''
>
> The attention has put Princeton in the difficult position of ensuring
> Singer's place without defending -- or condemning -- his views. The
> university has provided him with a guarded classroom and promised to
> maintain his safety and that of the 23 students taking his course,
> ``Questions of Life and Death.''
>
> ``Some of the controversy can be attributed to misrepresentation or
> misinterpretation of his views,'' university President Harold T. Shapiro
> wrote in an editorial for the Daily Princetonian last November, shortly
> after Singer was appointed. ``But some of the controversy arises from
> the fact that he works on difficult and provocative topics and in many
> cases challenges long-established ways of thinking -- or not thinking --
> about them.''
> ======================================================================
>
> --------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------
>
> Choose from a wide selection of high-quality newsletters at ONElist.
> For details on ONElist's PROS&PUNDITS newsletters, click below.
> <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/prospun2 ">Click Here</a>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> To subscribe to this list, send a blank e-mail to [log in to unmask]
> To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank e-mail to [log in to unmask]
> Thank you for the financial support, DREES, IRAPS, CDA, WAPD, and valiant individual subscribers! Does that include you? It can!
> To send money contributions, make your check out to david howell, and send it to david howell, adapt l.a., 17433 burbank blvd., encino, ca 91316-1714. Send your newsletters, bakery goods and other gifts (no more kittens please) to the same address.
> The new ADAPT-CA/ADAPT LA telephone number is 818/986-1223. Let me know if you're planning to picket with us on Sunday! See you there.. We'll make HUD help us FREE OUR PEOPLE!!
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|
