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Not Dead Yet doesn't feel it's academic: Who are we, and why are we protesting Peter Singer? We are Not Dead Yet, a national grassroots disability rights organization. In the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 people with disabilities are described as "a discrete and insular minority group". The disability rights movement is founded on a belief that the pervasive discrimination and injustice that this minority group faces must be addressed. It is from this foundation that our concern for justice flows. It is from this concern for justice that we find ourselves opposed to Peter Singer’s approach to public policy. For Singer makes policy suggestions about people with disabilities without ever directly addressing, much less designing proposals to solve, the injustice that disabled people face. Why would a civil rights group care about Peter Singer? Peter Singer attempts to make the case that certain members of society should not be granted the same civil rights or equal protection of the law as everyone else. Because he is speaking of a devalued segment of society, it is especially crucial that his arguments be subjected to careful scrutiny. In the United States we have learned from history that those who argue that people seen as "less worthy" may be treated as second-class citizens - or worse - are all too often capable of disguising flawed arguments so as to make them appealing to members of privileged classes. And in fact, Singer’s work is entirely inadequate to support the withdrawal of equal protection of the law from a devalued segment of society, people with disabilities. Are we opposed to academic debate? No. But this is about public policy. It affects us all. In the past year, we have seen bioethicists and medical organizations bring their combined legal weight to bring about the deaths of two people with cognitive disabilities through nonconsensual removal of lifesaving treatment. Robert Wendland, a conscious man with severe brain injury, died when his wife and legal guardian authorized the withholding of antibiotics when he contracted pneumonia. At the time, a California Supreme Court decision on the guardian’s right to remove tube feeding and other life-sustaining treatment was pending. The wife’s efforts were being opposed by Wendland’s mother and sisters, but the Supreme Court’s decision in their favor came too late. In North Carolina, 29-year-old Tina Cartrette was starved to death after the removal of a feeding tube that had sustained her for years. Cartrette was not terminally ill nor was she unconscious. She had cerebral palsy and a label of mental retardation. The perceived value and rights of real people are being debated here. If Singer’s policy proposals were enacted, literally millions of people with disabilities in this country would be denied all legal standing. Their survival would be a "privilege" that could be revoked by family members and legal guardians. But isn’t he a respected scholar? He is talking, not just about ideas, but about actual people living in the actual world. These are empirical matters. There is extensive research that indicates that people with and without disabilities have positive opinions about heir own quality of life. But Singer ignores this research and takes it for granted that people with disabilities have inferior lives from our own perspective. He also ignores the research that indicates doctors who treat newly disabled people, and disabled, newborns vastly underestimate the way those people will, within a few years, evaluate their own quality of life. He treats discrimination and other social problems as if they cannot be remedied. He acknowledges the research that shows that parents of disabled infants almost always withhold lifesaving treatment when doctors encourage them to, but he fails to consider the relevance of that fact when he talks about giving parents, not doctors, the right to make life-and-death decisions. Singer’s work is not only shoddy - it’s dishonest. If Singer were a college freshman in a special education course, these errors and omissions would be unacceptable; why are the standards so much lower for an Ivy League professor? Is Peter Singer proposing something new? Like the eugenicists at the start of the century who claimed that "we" could not bear the genetic burden of people with cognitive disabilities and like those in the middle of the century who claimed that "we" could not bear the social burden of the "menace of the feeble-minded", Singer joins the ranks of those who claim that "we" cannot bear the economic burden of treating people with significant cognitive disabilities as full members of society. As managed care plans stress preventive health care, the costs associated with meeting the basic needs of ill and disabled people are more likely to be seen as "extra" rather than as the routine responsibility for health insurance - and these "extra" costs are viewed as burdensome to those who do not yet face similar expenses. People whose daily needs are atypical are viewed as particularly expensive, and also as less valuable. The erosion or outright denial of civil rights to members of society who are seen as less valuable than those in power has a long and sad history. It has always been wrong in the past and it is wrong now. Why do we care about what happens in an ethics debate, anyway? This isn’t just about what happens in a debate. As Peter Singer himself acknowledges, his work is intended to have an impact on the public policies that affect our lives. "[T]he term ‘person’ is no mere descriptive label. It carries with it a certain moral standing. Just as, in law, the fact that a corporation can be a person means that a corporation can sue and be sued, so too, once we recognise a nonhuman animal as a person, we will soon begin to attribute basic rights to that animal." [Peter Singer, Rethinking Life and Death, page 182] And once we become convinced that certain humans aren’t really persons, we will soon stop worrying about their basic rights. -- Not Dead Yet ~ The Resistance -- -- Marta Russell Los Angeles, CA http://www.disweb.org