The debate continues!!!!!!!!!
Forwarded from the US Advocacy List.
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beth crowell wrote:
> I don't know if anybody else saw this article, but the Boston Globe published
> an interview with Peter Singer that should be required reading for us all.
>
> Furor follows Princeton philosopher
>
> By James Bandler, Globe Correspondent, 07/27/99
>
> NEW YORK - Peter Singer walks slowly down the supermarket aisle
> passing boxes of diapers and tidily wrapped packages of meat.
>
> This philosopher and Princeton University professor earns his daily bread
> contemplating questions of life and death - and some of his answers have caused
> a furor.
> Pausing beneath a shelf of Pampers and beside a stack of Tobin's First Prize
> bacon, he
> expounds, a bit reluctantly at first, on the differences between newborn babies
> and pigs.
>
> ''I would guess that the pig is more self-aware,'' Singer said, measuring his
> words with care, ''particularly if the infant has a brain disease and has no
> capacity to see
> itself as self-aware.''
>
> So which has more of a right to life: the infant or the pig?
>
> ''I think you'd have to say,'' Singer said, ''that the pig has the greater
> claim.''
>
> Stark statements such as these have made this lanky Australian one of the most
> controversial voices in academia. Now anger over his appointment to a
> prestigious chair in
> bioethics at Princeton's Center for Human Values is bubbling up into the
> national
> political arena.
>
> Steve Forbes, the Republican presidential candidate and a member of the
> Princeton board of trustees, has urged that Princeton rescind Singer's
> appointment.
>
> ''The Singer appointment,'' Forbes wrote in May to Princeton president Harold
> Shapiro, ''sends a dangerous and debilitating message that anything goes, that
> there
> are no bounds when it comes to questions of life and death.''
>
> Singer's utilitarian views, Forbes continued, ''fit right in with the thinking
> that the Nazis used
> to justify their euthanasia programs on the physically and mentally handicapped
> before the
> Second World War ...''
>
> Forbes's campaign manager, Bill Dal Col, elaborated with a reference to the
> shootings at
> Columbine High School in Colorado. ''With students as sensitive to issues - and
> Columbine is
> a perfect example - we shouldn't be promoting the culture of death in any
> form,'' he said.
>
> Genetic testing, embryo experimentation, and other laboratory advances have
> brought
> Singer's concerns to the forefront of public opinion. His Princeton appointment
> last year
> touched off a storm of protest from those who advocate for the disabled or
> against abortion.
>
> Some called him ''Professor Death'' and ''Baby Killer.'' The Wall Street
> Journal has called him a symbol of all that's wrong in colleges and
> universities. Even academic
> admirers find some of his views beyond the pale.
>
> For Singer, who lost three grandparents in the Nazi Holocaust, the Forbes
> letter is especially
> infuriating. ''It's a glib, superficial use of the Nazi analogy,'' said Singer,
> a married father of
> three adult daughters. ''I just don't think he can have read the stuff I've
> written.''
>
> Singer gave a series of roaming interviews recently, holding forth in his New
> York City
> rental apartment, a restaurant, and the local Grand Union supermarket, where
> he discussed the cruelties inherent in factory farming.
>
> Forbes wrote to Princeton after prodding by conservatives. Neither university
> officials nor a Forbes spokesman would say if he originally voted to approve
> the appointment.
>
> Forbes is just one of several prominent politicians on the board of trustees,
> including
> Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley, Tennessee Senator Bill Frist,
> and former secretary of state James Baker.
>
> Justin Harmon, a Princeton spokesman, said he could not believe Forbes would
> demand that the university president rescind a faculty member's appointment to a
> tenured
> chair on ideological grounds.
>
> ''No one who understands their role as a trustee would ask to rescind the
> appointment of someone who is academically qualified,'' Harmon said, adding that
> what was at
> stake was nothing less than academic freedom. Princeton, he said, would not
> buckle to
> pressure.
>
> Singer's defenders say the tumult has obscured the work of a man who has
> written widely on a host of thorny social questions, including medical ethics,
> overseas aid,
> civil disobedience, treatment of refugees, and the status of animals.
>
> Singer's academic and activist credentials are impressive. Holding an Oxford
> degree, the former professor at Monash University in Melbourne founded the
> International
> Association of Bioethics.
>
> His 1975 book, ''Animal Liberation,'' which compared treatment of animals with
> slavery, launched the animal-rights movement; it has sold 400,000 copies in nine
>
> languages and has turned tens of thousands of people into vegetarians while
> inspiring
> international reforms in the treatment of lab animals and livestock. He is the
> president of the Great
> Ape Project, which is dedicated to the protection of chimpanzees, gorillas, and
> orangutans. As a philosopher, he appears to practice what he preaches: He is a
> committed
> vegetarian; he gives one-fifth of his income away to international relief
> agencies.
