JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 98-11-15 17:52:36 EST, you write:
>
> << We've heard this "right of society" line before, it has been used to
> sterilize and exterminate disabled people, gays, deaf, gypsies, blacks,
> alcoholics, Jews, any social "deviant."
> >>
>
> It's offensive and ignorant to accuse Singer of being a Nazi. As he makes
> clear, he thinks that any rational being hasa special claim on our moral
> concern. He goesa lot further towards defending the nonrational than most
> would, too.
>
I was thinking broader than Nazis. In the U.S. members of the the criminal/incarcerated population were regularly sterilized by physicians and ironically the inventor of the iron lung (Alex Carol?) advocated for euthanasia of disabled adults. The Tuskegee experiments on "subhuman" blacks and the radiation experiments on mental patients and disabled children happened here. In addition, other health care officials in this country called for eliminating the unfit in the name of weighing society over the individual. Science and medicine have been infiltrated with these positions for decades and still are.
> Incidentally, Singer,a utilitarian, is consistent in rejecting the existence
> of rights as sometrhing apart from utility. He does not make an exception for
> animal rights. IHe just uses rights talk as a convenient way of summing up his
> utuilitarian view that the suffering of sentient animals hasa lot of moral
> weight and accordinging, we shouldn't kill them or otherwise abuse them--to
> turn it around, they have certain rights which we violate if we treat them in
> certain ways.
>
I am no advocate of animal abuse but it is astounding that Singer can draw a conclusion about inteferring with the life of an animal (which is not a rational being last time I checked) and then judges which baby (human) life is worth living and which is not according to it's full-being qualifications i.e., rational etc.. Does he say that it is OK to kill or use the baby animals in experiments but not their parents because the babies aren't fully an animal??? Marta Russell