MORAL EXPERTS
1. A. J. Ayer, “The Analysis of Moral Judgments” in Philosophical Essays (London: Macmillan, 1954).
2. C. D. Broad, Ethics and the History of Philosophy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952).
3. Ryle, “On Forgetting the Difference between Right and Wrong” in Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. A. Melden (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958).
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL …
1. For Bentham’s moral philosophy, see his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, and for Sidgwick’s see The Methods of Ethics, 1907 (the passage is quoted from the seventh edition; reprint, London: Macmillan, 1963), p. 382. As examples of leading contemporary moral philosophers who incorporate a requirement of equal consideration of interests, see R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), and John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap, 1972). For a brief account of the essential agreement on this issue between these and other positions, see R. M. Hare, “Rules of War and Moral Reasoning,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, 2 (1972).
2. Letter to Henry Gregoire, February 25, 1809.
3. Reminiscences by Francis D. Gage, from Susan B. Anthony, The History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1; the passage is to be found in the extract in Leslie Tanner, ed., Voices from Women’s Liberation (New York: Signet, 1970).
4. I owe the term “speciesism” to Richard Ryder. It has become accepted in general use since the first edition of this book and now appears in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
5. Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. 17.
6. See M. Levin, “Animal Rights Evaluated,” Humanist 37: 14–15 (July/August 1977); M. A. Fox, “Animal Liberation: A Critique,” Ethics 88: 134–138 (1978); C. Perry and G. E. Jones, “On Animal Rights,” International journal of Applied Philosophy 1: 39–57 (1982).
7. Lord Brain, “Presidential Address,” in C. A. Keele and R. Smith, eds., The Assessment of Pain in Men and Animals (London: Universities Federation for Animal Welfare, 1962).
8. Ibid., p. 11.
9. Richard Serjeant, The Spectrum of Pain (London: Hart Davis, 1969), p. 72.
10. See the reports of the Committee on Cruelty to Wild Animals (Command Paper 8266, 1951), paragraphs 36–42; the Departmental Committee on Experiments on Animals (Command Paper 2641, 1965), paragraphs 179–182; and the Technical Committee to Enquire into the Welfare of Animals Kept under Intensive Livestock Husbandry Systems (Command Paper 2836, 1965), paragraphs 26–28 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office).
11. See Stephen Walker, Animal Thoughts (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983); Donald Griffin, Animal Thinking (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984); and Marian Stamp Dawkins, Animal Suffering: The Science of Animal Welfare (London: Chapman and Hall, 1980).
12. See Eugene Linden, Apes, Men and Language (New York: Penguin, 1976); for popular accounts of some more recent work, see Erik Eckholm, “Pygmy Chimp Readily Learns Language Skill,” New York Times, June 24, 1985; and “The Wisdom of Animals,” Newsweek, May 23, 1988.
13. In the Shadow of Man (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), p. 225. Michael Peters makes a similar point in “Nature and Culture,” in Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris, eds., Animals, Men and Morals (New York: Taplinger, 1972). For examples of some of the inconsistencies in denials that creatures without language can feel pain, see Bernard Rollin, The Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain, and Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
14. I am here putting aside religious views, for example the doctrine that all and only human beings have immortal souls or are made in the image of God. Historically these have been very important, and no doubt are partly responsible for the idea that human life has a special sanctity. Logically, however, these religious views are unsatisfactory, since they do not offer a reasoned explanation of why it should be that all humans and no nonhumans have immortal souls. This belief too, therefore, comes under suspicion as a form of speciesism. In any case, defenders of the “sanctity of life” view are generally reluctant to base their position on purely religious doctrines, since these doctrines are no longer as widely accepted as they once were.
15. For a general discussion of these questions, see my Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), and for a more detailed discussion of the treatment of handicapped infants, see Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). See also the section of this volume, “Saving and Taking Human Life.”
16. For a development of this theme, see my essay, “Life’s Uncertain Voyage,” in P. Pettit, R. Sylvan, and J. Norman, eds., Metaphysics and Morality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), pp. 154–172.
17. The preceding discussion, which has been changed only slightly since the first edition, has often been overlooked by critics of the Animal Liberation movement. It is a common tactic to seek to ridicule the Animal Liberation position by maintaining that, as an animal experimenter put it recently, “Some of these people believe that every insect, every mouse, has as much right to life as a human.” (Dr. Irving Weissman, as quoted in Katherine Bishop, “From Shop to Lab to Farm, Animal Rights Battle Is Felt,” New York Times, January 14, 1989.) It would be interesting to see Dr. Weissman name some prominent animal liberationists who hold this view. Certainly (assuming only that he was referring to the right to life of a human being with mental capacities very different from those of the insect and the mouse) the position described is not mine. I doubt that it is held by many—if any—in the animal liberation movement.
TOOLS FOR RESEARCH
1. Since this was written, most cosmetics companies have, after campaigns from animal rights organizations, ceased to test their products on animals.
2. Report of the Littlewood Committee, pp. 53, 166; quoted by Richard Ryder, “Experiments on Animals,” in Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris, eds., Animals, Men, and Morals (New York: Taplinger, 1972), p. 43.
3. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 48 (2): 291 (April 1953).
4. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 73 (3): 256 (June 1968).
5. Animal Learning and Behavior 12: 332–338 (1984).
6. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior and Processes 12: 277–290 (1986).
7. Psychological Reports 57: 1027–1030 (1985).
8. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry 8:434–446 (1984).
9. H. Beecher, “Ethics and Clinical Research,” New England Journal of Medicine 274: 1354–1360 (1966); D. Rothman, “Ethics and Human Experimentation: Henry Beecher Revisited,” New England Journal of Medicine 317: 1195–1199 (1987).
10. T. McKeown, The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage or Nemesis? (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979).
11. D. St. George, “Life Expectancy, Truth, and the ABPI,” Lancet, August 9, 1986, p. 346.
12. J. B. McKinlay, S. M. McKinlay, and R. Beaglehole, “Trends in Death and Disease and the Contribution of Medical Measures” in H. E. Freeman and S. Levine, eds., Handbook of Medical Sociology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988), p. 16.
13. See William Paton, Man and Mouse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); Andrew Rowan, Of Mice, Models and Men: A Critical Evaluation of Animal Research (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), chap. 12; Michael DeBakey, “Medical Advances Resulting from Animal Research,” in J. Archibald, J. Ditchfield, and H. Rowsell, eds., The Contribution of Laboratory Animal Science to the Welfare of Man and Animals: Past, Present and Future (New York: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1985); OTA, Alternatives to Animal Use in Research, Testing and Education, chap. 5; and National Research Council, Use of Animals in Biomedical and Behavioral Research (National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1988), chap. 3.
14. Probably the best of those works arguing against the claims made for animal experimentation is Robert Sharpe, The Cruel Deception (Wellingborough, England: Thorsons, 1988).
15. “The Costs of AIDS,” New Scientist, March 17, 1988, p. 22.
DOWN ON THE FACTORY FARM …
1. Washington Post, October 3, 1971; see also the testimony during September and October 1971, before the Subcommittee on Monopoly of the Select Committee on Small Business of the U.S. Senate, in the Hearings on the Role of Giant Corporations, especially the testimony of Jim Hightower of the Agribusiness Account-ability Project. For the size of egg producers, see Poultry Tribune, June 1987, p. 27.
2. Stall Street journal, July 1972.
3. J. Webster, C. Saville, and D. Welchman, “Improved Husbandry Systems for Veal Calves,” Animal Health Trust and Farm Animal Care Trust, n.d., p. 5; see also Webster et al., “The Effect of Different Rearing Systems on the Development of Calf Behavior,” and “Some Effects of Different Rearing Systems on Health, Cleanliness and Injury in Calves,” British Veterinary Journal 1141: 249 and 472 (1985).
4. J. Webster, C. Saville, and D. Welchman, “Improved Husbandry Systems for Veal Calves,” p. 6.
5. Ibid., p. 2.
6. Stall Street Journal, November 1973.
7. Stall Street Journal, April 1973.
8. Stall Street Journal, November 1973.
9. Farmer and Stockbreeder, September 13, 1960, quoted by Ruth Harrison, Animal Machines (London: Vincent Stuart, 1964) p. 70.
10. Stall Street Journal, April 1973.
11. G. van Putten, “Some General Remarks Concerning Farm Animal Welfare in Intensive Farming Systems,” unpublished paper from the Research Institute for Animal Husbandry, “Schoonoord,” Driebergseweg, Zeist, Netherlands, p. 2.
12. Ibid., p. 3.
13. Vealer, March/April 1982.
14. U.K. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Welfare of Calves Regulations, 1987 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1987).
BRIDGING THE GAP
1. John Locke’s definition of a person is to be found in his Essay on Human Understanding, bk. II. chap. 27, paragraph 9.
2. The description comes from Frans de Waal’s fascinating book, Chimpanzee Politics (London: Cape, 1982). I made only two changes: I gave human names to the chimpanzees involved in the fight, and I added from another study of chimpanzees the experiment involving the two series of boxes.
3. Charles Darwin, Notebooks, 1836–19492, Portland, OR 97280;1844, Paul H. Barrett et al., eds. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 300.
4. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: New York Review of Books, 1975); 2nd ed. (1990). (See “All Animals Are Equal …” in this volume.) For an account of the history of the movement, see Richard Ryder, Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes Towards Speciesism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989).
5. See the essays on this topic in Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, eds., The Great Ape Project (London: Fourth Estate, 1993); and also E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, et al., Apes, Language, and the Human Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
6. Jared Diamond, The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, (New York: HarperCollins, 1991). The relevant passage is reprinted in The Great Ape Project, pp. 88–101. The preceding paragraph draws on Diamond’s account.
7. Toshisada Nishida, “Chimpanzees Are Always New to Me” in The Great Ape Project (London: Fourth Estate, 1993), 24.
8. The Great Ape Project can be contacted at P.O. Box 19492, Portland, OR 97280–0492, USA, or through its web site, www.greatapeproject.org.
ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES
1. For more on the Franklin Dam, see the chapter “Living Ethically.”
2. I have defended this assumption elsewhere: see the chapter “About Ethics.”
3. Genesis 1:26–28.
4. See Robin Attfield, The Ethics of Environmental Concern (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983).
5. Genesis 9:2.
6. Corinthians 9:9–10.
7. Augustine, The Catholic and Manichean Ways of Life, D. A. Gallagher and I. J. Gallagher, trans. (Boston: Catholic University Press, 1966), p. 102. For cursing of the fig tree, see Mark 11: 12–22, and for that of the pigs, Mark 5: 1–13.
8. Aristotle, Politics (London: Dent, 1916), p. 16.
9. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II, ii, question 64, article 1; I, ii, question 72, article 4.
10. For details on the alternative Christian thinkers, see Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World (London: Allen Lane, 1983), pp. 152–153; and Attfield, op. cit (note 4).
11. Aristotle, op. cit. (note 8).
12. Albert Schweitzer, Civilization and Ethics (part II of The Philosophy of Civilization, C. T. Campion, trans., 2nd ed. (London: A. & C. Black, 1929), pp. 246–7.
13. Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 45, 128. My discussion draws on a fine critique of Taylor by Gerald Paske, “The Life Principle: A (metaethical) rejection,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 6: 219–225 (1989).
14. A. Leopold, A Sand Country Almanac (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966; first published 1949), pp. 219, 238.
15. A. Naess, “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement,” Inquiry 16: 95–100 (1973).
16. See, for example, the following works: W. Devall and G. Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living As If Nature Mattered, (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1985); L. Johnson, A Morally Deep World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); V. Plumwood, “Ecofeminism: an Overview and Discussion of Positions and Arguments: Critical Review,” Australasian journal of Philosophy 64 (supplement), 120–138 (1986); R. Sylvan, “Three Essays Upon Deeper Environmental Ethics,” Discussion Papers in Environmental Philosophy 13 (1986), published by the Australian National University, Canberra; and P. Taylor, op. cit.
17. Leopold, op. cit., p. 262.
18. A. Naess and G. Sessions, “Basic Principles of Deep Ecology,” Ecophilosophy 6: 3–7 (1984), quoted from D. Bennet and R. Sylvan, “Australian Perspectives on Environmental Ethics: A UNESCO Project” (unpublished, 1989).
19. R. Routley [now R. Sylvan] and V. Routley [now V. Plumwood], “Human Chauvinism and Environmental Ethics” in D. Mannison, M. McRobbie, and R. Routley, eds., Environmental Philosophy (Canberra: Australian National University Research School of Social Sciences, 1980).
20. For a useful survey of the value positions of deep ecologists, see R. Sylvan, A Critique of Deep Ecology (Canberra: Australian National University, Department of Philosophy, Discussion Papers in Environmental Philosophy, 12, 1985), P.53.
FAMINE, AFFLUENCE, AND MORALITY
1. There was also a third possibility: that India would go to war to enable the refugees to return to their lands. Since I wrote this paper, India has taken this way out. The situation is no longer that described above, but this does not affect my argument, as the next paragraph indicates.
2. In view of the special sense philosophers often give to the term, I should say that I use “obligation” simply as the abstract noun derived from “ought,” so that “I have an obligation to” means no more, and no less, than “I ought to.” This usage is in accordance with the definition of “ought” given by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: “the general verb to express duty or obligation.” I do not think any issue of substance hangs on the way the term is used; sentences in which I use “obligation” could all be rewritten, although somewhat clumsily, as sentences in which a clause containing “ought” replaces the term “obligation.”
3. J. O. Urmson, “Saints and Heroes,” in Essays in Moral Philosophy, Abraham I. Melden, ed. (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1958), p. 214. For a related but significantly different view see also Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1907), pp. 220–221; 492–493.
4. Summa Theologica, II-II, question 66, article 7, in Aquinas, Selected Political Writings, A. P. d’Entreves, ed., J. G. Dawson, trans. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), p. 171.
5. See, for instance, John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967); and E. J. Mishan, The Costs of Economic Growth (New York: Prager, 1967).
WHAT’S WRONG WITH KILLING?
1. Andrew Stinson’s treatment is described by Robert and Peggy Stinson in The Long Dying of Baby Andrew (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983).
2. For more on this subject, see “All Animals Are Equal,” pp. 28–46 in this volume.
3. Joseph Fletcher’s article “Indicators of Humanhood: A Tentative Profile of Man” appeared in Hastings Center Report, 2, 5 (1972).
4. John Locke’s definition of “person” is taken from his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk. II, chap. 27, paragraph 9.
5. Aristotle’s views on infanticide are in his Politics, bk. 7, p. 1335b; Plato’s are in the Republic, bk. 5, p. 460.
6. Support for the claim that our present attitudes toward infanticide are largely the effect of the influence of Christianity on our thought can be found in the historical material on infanticide cited in note 9 in “Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus.” (See especially the article by W. L. Langer, pp. 353–355.)
7. For Aquinas’s statement that killing a human being offends against God as killing a slave offends against the master of the slave, see Summa Theologica, 2, ii, question 64, article 5.
8. Hare propounds and defends his two-level view of moral reasoning in Moral Thinking (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).
9. Michael Tooley’s “Abortion and Infanticide” was first published in Philosophy and Public Affairs 2 (1972). The passage quoted here is from a revised version in J. Feinberg, ed., The Problem of Abortion (Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1973), p. 60. His book Abortion and Infanticide was published by Clarendon Press in Oxford in 1983.
