Beware of bioethicists: Many are Nazi like in their disdain for human life

Not all bioethicists are bad.  If you want advice on end of life issues go to the National Catholic BioEthics Center; they have trained staff waiting to help you do what's right.

But most if not all secular bioethicists are dangerous at best. They tend to define ethical is whatever saves the government and families money.

The most recent example of why you can't trust them is that Princeton Professor Peter Singer--a rock star in the bioethics world--has said that molesting a mentally disabled person isn't that big a deal because they don't know what's going on.

The case is about a Rutgers bioethicist, Anna Stubblefield, assaulted a thirty year old man with cerebral palsy, DJ.  She claimed to have managed to get DJ to talk, he'd never said a word in his life, using a highly controversial technique called "facilitated communication" which involved holding his hands while he allegedly typed.

Stubblefield then announced that DJ had said that he was in love with her. They married and consummated the marriage.  The jury thought otherwise and Stubblefield was sentenced to 12 years in prison for sexual assault.

Irrespective of your opinion about that Peter Singer's position on the issue is morally horrifying.

In an editorial in the New York Times, where else?, Singer and coauthor Jeff McMahan said:

“If we assume,” they write, “that he is profoundly cognitively impaired, we should concede that he cannot understand the normal significance of sexual relations between persons or the meaning and significance of sexual violation. In that case, he is incapable of giving or withholding informed consent…”

Now moral people would conclude from that that in fact a serious violation of DJ's rights had occurred.

After all isn't the whole idea of statutory rape that a mentally mature adult taking advantage of a person whose mental faculties aren't yet fully developed and hence is incapable of fully informed consent is a heinous crime?

But that's not what Singer thought.

The op-ed goes on to say that since DJ probably enjoyed the experience it wasn't that serious of a crime and that the sentence was too severe.

This is consistent with previous proclamations by Singer that animals are equal if not better than people:

“To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give preference to those who are members of their race.”

Singer also supports infanticide since in his mind babies aren't persons.  

For me, the knowledge that my [hypothetical Down] child would not be likely to develop into a person whom I could treat as an equal, in every sense of the word, who would never be able to have children of his or her own, who I could not expect to grow up to be a fully independent adult, and with whom I could expect to have conversations about only a limited range of topics would greatly reduce my joy in raising my child and watching him or her develop.

“Disability” is a very broad term, and I would not say that, in general, “a life with disability” is of less value than one without disability. Much will depend on the nature of the disability.

But let’s turn the question around, and ask why someone would deny that the life of a profoundly intellectually disabled human being is of less value than the life of a normal human being. Most people think that the life of a dog or a pig is of less value than the life of a normal human being.

On what basis, then, could they hold that the life of a profoundly intellectually disabled human being with intellectual capacities inferior to those of a dog or a pig is of equal value to the life of a normal human being? This sounds like speciesism to me, and as I said earlier, I have yet to see a plausible defence of speciesism. After looking for more than forty years, I doubt that there is one.

Given that Singer is a highly respected figure in the bioethics community tells us just why we should never trust a word that they say.

Like the Nazi's Singer and many others bioethicists judge the value of human life based on its utility.

Americans on the other hand follow our Declaration of Independence that states that all people are of value simply because they are people.