”Peter Singer, who (I kid you not) is a professor of bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values.”
A couple of his thoughts…
‘"Is a world with people in it better than a world with no sentient beings at all?" He's not talking about Animal Liberation (of which he is an enthusiastic believer)--whether they'd be better off if we'd stop taking up space--but rather whether enough of us live a life of sufficient "quality" to justify keeping us "sentient beings" going.
If the answer is no, then we probably ought to be about the business of obtaining universal agreement to sterilize ourselves
"Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse affects on the others, it would, according to the total view [of utilitarianism], be right to kill him. The main point is clear: killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person.
Very often it is not wrong at all." And "The only difference between killing a normal infant and a defective one is the attitude of the parents."’
We cannot ignore these people. They exert heavy influence the ethical beliefs of our next generation of lawyers, judges, police chiefs, doctors.
No comments:
Post a Comment