10. For further discussion of respect for autonomy as an objection to killing, see Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1977), chap. 5; and H. J. McCloskey, “The Right to Life,” Mind 84 (1975).
11. My discussion of the “total” and “prior existence” versions of utilitarianism owes much to Derek Parfit. I originally tried to defend the prior existence view in “A Utilitarian Population Principle,” in M. Bayles, ed., Ethics and Population (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1976), but Parfit’s reply, “On Doing the Best for Our Children,” in the same volume, persuaded me to change my mind. Parfit’s Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) is required reading for anyone wishing to pursue this topic in depth. See also his short account of some of the issues in “Overpopulation and the Quality of Life,” in P. Singer, ed., Applied Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Parfit uses the term “person-affecting” where I use “prior existence.” The reason for the change is that the view has no special reference to persons, as distinct from other sentient creatures. The distinction between the two versions of utilitarianism appears to have been first noticed by Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London: Macmillan, 1907), pp. 414–416. Later discussions include, in addition to those cited above, J. Narveson, “Moral Problems of Population,” Monist 57 (1973); T. G. Roupas, “The Value of Life,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 7 (1978); and R. I. Sikora, “Is It Wrong to Prevent the Existence of Future Generations?” in B. Barry and R. Sikora, eds., Obligations to Future Generations (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978).
12. Mill’s famous passage comparing Socrates and the fool appeared in his Utilitarianism (London: J. M. Dent, 1960; first published 1863), pp. 8–9.
TAKINC LIFE: THE EMBRYO AND THE FETUS
1. The most important sections of the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade are reprinted in J. Feinberg, ed., The Problem of Abortion (Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1973).
2. The government committee referred to in the subsection “Not the Law’s Business?”—the Wolfenden Committee—issued the Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, Command Paper 247 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1957), p. 24.
3. J. S. Mill’s “very simple principle” is stated in the introductory chapter of On Liberty (London: J. M. Dent, 1960), p. 73.
4. Edwin Schur’s Crimes Without Victims was published by Prentice-Hall in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., in 1965.
5. Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” appeared in Philosophy and Public Affair, 1 (1971) and has been reprinted in P. Singer, ed., Applied Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
6. Paul Ramsey uses the genetic uniqueness of the fetus as an argument against abortion in “The Morality of Abortion,” in D. H. Labby, ed., Life or Death: Ethics and Options (London: University of Washington Press, 1968); reprinted in J. Rachels, ed., Moral Problems, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 40.
7. Bentham’s reassuring comment on infanticide, quoted in the section “Abortion and Infanticide” is from his Theory of Legislation (London: Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1931), and is quoted by E. Westermarck, The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas (London: Macmillan, 1924), vol. 1, p. 413n.
8. In the final part of Abortion and Infanticide (Oxford: Clarendon Press), Michael Tooley discusses the available evidence on the development in the infant of the sense of being a continuing self.
9. For historical material on the prevalence of infanticide, see Maria Piers, Infanticide (New York, 1978); and W. L. Langer, “Infanticide: A Historical Survey,” History of Childhood Quarterly 1 (1974). An older but still valuable survey is in Edward Westermarck, The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, vol. 1, (London: Macmillan, 1924), pp. 394—413. An interesting study of the use of infanticide as a form of family planning is Nakahara: Family Farming and Population in a Japanese Village, 1717–1830, by Thomas C. Smith (Palo Alto, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1977).
10. References for Plato and Aristotle were given in the notes to “What’s Wrong With Killing?”
11. For Seneca, see De Ira 1, 15, cited by Westermarck, The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, vol. 1, p. 419.
PROLOGUE
1. Don Colburn, “AMA Ethics Panel Revises Rules on Withholding Food; In Irreversible Comas, Water and Nutrition May Be Stopped,” Washington Post, April 2, 1986, p. 9.
2. Stuart Youngner et al., “‘Brain Death’ and Organ Retrieval: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Knowledge and Concepts Among Health Professionals,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 261: 2209 (1989).
3. Carole Outterson, “Newborn Infants with Severe Defects: A Survey of Paediatric Attitudes and Practices in the UK,” Bioethics 7: 420–435 (1993); see questions 7,16, and 17, but the percentage of respondents who accepted all of these propositions is not apparent from the published article. I am grateful to Ms. Outterson for making it available to me.
4. Eric Harrison and Tracy Shryer, “Weeping Father Pulls Gun, Stops Infant’s Life Support,” Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1989, p. 1.
IS THE SANCTITY OF LIFE ETHIC TERMINALLY ILL?
1. Henry Beecher to Robert Ebert, 30 October 1967. The letter is in the Henry Beecher Manuscripts at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard University, and is quoted by David Rothman, Strangers at the Bedside (New York: Basic Books, 1991), pp. 160–161.
2. The first draft and Ebert’s comment on it are both quoted by Rothman, Strangers at the Bedside, pp. 162–164. The documents are in the Beecher Manuscript collection.
3. Henry Beecher, “The New Definition of Death, Some Opposing Viewpoints,” International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 5: 120–121 (1971) (italics in original).
