The doctrine of the sanctity of human life is in deep trouble,
claims Australian philospher Singer (The Expanding Circle: Ethics
and Sociobiology, 1981, etc.), who gives his own clear ideas of
what should replace it in this decidedly provocative work. With
crisp, dramatic tales involving brain-dead bodies, anencephalic
infants, people in persistent vegetative states or with agonizing
terminal illnesses, and other now-familiar hospital scenarios,
Singer asserts that modern medical practice has become incompatible
with a belief in the equal value of all human life. He argues that
the ethical problems such situations pose would be simplified if we
would only abandon our outdated thinking about life and death. He
presents five commandments of what he calls the old ethic and
suggests how they might be rewritten. In his scheme, the first,
"Treat all human life as of equal worth," becomes "Recognize that
the worth of human life varies"; the second, "Never intentionally
take innocent human life," becomes "Take responsibility for the
consequences of your actions." The third and fourth express
Singer's views that people have the right to end their own lives
and that unwanted children should not be brought into the world.
All of these will trigger outrage in various quarters, but perhaps
most provocative is his fifth revision: "Treat all human life as
always more precious than any nonhuman life" becomes "Do not
discriminate on the basis of species." A founder of the Animal
Rights Movement, Singer argues that the right to life properly
belongs not to Homo sapiens but to persons, by which he means those
beings that possess self-awareness. In this view, an embryo or
someone in an irreversible coma is clearly not a person, but a
gorilla or a baboon is. Singer can't quite figure out how to regard
newborn humans, but he gives infanticide a serious look before
backing off. By going to the very core of our beliefs about life,
Singer has created just about as controversial a book as possible.
(Kirkus Reviews)
A victim of the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989, Anthony Bland lay in
hospital in a coma being fed liquid food by a pump, via a tube
passing through his nose and into his stomach. On 4 February 1993
Britain's highest court ruled that doctors attending him could
lawfully act to end his life. Our traditional ways of thinking
about life and death are collapsing. In a world of respirators and
embryos stored for years in liquid nitrogen, we can no longer take
the sanctity of human life as the cornerstone of our ethical
outlook. In this controversial book Peter Singer argues that we
cannot deal with the crucial issues of death, abortion, euthanasia
and the rights of nonhuman animals unless we sweep away the old
ethic and build something new in its place. Singer outlines a new
set of commandments, based on compassion and commonsense, for the
decisions everyone must make about life and death.
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