Book: Bioethics: An Anthology
Authors: Charles Weijer
Journal: BMJ (2000)

Eds, Helga Kuhse, Peter Singer


Blackwell Publishers, £18.99, pp 600 




ISBN 0 631 20311 7

———————

Rating: ★★

Peter Singer was a keynote speaker at the last annual meeting of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities in Philadelphia. For various reasons, I had chosen this moment in the programme to duck out of the conference. I was completely unprepared for what greeted me as I left the hotel—protesters, many confined to wheelchairs, chanting “Less debate, more hate.” This, I discovered, was the disability activist group Not Dead Yet, which is incensed about Singer's stance that some people with disabilities are not “persons” and may be killed or allowed to die with impunity. It is rare for philosophers to incite the ire of the community at large. Socrates and Bertrand Russell did, and now it seems Peter Singer has joined the ranks of infamy.

I am disappointed by Kuhse and Singer's edited collection of philosophical papers on bioethics. The selection is deeply conservative, and it eschews literature at the margins of bioethics. This is a shame because contemplation of narrative ethics, anthropology, families, and communities is where the action has been in bioethics during the past decade. My attention was naturally drawn to the four essays by Singer himself in the volume. Here, I was not disappointed but offended. Singer variously concludes that experimenting on a human embryo is preferable to doing so on a mouse; that chimpanzees are properly called “people,” but humans with profound cognitive impairments are not; and the heart of a handicapped newborn human might be legitimately excised to save a baboon in need of a new heart. Some have argued that Singer is not responsible for these absurd conclusions since he is merely working through the logical outcomes of a particular moral theory, utilitarianism. Whatever faults we may find with the outcome are properly attributed to the theory and not the philosopher. I disagree: Singer is culpable for these views because doing ethics responsibly involves more than logical reasoning alone. Moral intuition acts as an important check on ethical reasoning, telling us that at times it is the theory, not our actions, that must be changed. More than once Singer notes, “At first this sounds crazy,” and more than once he fails for not paying attention to his own intuition.

My reaction to Singer's work is akin to discovering that a friend has served me her pet for dinner. As my initial reaction of disgust fades, I would wonder whether the animal was really a pet, and, if it was, whether my friend actually understands what it means to have a pet. Having a pet implies a set of rules describing the proper relationship between owner and pet—and not eating one's pet is high on the list. The terms “person” and “animal” come with their own sets of rules, embedded deep within our society, defining relationships among human beings and between people and animals. Singer, in suggesting that these terms or the rules associated with them may be interchangeable, demonstrates the he fails to understand the concepts of “person” and “animal” at all.