Good riddance to a warped philosopher-that was the gist of many newspaper headlines when Peter Singer left Australia for Princeton University earlier this year, only to be welcomed by protesters waving placards that branded him a murderer and a Nazi. Why? It all started some 25 years ago with Animal Liberation, in which Singer created a moral framework for the modern animal rights movement. Then, as now, Singer argued that giving humans special status is outmoded 鈥渟peciesism鈥� on a par with racism or sexism. Over the years, Singer, a passionate believer in euthanasia, has also repeatedly questioned the idea that human life should be sustained at all costs via, for example, life-support systems. But his most shocking argument is that it鈥檚 not wrong for parents to kill severely disabled infants. Nell Boyce asked Singer how he was surviving in the US.
How do you cope when protesters call you a Nazi who supports killing the sick and disabled?
Let鈥檚 not get too carried away. There鈥檚 only been one protest since my arrival in the US-I think there may have been one or two before. And these protests have their good side as well. Certainly everyone knows that I鈥檝e arrived in the country and that gives me the opportunity to talk about things that I want to talk about.
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You鈥檝e said that research on a chimp can only be justified when the experiment is so important that the use of a brain-damaged human would also be justifiable. So would it be OK to use brain-damaged humans?
You would have to look at it on a case by case basis. I wouldn鈥檛 absolutely rule it out. The point of what I said is that we are just incredibly more protective of human beings than we are of non-human animals. Getting people to make that comparison makes you think about what kind of case for experimentation would be strong enough for us to say, yes we really are prepared to do that on a brain-damaged human. I was wanting to say: 鈥淒o you think that the cases in which you would defend experimentation on chimpanzees, say, are really that strong?鈥�
Do you feel that any of your ideas have been misrepresented?
My views regarding euthanasia for disabled infants. The misrepresentation is of various kinds but it usually comes from taking a sentence or two from Practical Ethics, which is written as a textbook, and suggesting that this is my view or that it should immediately be put into practice as public policy, or something of that sort. Very often what I am doing is following the implications of various ethical views and getting students to think about whether they accept these implications.
But haven鈥檛 you argued that parents should be allowed to kill a disabled infant or even one with a treatable disease such as haemophilia if it allows them to have a child with a greater chance of happiness?
Haemophilia is one of the misrepresented examples I was referring to. It was taken from Practical Ethics and I was developing the implications of a particular view of utilitarianism to get people to think about that. I wasn鈥檛 suggesting as a matter of public policy that parents should be allowed to kill infants with haemophilia. Haemophilia is not such a disastrous condition, and if parents felt that they were unable to cope with it, there would be adoptive parents who would be prepared to do so. But there will be cases where I think parents in consultation with their doctors should be allowed to kill a child whose prospects for a minimally decent life are very poor. And you鈥檙e right to say that it鈥檚 not easy to make those decisions. All you can do is try to gather as much information as you can about the prospects of the child. It鈥檚 been pointed out to me by some of the disability advocacy groups that doctors may not be very well informed, may have biases or prejudices against people with disabilities, and I think that the disability organisations themselves should have a role to play informing parents who have a child born with disabilities. In the end, I still think it should be possible for parents to make that decision.
As a pioneer of the modern animals rights movement, how do you now feel about activists sending scientists razor blades through the post?
It bothers me a great deal. I think that it鈥檚 a deplorable thing to do. It risks serious damage to the movement because the movement鈥檚 strength is the fact that it takes a strong moral stand and that it has a really moral case. By using these tactics, the risk is that the movement will be seen simply as crazy terrorists trying to force their views on other people.
You no doubt receive hate mail because of the way your views have been represented. Have you taken any specific security measures since moving to the US?
Yes, there have been a few threatening letters, and I have been taking some precautions, but I鈥檇 prefer not to go into details.
In your moral equations, you talk about a creature鈥檚 capacity for rationality, empathy and self-awareness. Why do you pick these characteristics to assess the relative worth of humans and other animals?
