This Blog considers assisted suicide/euthanasia, bioethics, human cloning, biotechnology, radical environmentalism, and the dangers of animal rights/liberation. My views expressed here, as in my books and other writings, reflect my understanding that the philosophy of human exceptionalism is the bedrock of universal human rights. Or, to put it another way: human life matters. (The opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of any organization with which I am affiliated.)
I'm a little slow on the uptake on this one, but the excellent folk at Not Dead Yet are now cruising the blogosphere. Check it out, here.
Labels: Not Dead Yet Blog
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:37 PM
3 Comments
I am a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute and the author of 12 books, including A Rat Is A Pig Is A Dog Is A Boy, which is relevant to the issues considered by this blog.
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3 Comments:
Seriously, people like Peter Singer do not advocate killing disabled people. However, he does respect the desires of those who want to kill disabled progeny through abortion or in extreme cases infanticide. He does not argue that they SHOULD be killed as that is coersion.
As a negative utilitarian, I do not know what to say, but I do think the abolition of suffering should be the considered when making ethical decisions.
HKR: I know it is hard to accept the brutality of Singer's philosophy. Note how you seek to protect him from the infanticide license he would grant with the modifier "in extreme cases." Singer's support for infanticide has nothing to do with extreme cases. It has to do with the infant's alleged non personhood. He uses disabled infants as an example of situations in which the preferences of parents would be to not have disabled children, e.g., Down syndrome, hemophilia (in case of a future born health child!). He believes that if parents decide that their preferences are not to have the child that is born, prior to personhood (which I think he now says comes at about age 1), it would be okay to kill the baby.
Who is to say who is "suffering"? How does anybody know one is "suffering" just because they are disabled?
Oh, and by the way, does the right of guardians to kill extend beyond birth defects and cover accidents and illnesses of all kinds happening long after birth?
Oh, dear me, it's already going on.
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