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The President of Good and Evil by Peter Singer, Granta, 拢8.99, ISBN 1862076936 Reviewed by Mike Holderness

WHETHER discussing embryo experiments or regime change, the current US administration is wont to describe its actions in ethical and moral terms. The first address that President George W. Bush felt it necessary to make to his nation restricted research to cell lines already derived from surplus conceptuses. This was by way of answer to his question, 鈥淎re these frozen embryos human life and, therefore, something precious to be protected?鈥�

What do such declarations mean? How does Bush square his reverence for blastocysts with his enthusiasm for executing the born? These questions are a job for a philosopher and Peter Singer, of the University Center for Human Value at Princeton University, has stepped forward.

It鈥檚 hard to type Singer without prepending the word controversial. He achieves, though, the goal set by his subtitle, 鈥淭aking George W. Bush seriously鈥�, analysing at face value what Bush says 鈥� even if at times you can hear his teeth gritting. The result should disturb everyone. Some responses to this book will be depressingly predictable; particularly those that focus on Singer鈥檚 religious scepticism. Is the world well served, he asks, by leaders who simply accept as truth what some preacher-man says? Or should we prefer that governance is handled by complex beings who have understood the physicist Blaise Pascal鈥檚 wager that it is worth believing in a deity on the off chance there鈥檚 an afterlife 鈥� and have decided not to bet?

But the most upsetting feature of this book is the realisation that nowadays merely recounting with grim clarity what those in power say on the record is likely to be met with accusations of extremist alarmism. Whether your concern is with research regulation, climate change, HIV, hunger or empire, read this and recoil.