>
> ''He is one of the rare people who have had an impact,'' said Arthur Caplan,
> the director of the center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, who
> said he
> disagrees with much of what Singer has written but still calls him a friend.
> ''This makes him
> frightening to people who have political agendas. Normally no one cares what
> eggheads say in ivory
> towers or in academic journals with circulations under three digits.''
>
> Singer's philosophy flows from the utilitarian ethic of 19th century British
> philosopher Jeremy Bentham. Utilitarians focus on the consequences of acts
> rather than
> underlying motives. At the root of Singer's world view is an abhorrence of
> cruelty and
> suffering and a belief that the interests of all sentient beings ought to be
> given similar
> consideration.
>
> It is from this perspective that he advocates giving parents and doctors - not
> the state - the right to kill newborns with severe defects that will condemn
> them to lives of
> pain with limited mental development. An infant, Singer said, is a being that is
> neither
> rational nor self-conscious; unlike adults or even some animals, it is incapable
> of seeing
> itself as a distinct entity existing over time.
>
> In his 1981 book ''The Expanding Circle,'' Singer argues that starvation in
> Africa should be considered as horrifying as hunger in America; animal suffering
> should be
> deemed as scandalous as a child's suffering.
>
> He argues for considering euthanasia for the elderly or accident victims who
> are not ''self-conscious, rational or autonomous,'' as long as while they were
> rational they did not expressly say they opposed being put to death under these
> circumstances.
>
> Singer and his admirers argue, with some justification, that his views on the
> relative rights of animals and children have been twisted and misunderstood. For
> instance, it is
> not true that Singer ever stated that snails have more of a right to life than
> newborn
> infants. What he did say, though, was that neither snails nor newborns have
> self-awareness. ''It's
> a factual claim, not an ethical one,'' said Singer.
>
> But even in their context his views are radical and disturbing. Because they
> are autonomous and self-conscious creatures, he believes certain adult animals -
>
> chimpanzees, dogs, pigs, and cats - have a greater right to life than children.
> He would allow parents, in
> consultation with their doctors, to kill babies with such defects as spina
> bifida or Down
> syndrome, he writes in his book ''Practical Ethics.'' In rare cases, he can see
> an argument for
> killing babies with hemophilia, even though they may have the prospect of
> relatively normal
> lives.
>
> ''The total (utilitarian) view makes it necessary to ask whether the death of
> the hemophiliac infant would lead to the creation of another being who would not
> otherwise
> have existed,'' Singer writes. ''In other words, if the hemophiliac child is
> killed, will his
> parents have another child whom they would not have if the hemophiliac child
> lives? If they would,
> is the second child likely to have a better life than the one killed? Often it
> will be
> possible to answer both these questions affirmatively.''
>
> These views, Singer admits, are radical, but they're also highly qualified and
> nuanced and they're not his final word on the subject, he said.
>
> ''It's more a matter of pursuing a philosophical point.''
>
> Singer makes it clear that he is not advocating killing handicapped people
> who are old enough to express a preference to go on living.
>
> Even with these qualifications, disabled people still find his views
> threatening. Killing
> disabled infants, they say, is just a hop-skip-and-jump down the ethical path
> to killing disabled adults.
>
> Singer, who sees no moral distinction between killing a newborn infant and a
> fetus (he argues neither is a self-conscious being),doesn't understand the fuss.
>
> Millions of women, he notes, terminate their pregnancies after tests turn up
> genetic abnormalities.
> ''All of these women and all of the people who endorse that practice are making
> the exact
> same judgment that I am,'' Singer said. ''They're saying it's better to not have
> a child
> with spina bifida than with; they're saying it's better not to have a child with
> Down syndrome than
> with.''
>
> Singer does appear to be retreating from some of his earlier views. In the
> book he co-authored with Helga Kuhse, ''Should The Baby Live?'' Singer argues
> that
> parents and doctors should have 28 days to perform diagnostic tests on their
> newborn
> infant before deciding whether it should be killed or live. Today, he's not so
> sure.
> ''Now I think that's arbitrary,'' he said. ''It's better to work on a
> case-by-case basis.''
>
> Some of Singer's friends have advised him to cloak his words more in
> euphemism. ''Some things are easier to swallow buffered or coded,'' said Caplan.
>
> But Singer isn't about to change. ''It's better to be a little blunt and to get
> people to think
> about what they're doing,'' he said. ''At least then we get to have a clear
> head-to-head
> debate.''
>
> This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 07/27/99.
> © Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
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