4. President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine, Defining Death: A Report on the Medical, Legal and Ethical Issues in the Determination of Death (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1981), pp. 24, 25.
5. Ibid., pp. 67, 72.
6. In 1998 Japan adopted a law allowing organs to be taken from brain-dead patients.
7. Stuart Youngner et al., “‘Brain Death’ and Organ Retrieval: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Knowledge and Concepts Among Health Professionals,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 261 (1090): 2209 (1989).
8. See, for example, the United States Uniform Determination of Death Act. Note that the Harvard committee had referred to the absence of central nervous system “activity” rather than function. The use of the term “function” rather than “activity” makes the definition of brain death more permissive, because, as the United States President’s Commission recognized (Defining Death, p. 74), electrical and metabolic activity may continue in cells or groups of cells after the organ has ceased to function. The commission did not think that the continuation of this activity should prevent a declaration of death.
9. Robert Truog, “Rethinking Brain Death,” in K. Sanders and B. Moore, eds., Anencephalics, Infants and Brain Death Treatment Options and the Issue of Organ Donation (Melbourne: Law Reform Commission of Victoria, 1991), pp. 62–74; Amir Halevy and Baruch Brody, “Brain Death: Reconciling Definitions, Criteria and Tests,” Annals of Internal Medicine 119 (6): 519–525 (1993); Robert Veatch, “The Impending Collapse of the Whole-Brain Definition of Death,” Hastings Center Report 23 (4): 18–24 (1993).
10. Henry Beecher, “The New Definition of Death, Some Opposing Views,” unpublished paper presented at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, December 1970, p. 4, quoted from Robert Veatch, Death, Dying and the Biological Revolution (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 39.
11. Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health (1990) 110 S. Ct. pp. 2886–7.
12. Airedale N.H.S. Trust v. Bland (C.A) (February 19, 1993) 2 Weekly Law Reports, p. 350. Page numbers given without further identifying details in subsequent footnotes are to this report of the case.
13. P. 333; the passage was quoted again by Lord Goff of Chieveley in his judgment in the House of Lords, p. 364.
14. pp. 374. 386.
15. P. 331.
16. John Keown, “Courting Euthanasia? Tony Bland and the Law Lords,” Ethics and Medicine 9 (3): 36 (1993).
17. P. 339.
18. P. 361.
19. P. 400.
20. P. 383.
21. P. 388.
22. R. v. Adams (1959), quoted by Derek Morgan, “Letting Babies Die Legally,” Institute of Medical Ethics Bulletin, May 1989, p. 13. See also Patrick Devlin, Easing the Passing: The Trial of Dr. John Bodkin Adams (London: Faber and Faber, 1986), pp. 171, 209.
23. Pp. 388–89.
24. For a statement of the traditional definition, see, for example, Black’s Law Dictionary (New York: West, 1968).
JUSTIFYING VOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA
1. On euthanasia in the Netherlands, see J. K. Gevers, “Legal Developments Concerning Active Euthanasia on Request in the Netherlands,” Bioethics 1 (1987). The annual number of cases is given in “Dutch Doctors Call for Legal Euthanasia,” New Scientist, October 12, 1991, p. 17. Paul J. van der Maas et al., “Euthanasia and Other Medical Decisions Concerning the End of Life,” Lancet, 338: 669–674 (September 14, 1991), at 673, gives a figure of 1900 deaths due to euthanasia each year, but this is limited to reports from doctors in general practice. The quotation about patients’ desire for reassurance comes from this article, p. 673.
2. The case of Diane is cited from Timothy E. Quill, “Death and Dignity: A Case of Individualized Decision Making,” New England Journal of Medicine 324 (10): 691–694 (March 7, 1991). Betty Rollin describes the death of her mother in Betty Rollin, Last Wish (New York: Penguin, 1987). The passage quoted is from pp. 149–150. See also Betty Rollin’s foreword to Derek Humphry, Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide (Eugene, Ore., 1991), pp. 12–13.
EUTHANASIA: EMERGING FROM HITLER’S SHADOW
1. Leo Alexander, “Medical Science under Dictatorship,” New England Journal of Medicine 241: 39–47 (July 14, 1949).
2. Michael Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany, c. 1900–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 3–4.
3. Arlene Judith Klotzko, “What Kind of Life? What Kind of Death? An Interview with Dr. Henk Prins,” Bioethics 11 (1): 24–42 (January 1997).
4. I am grateful to Dr Dörner for sending me a copy of his unpublished lecture. The passage I have quoted is on p. 7. For a fuller presentation of his views on the origins of the Nazi crimes, see his Tödliches Mitleid, 3rd ed. (Gütersloh: Verlag Jakob von Hoddis, 1993).
5. For further details see my Rethinking Life and Death (Melbourne: Text, 1994; Oxford: Oxford University Press and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995).
6. Christian Munthe, The Moral Roots of Prenatal Diagnosis, (Göteborg: Studies in Research Ethics No. 7, Centre for Research Ethics, 1996), p. 46n.
7. See Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 11–17.
8. Klotzko, op. cit., p. 39.
9. Ibid., p. 31.
IN PLACE OF THE OLD ETHIC
1. The classic account of the shift from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican model is Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1972).