Let me rephrase what it is that I use these characteristics for. It鈥檚 not exactly the worth of humans and other animals, it鈥檚 the question of what makes it really serious to kill a being without its consent. There has to be something, unless we鈥檙e going to revise our intuitions even more radically than I鈥檇 like to, that makes it worse to kill a normal human being than to kill either a plant or some simpler forms of animal life. That can鈥檛 be, in my view, simply the fact that the human is a member of the species Homo sapiens. So if it鈥檚 not going to be that, it looks like it will have to be some specific mental capacities that normal humans have and that plants and at least some animals don鈥檛 have. I think the ones that most plausibly relate to the wrongness of killing are capacities that make it possible for the being to live its life from the inside, not just moment by moment but over a period of time. I see those as significant for the wrongness of killing. I reject the idea that they鈥檙e sort of determinant of the worth of a being. Even if it鈥檚 not self-aware, it鈥檚 still wrong to make it suffer.
Has your experience with your mother, who is profoundly disabled with Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, influenced your views about creatures with a limited capacity for self-awareness?
I couldn鈥檛 say that it鈥檚 totally unrelated, but I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 had an impact. My mother is not suffering pain from her condition, because she lacks the self-awareness that would lead her to suffer from it. So it鈥檚 not like the cases of euthanasia that I鈥檝e written about.
Years ago, an infant was born in Bloomington, Indiana, with both Down鈥檚 syndrome and a defective digestive tract which the parents decided not to surgically correct, so the child died. Are similar decisions being made now to kill infants through neglect?
Probably there would be the attitude now that people with Down鈥檚 syndrome can still have good lives and that parents should be encouraged to allow surgery even if they are going to give the child up for adoption. But certainly those decisions still get made in other cases where the conditions are more related to suffering of various kinds, more severely disabling. In the US, there probably is on the whole much more aggressive treatment of these cases than there would be in Britain or Australia.
Are you satisfied with the situation?
No, I鈥檓 not satisfied. I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 a good situation because the law doesn鈥檛 really clarify what doctors are entitled to do. There are certain things going on that are legally dubious but which may be right. The fact that it goes on in that somewhat secretive way is not a good thing, because it means that doctors and parents can鈥檛 be totally open.
What projects are you working on these days?
I am completing something that is completely different, a book about my grandfather, who lived in Vienna from the late 19th century until the Holocaust. I find it fascinating to go back to that period and piece together the life of a man I never knew. I鈥檓 getting close to the end of it now. That, plus the move to Princeton, has made it a good time to stop and decide what I really want to be working on next. I鈥檒l probably do something relating to genetics. I鈥檓 also interested in some of the global issues, like justice and world hunger.
Your grandfather and other members of your family died in the Holocaust. When people call you a Nazi, do you ignore it, or do you worry that some of your ideas may have unforeseen consequences?
I find the throwing around of the Nazi accusation pretty offensive. It sadly trivialises the enormity of the Nazi crimes. It鈥檚 just absurd, and I know that I come from a totally different political direction. But do I reflect on the idea that some of the things I鈥檝e said could lead in a direction that would not be a force for good? Yes, certainly. But I don鈥檛 think the right answer is to say: 鈥淲ell, we must not challenge the traditional ethic of the sanctity of human life鈥�, even though we can see that it鈥檚 actually founded on fictions or outmoded views of the world. I think that if you try to cover up the cracks in the ethic, you鈥檙e more likely to get a major crash in the long run.
What kind of crash?
The traditional ethic of the sanctity of life is being eroded on all sides by practices related to medical technology, such as advanced life support systems. In future, we may end up paying lip service to the ethic. Eventually people could simply abandon it but they won鈥檛 have anything else to put in its place. The result could be a complete confusion about what might make killing wrong in any circumstances. What I鈥檓 trying to suggest is the traditional ethic is not sustainable. There are other ways of looking at the wrongness of killing which show why killing is wrong in, for example, the case of any self-aware being who wants to go on living. A principle like that, widely understood, is more likely to be successful in preventing things like the Holocaust than sticking to an ethic that really only makes sense within the context of a Judaeo-Christian world view.