Thompson at Large - author, journalist, blogger, and periodic talk radio host

The twisted world of Peter Singer

“Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all.”
— Peter Singer, professor of philosophy, Princeton University

The man so often called “a monster” does not come off as one in the eyes of many people who meet him and find him surprisingly cordial, affable, soft-spoken. Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University. He has been called “the godfather of animal rights,” at age twenty-nine publishing Animal Liberation, the book that he himself proudly calls “the seminal work of the movement.” He is a philosopher in the utilitarian tradition, which holds that the "useful" is the good and that the determining consideration of right conduct should be the usefulness of its consequences.

If by chance you believe it is wrong to intentionally cause blindness or burn the flesh of animals in order to test, say, the efficacy of a new perfume, you owe Dr. Singer a big pat on the back. If you happen to think there are meaningful distinctions between humans and animals, or humans are the same as persons, some of Peter Singer’s beliefs may give you pause.

Why do we experiment with chimps, Singer asks, “yet would never think of doing the same thing to a retarded human being at a much lower mental level? The only possible answer is that the chimpanzee, no matter how bright, is not human, while the retarded human, no matter how dull, is?” He explicitly rejects the basic Judeo-Christian tenet that human life is extraordinary, that humans are not comparable to chimps or pigs or rats. As Reason magazine observed, “Fetuses and some very impaired human beings are not persons in his view and have a lesser moral status than, say, adult gorillas and chimpanzees.” Singer told the national Animal Rights 2002 conference in McLean, Virginia, that society should allow a “severely disabled” infant to be killed up to twenty-eight days after its birth if the parents decide the neonate’s life is not worth living.

In fairness, twenty-eight days is actually rather generous. By comparison, seventy-two hours after buying that car it’s yours, too bad if you’ve changed your mind. Want a definition of “viability” you can depend on? Start by knowing what day it is when you leave the car lot. Wouldn’t hurt to check your watch batteries, just to be on the safe side. The dealer’s probably tracking by the minute.

Peter Singer “would allow parents and doctors to kill newborns with drastic disabilities (like the absence of higher brain function, an incompletely formed spin called spina bifida or even hemophilia) instead of just letting nature take its course and allowing the infants to die,” as the New York Times reported. Shocking? Yes, but again let’s be fair. Singer insists that it is never justified to kill a disabled person who wants to live — just infants or others who are unable to speak for themselves. Brings to mind the Sixties era joke — a vegetarian is a person who can’t hear a carrot scream.

Peter Singer’ thinks of himself as flexible when you press him on one of the “hard” issues. Case in point: When Princeton gave him that prestigious slot, and students organized protests saying it was morally repulsive to give such a position to an advocate of killing babies, Singer assured them he opposes discrimination against adults with disabilities — unless they can’t talk or nod, in which case they’ll get a prescription to Princeton’s Planned Personhood Program and all the details will be handled with dignity and decorum.

The part about the Planned Personhood, I made that up. There’s no such place, but I see no reason why there shouldn’t be. We all should be giving thought to that time when our personhood will change in ways that make us less useful — that’s what “utilitarianism” is all about. “Should I stay or should I go?” becomes something akin to “Am I still useful to the rest of you?” Actually it’s closer to: Is this very young person recently born or that very old people (why leave them out of the equation?) pulling their weight.

Outraged Princeton students got together a petition that said, “We protest his hiring because Dr. Singer denies the intrinsic moral worth of an entire class of human beings — newborn children — and promotes policies that would deprive many infants with disabilities of their basic human right to legal protection against homicide.”

A reporter for Vegan Voice magazine asked Singer how he felt about the fact that Singer’s “rational argument” for euthanasia hasn’t united “revolutionary change you had hoped for.” Singer agreed, adding that we humans “are self-interested beings to some extent.” We homo sapiens sapiens do seem to be under the sway of a certain romantic empathy with our own — you know, species. This curious qualm about, um, putting down family members and the like. And, funny how that cannibalism taboo likewise hangs in there, too. No accounting for species nostalgia. What a vain evolutionary line we are.

In Practical Ethics, Singer puts his thesis as plainly as possible. Human beings, as human beings, have no right to life: “The wrongness of killing a being cannot depend on its species.” In his book he asserts that killable infants need not be defective: “The only difference between killing a normal infant and a defective one is the attitude of the parents.” It is perfectly fine, he continues, for fertile parents to kill a month-old hemophiliac baby in order to replace it with a more healthy one. Waiting for a month will give its biological or adoptive parents time to assess the degree of its illness, and to decide whether they really want it. Singer says that infants are “replaceable” and it is acceptable to replace an infant by killing it and conceiving another.

In Arabia, in primitive times, female infants were replaced by males in this manner, as recorded in the Koran, which condemns the practice as a terrible crime. Fuddy-duddies. Singer’s list of human beings who have no right to life explicitly includes not only disabled newborn infants but also month-old hemophiliac infants not wanted by their parents or adopters, any young infant not wanted by its parents or adopters. “No infant, defective or not, has as strong a claim to life as a person.” In the final analysis, it seems reasonable to include human beings who do not know they are persons.

The whole business of “personhood” is tricky, yes? At what age does a child become a person — seven, the traditional age of reason? Is it hyperbole to suggest Singer apparently thinks that just about any child can be killed if there are no potential adopters and the parents don’t want that particular child? What constitutes hyperbole in this domain, advice please.

Why don’t we just follow the logic of Singer’s own assertions? When we do, six conclusions are pretty close to inescapable. One, human life per se has no intrinsic value. Two, not all human beings are “persons.” Three, only human beings who know they are persons are persons. Four, persons as such have rights. Five, human beings as such have no rights. Six, several sorts of human beings have no right to life. In short: If you’re not now in a coma, try to stay out of one.

The comic actor Charles Grodin wrote a memoir some years ago, entitled It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here. The title has a utilitarian ring to it. The book is very funny, like Grodin himself. Peter Singer isn’t funny, but in fairness he’s not trying to be. He’s altogether serious about getting rid of people he finds not up to snufff. It would be so nice if they weren’t — you know — here.

If you’re over 60, you really ought to keep your ears tuned to Peter Singer and company. This may begin to be a common refrain: "You’re rather old to be still using society’s resources, aren’t you? What have you done lately? What’s that, can’t hear you. Going to count to three here and if you still haven’t spoken it’s dignity and decorum time. What? You say you’re not ready to go? Oh dear, you're missing the point. The rest of us are ready for you to go. We don’t find you convenient anymore.