2. Dr. L. Haas, from a letter in Lancet, November 2, 1968; quoted from S. Gorovitz, ed., Moral Problems in Medicine (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976), p. 351.
3. Clough’s “The Latest Decalogue” can be found in Helen Gardner, ed., The New Oxford Book of English Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).
4. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II, ii, question 64, article 5.
5. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (London: Dent, 1960), pp. 72–73.
6. This position is associated with Michael Tooley’s influential article, “Abortion and Infanticide,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2: 37–65 (1972); for a slightly different argument to the same conclusion, see also Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Similar views have been defended by several philosophers and bioethicists, among them H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., The Foundations of Bioethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); R. G. Frey, Rights, Killing and Suffering (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983); Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977); John Harris, The Value of Life (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985); Helga Kuhse, The Sanctity of Life Doctrine in Medicine: A Critique (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); James Rachels, The End of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); and Created from Animals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). See also my own Practical Ethics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; originally published 1979).
7. For Augustine, see Against Faustus, bk. 15. chap. 7; for Luther, “Der Grosse Catechismus,” 1529, “On the Sixth Commandment”; and for Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, vol. 2, chap. 38, v. 8. I owe these references and other information in this paragraph to John T. Noonan, “Contraception,” in Warren T. Reich, ed., Encyclopedia of Bioethics (New York: Free Press, 1978), vol. I, pp. 204–216. The Supreme Court case referred to is Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965.
8. Jodi L. Jacobson, “Holding Back the Sea,” in Lester Brown et al., State of the World, 1990: The Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Towards a Sustainable Economy (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1990).
9. Peter Singer, “Sanctity of Life or Quality of Life,” Pediatrics 72: 128–129 (July 1983); three protest letters were published with my reply in 73: 259–263 (February 1984), but the remainder of the letters are unpublished.
10. Albert Schweitzer’s ethic of reverence for life may be making this wider claim; the contemporary American philosopher Paul Taylor certainly does make it. See “Environmental Values,” pp. 86–102.
11. For an argument that it could be as late as 32 weeks, see Susan Taiwa, “When Is the Capacity for Sentience Acquired During Human Fetal Development?” Journal of Maternal-Fetal Medicine 1: 153–165 (1992).
12. For a full defense of this position, see Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
13. Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act 5, Scene 1.
14. For sources and further details, see the notes to “Taking Life: The Embryo and the Fetus.”
15. Robert and Peggy Stinson, The Long Dying of Baby Andrew (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983), pp. 153, 266–267.
16. Here I have been influenced by Norbert Hoerster, “Kindestötung und das Lebensrecht von Personen,” Analyse & Kritik 12: 226–244 (1990).
17. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 13.
THE ULTIMATE CHOICE
1. Information in this and the following paragraphs on Ivan F. Boesky is taken in part from Robert Slater, The Titans of Takeover (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1987), chap. 7.
2. Wall Street Journal, June 20, 1985; quoted in Slater, p. 134.
3. Ivan F. Boesky, Merger Mania (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), p. v. The earlier quotations are from pp. xiii-xiv.
4. Mark Brandon Read, Chopper from the Inside (Kilmore, Vic: Floradale Productions, 1991), pp. 6–7.
5. Plato, Republic, bk. II, 360, 2nd ed., Desmond Lee, trans. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1984).
6. Robert J. Ringer, Looking Out for # 1 (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1978), p. 22.
7. Todd Gitlin, Inside Prime Time (New York: Pantheon, 1983), pp. 268–269.
LIVING ETHICALLY
1. For details on Wallenberg’s life, see John Bierman, The Righteous Gentile (New York: Viking, 1981).
2. See Thomas Kenneally, Schindler’s Ark (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982).
3. Samuel and Pearl Oliner, The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe (New York: Free Press, 1988). The cases mentioned earlier in the paragraph are taken from Kristen R. Monroe, Michael C. Barton, and Ute Klingemann, “Altruism and the Theory of Rational Action: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe,” Ethics 101 (1): 103–123 (October 1990). See also Perry London, “The Rescuers: Motivational Hypotheses About Christians Who Saved Jews from the Nazis,” in J. Macaulay and L. Berkowitz, eds., Altruism and Helping Behavior (New York: Academic, 1970); Carol Rittner and Gordon Myers, eds., The Courage to Care—Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (New York: New York University Press, 1986); Nehama Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness—Christian Rescuers of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); and Gay Block and Malka Drucker, Rescuers—Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1992).
4. Primo Levi, If This Is a Man, Stuart Woolf, trans. (London: Abacus, 1987), pp. 125, 127–128.
5. The story of Corti and Delaney is the subject of Jonathan Kwitny’s Acceptable Risks (New York: Poseidon, 1992).
6. The Blockaders, The Franklin Blockade (Hobart: Wilderness Society, 1983), p. 72.
7. Conservation News 24, 2 (April/May 1992).
8. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, bk. 7, chap. 10, reprinted in Isadore Twersky, A Maimonides Reader (New York: Behrman House, 1972), pp. 136–137.
9. R. M. Titmuss, The Gift Relationship (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971), p. 44.
10. These figures were obtained from correspondence received from the relevant bone marrow registries during June–July 1992.
