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Where It All Leads: Professor Death Supports Doctor Death

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It is time to start calling Peter Singer "Professor Death."

The Princeton moral philosopher — surely a misnomer in his case — is the world’s foremost proponent of infanticide. He typically uses examples of disabled babies, but the reason he believes they can be killed is that they are supposedly not "persons." Thus, Singer has refused to state that killing a baby because she was ugly would be wrong.

Professor Death also supports euthanasia, both voluntary and non-voluntary against ill human non-persons, such as Alzheimer’s patients.

He has stated that, instead of chimpanzees, cognitively devastated people should have been used in developing the hepatitis vaccines. Not surprisingly, he advocates duty-to-die health care rationing based on invidious discrimination based on "quality of life."

Professor Death has come to the defense of his colleague in nihilism, Australia’s Doctor Death, Phillip Nitschke, who favors making suicide available for troubled teenagers and selling suicide pills in super markets.

Nitschke has had his medical license suspended for "death coaching," that is, giving active encouragement and how-to instructions to suicidal people. One such individual was a suspected murderer, who received suicide encouragement through Nitschke’s organization, learned how to get the drugs, and did the deed. 

Professor Death thinks Dr. Death’s license should not have been taken because both death colleagues believe in the dangerous concept of "rational suicide." From the story in The Age:

”I think suicide can be rational in the absence of terminal illness and I think I could find you dozens or hundreds of philosophers who would think that …"

All bow to the philosophers! Back to Singer:

"I think if you know you are going to spend the next twenty years in prison, suicide is a rational option — not for everybody, but for some people,” he said, referring to the case of Nigel Brayley, a Perth man who communicated with Dr. Nitschke before taking his own life while he was being investigated over his wife’s death.

This is Kevorkianland: K believed that anyone who wanted to die should be able to attend a clinic for that purpose. Apparently, Singer agrees:

In response to concerns about depressed people accessing Exit International information, Professor Singer said: ”I think the solution to that is to legalize voluntary euthanasia and restrict it to medical practitioners, and then Philip won’t have to do this … I think he feels he is a crusader against a law that unnecessarily restricts people’s right to die."

Who cares what he "feels"? But note, Singer believes that a man suspected of murder should be able to go to a doctor to be killed to avoid prison.

Nitschke has sold suicide bags to people he knew to be self-destructive, which was outlawed in response to my advocacy against N in Australia in 2001.

He told people how to access poison for suicide. He lied in the media about a woman who announced she was going to commit suicide under his tutelage, claiming she had terminal cancer, when she didn’t. He has encouraged and furthered the suicides of who knows how many people over the years.

Singer might think that is fine. He may think doctors should be allowed to kill. But at least as things are now, when Nitschke committed his ghoulish suicide promotion, that sure isn’t consistent with the practice of ethical medicine.

Photo: Peter Singer/Wikipedia.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.

Wesley J. Smith

Chair and Senior Fellow, Center on Human Exceptionalism
Wesley J. Smith is Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Wesley is a contributor to National Review and is the author of 14 books, in recent years focusing on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and has been honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia. Wesley’s most recent book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement.

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