>But is it somehow radical and demeaning to claim as Singer does in your
>final quote
>that other things being equal it is better not to have a disability than
>to have it?
>Consider the following cases:
> You approach a paraplegic friend hoping to convince them to join
>the disbled
>rights movement. You start out by asking them whether they would prefer a
>life without
>their disability or whether there is less happiness in her life with the
>disability than
>without. What would your friend be likely to reply?
> Next you go to a second disabled person,one who is disabled
>because her mother
>took thalidomide. This person is suing the manufacturer of thalidomide for
>8 million
>dollars for damages etc. You ask her if she prefers her life with stumps
>for arms to a
>normal life. Isn;t she likely to reply, assuming she does not become too
>angry to reply:
>Of course I prefer a life with functioning arms and I am suing because the
>thalidomide
>manufacturers are responsible for the way I am. Shouldn't you respond. But
>you are
>valuing your disabled versus an alternvative normal status and assigning
>superior value
>to the normal status.. You are worse than SInger. You actually are
>suggesting some
>monetary measure, that eight milllion dollars is the difference in value
>between you
>being disabled and not. She might very reply that no amount of money can
>compensate for
>her disability.
The Singer ethic of "quality of life" would have saved *lots* of money for the manufacturer of thalidomide. Without limbs, the Singer bioethic says, the thalidomide baby's quality of life is not worth medical treatment, and the baby poses a threat to the parents' happiness besides. Newborns do not have a "right" to continue living. They are non-persons. Why not have the doctor euthanize the baby without limbs? After all, there is nothing intrinsically wrong about killing non-persons, and, in fact, killing the thalidomide baby would maximize the happiness of all affected. If doctors and parents had accepted the Singer ethic, there would not have been anyone who would grow up without limbs and, God forbid, sue the thalidomide manufacturer!
As P. Sundstrom argues, Singer's and your arguments are based upon an *invalid analogy* between clinical judgments and relative "quality of life" judgments (on whose lives are happier than whose).
***** P. Sundstrom, "Peter Singer and Lives Not Worth Living -- Comments on a Flawed Argument from Analogy," _Journal of Medical Ethics_ 21: (1) 35-38 FEB 1995
Abstract:
The Australian bioethicist Peter Singer has presented an intriguing argument for the opinion that it is quite proper (morally) to deem the lives of certain individuals not worth living and so to kill them. The argument is based on the alleged analogy between the ordinary clinical judgement that a life with a broken leg is worse than a life with an intact leg (other things being equal), and that the broken leg therefore ought to be mended, on the one hand, and the judgement that the lives of some individuals, for example, severely disabled infants, are not worth living and therefore ought to be terminated, on the other. In the present article it is argued that Singer's argument is flawed, intellectually and/or ethically. *****
Yoshie