11. Alfie Kohn, The Brighter Side of Human Nature (New York: Basic Books, 1990), p. 64.
12. B. O’Connell, “Already 1,000 Points of Light,” New York Times, Jan. 25, 1989, A23. (I owe this reference to Alfie Kohn, The Brighter Side of Human Nature, p. 290.) See also Time, April 8, 1991.
13. Production of aerosol-powered personal care products in 1989 declined 11 percent from 1988 levels, according to the Chemical Specialty Manufacturers Association, The Rose Sheet (Chevy Chase, Md.), Dec. 10, 1990. Vol. 11, No. 50.
14. “Doing the Right Thing,” Newsweek, Jan. 7, 1991, pp. 42–43.
15. The quotations are taken from Titmuss, The Gift Relationship, pp. 227–228.
16. E. Lightman, “Continuity in Social Policy Behaviors: The Case of Voluntary Blood Donorship,” Journal of Social Policy 10 (1): 53–79 (1981); J. A. Piliavin, D. E. Evans, and P. Callero, “Learning to ‘Give to unnamed strangers’: The Process of Commitment to Regular Blood Donation,” in E. Staub et al, eds., Development and Maintenance of Prosocial Behavior: International Perspectives on Positive Morality (New York: Plenum, 1984), pp. 471–491; J. Piliavin, “Why Do They Give the Gift of Life? A Review of Research on Blood Donors Since 1977,” Transfusion 30 (5): 444–459 (1990). For Aristotle’s views on virtue, see his Nicomachean Ethics, W. D. Ross, trans. (London: World Classics, Oxford University Press, 1959). I take the point made in this paragraph from “Giving Blood: The Development of Generosity,” unsigned article in Issues in Ethics 5, 1 (1992), published by the Santa Clara University Center for Applied Ethics, Calif.
THE GOOD LIFE
1. I used the metaphor of “the escalator of reason” in my book The Expanding Circle, p. 88; some parts of this section draw on that work. Colin McGinn made essentially the same argument in “Evolution, Animals and the Basis of Morality,” Inquiry 22: 91 (1979).
2. John Aubrey, Brief Lives, A. Clark, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1898), vol. 1, p. 332.
3. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: Harper & Row, 1944), app. 1.
4. See the writings included in “Across the Species Barrier” in this volume.
5. Karl Marx, The German Ideology (New York: International, 1966), pp. 40–41.
6. For more detailed discussion of these points, see my book Practical Ethics, 2nd ed., pp. 232–234.
7. The sources are, respectively: Gospel According to St. Matthew, 22:39; Babylonian Talmud, Order Mo’ed, Tractate Sabbath, sec. 31a; Lun Yu XV:23 and XII:2, quoted by E. Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (London: Macmillan, 1924), vol. I, p. 102; and Mahabharata, XXIII: 5571.
8. Luke, 10: 29–37.
A MEANINGFUL LIFE
1. With a lot of help from others, especially John Swindells, who became coproducer and director, the video was eventually transformed into Henry: One Man’s Way, a documentary shown on SBS-TV, Australia, on August 22, 1997. The video is available in the United States through Bullfrog Films, Oley, Pa. (1–800543–3674).
2. Joan Zacharias, “The Satya Interview: Making a Difference: An Interview with Henry Spira,” Satya, July 1995, p. 9.
3. Henry is referring to the following passage from Barnaby Feder, “Pressuring Perdue,” New York Times Magazine, November 26, 1989, p. 72: “When asked what his epitaph should be, he ponders and suggests, ‘He pushed the peanut forward.’”
ON BEING SILENCED IN GERMANY
1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979; German translation, Praktische Ethik (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984); Spanish translation, Etica Practica (Barcelona: Ariel, 1984); Italian translation, Etica Praticà (Naples: Liguori, 1989); Swedish translation, Praktisk Ethik (Stockholm: Thales, 1990).
2. Oxford: Oxford University Press/Clarendon Press, 1987.
3. Der Standard (Vienna), October 10, 1990.
4. Eine Frage des Lebens: Ethik der Abtreibung and Künstlichen Befruchtung (Frankfurt: Campus, 1990).
5. Analyse & Kritik, December 12, 1990.
6. During the period when opposition to the Wittgenstein Symposium was being stirred up, these philosophers were all described, in terms calculated to arouse a hostile response, in a special “euthanasia issue” of the Austrian journal erziehung heute (education today) (Innsbruck, 1991), p. 37.
7. Adolf Hübner, “Euthanasie diskussion im Geiste Ludwig Wittgenstein?” Der Standard (Vienna), May 21, 1991.
8. “Die krisenhafte Situation der Österreichischen Ludwig Wittgenstein Gesellschaft, ausgelöst durch die Einladungspraxis zum Thema ‘Angewandte Ethik’” (unpublished typescript).
9. Martin Stürzinger, “Ein Tötungshelfer mit faschistischem Gedankengut?” Die Weltwoche (Zurich), May 23, 1991, p. 83.
10. There is a brief account of my reasons for holding this position in Practical Ethics, chap. 7; and a much more detailed one in Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). See also Peter Singer and Helga Kuhse, “The Future of Baby Doe,” New York Review (March 1, 1984), pp. 17–22.
11. Here is a selection; many more could be added: H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., The Foundations of Bioethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); R. G. Frey, Rights, Killing and Suffering (London: Blackwell, 1983); Jonathan Glover, Causing Deaths and Saving Lives (New York: Penguin, 1977); John Harris, The Value of Life (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985); James Rachels, The End of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); and Created from Animals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Michael Tooley, Abortion and Infanticide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); and the book by Helga Kuhse to which I have already referred, The Sanctity-of-Life Doctrine in Medicine: A Critique.
12. Franz Christoph, “(K)ein Diskurs über ‘lebensunwertes Leben,’” Der Spiegel (23) (June 5, 1989).
13. “Bizarre Verquickung” and “Wenn Mitleid tödlich wird,” Der Spiegel (34): 171–176 (August 21, 1989).
14. My Animal Liberation (New York: Random House, 1975; 2nd rev. ed., New York: New York Review/Random House, 1990) had been published in Germany under the title Befreiung der Tiere (Munich: F. Hirthammer, 1982) but it was not widely known at the time. Nevertheless, Practical Ethics contains two chapters summarizing my views on animals, so the response did indicate that most of the protesters had not read the book on which they based their opposition to my invitation to speak.
15. For this reason one of the protesters, reporting on the events in a student publication, made it clear that to enter into the discussion with me was a tactical error. See Holger Dorff, “Singer in Saarbrücken,” Unirevue (Winter semester, 1989/1990), p. 47.
16. Helga Kuhse, “Warum Fragen der Euthanasie auch in Deutschland unvermeidlich sind,” Deutsche Ärzteblatt (16): 1243–9 (April 19, 1990); readers’ letters, and a response by Kuhse, are to be found in (37): 2696–704 (September 13, 1990), and (38): 2792–6 (September 20, 1990).
17. The list of books published between January 1990 and September 1991 devoted to this theme includes: C. Anstötz, Ethik und Behinderung (Berlin: Edition Marhold, 1990); T. Bastian, ed., Denken, Schreiben, Töten (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 1990); T. Bruns, U. Panselin, and U. Sierck, Tödliche Ethik (Hamburg: Verlag Libertäre Assoziation, 1990); Franz Christoph, Tödlicher Zeitgeist (Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1990); R. Hegselmann and R. Merkel, eds., Zur Debatte über Euthanasie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991); E. Klee, Durch Zyankali Erlöst (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1990); A. Leist, ed., Um Leben und Tod (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990), and O. Tolmein, Geschätzles Leben (Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag, 1990).
18. See, for instance, the way in which Rudi Tarneden, a reviewer from an association for the disabled, and very sympathetic to Christoph’s position, is drawn in the course of his review to raise such questions as: “Aren’t there in fact extreme situations of human suffering, limits to what is bearable? Am I really guilty of contempt for humanity [Menschenverachtung, a term often used in Germany to describe what I am supposed to be guilty of—P.S.] if I try to take this into account?” Rudi Tarneden, “Wo alles richtig ist, kann es auch keine Schuld mehr geben” (review of Franz Christoph, Tödlicher Zeitgeist and Christoph Anstötz, Ethik und Behinderung), Zeitschrift für Heilpädagogik 42 (4): 246 (1991).
19. In 1993 Rowahlt, a major German publisher, agreed to publish a German edition. When it was listed as “forthcoming” in the catalogue, the publisher received protests and threats, to which it eventually yielded, canceling the planned publication. The book was subsequently published in Germany by Harold Fischer Verlag of Erlangan.
20. Taz (Berlin), January 10, 1990.
21. German feminists who read Franz Christoph’s recent book (see note 17) may reconsider their support for his position; for he leaves no doubt that he is opposed to granting women a right to decide about abortion. For Christoph, “Abortion decisions are always decisions about whether a life is worthy of being lived; the child does not fit into the woman’s present life-plans. Or: the social situation is unsatisfactory. Or: the woman holds that she is only able to bear a healthy child. Whether one likes it or not: with the last example, the woman who wants an abortion confirms an objectively negative social value judgment against the handicapped” (p. 13). There is more along these lines, all in a style well suited for quotation in the pamphlets of the antiabortion movement.
This is, at least, more honest than the evasive maneuvering of Oliver Tolmein, who states in the foreword to his Geschätztes Leben that to discuss the significance of the feminist concept of self-determination in the context of prenatal diagnosis and abortion would take him “by far” beyond the bounds of his theme (p. 9). Odd, since the crux of his vitriolic attack on all who advocate euthanasia (an attack that includes, on the very first page of the book, a statement that it is necessary to disrupt seminars on the issue) is that those who advocate euthanasia are committed to valuing some human lives as not worth living.
22. R. M. Hare makes a similar point in a letter published in Die Zeit, August 11, 1989.
23. “Zur Sprengung einer Vortragsveranstaltung an der Universität,” Unipresse Dienst, Universität Zurich, May 31, 1991.
24. See, for example, “Mit Trillerpfeifen gegen einen Philosophen,” and “Diese Probleme kann and soil man besprechen,” both in Tages-Anzeiger, May 29, 1991; “Niedergeschrien,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, May 27, 1991; and (despite the pejorative headline) “Ein Tötungshelfer mit faschistischem Gedankengut?” Die Weltwoche, May 23, 1991.