Appointment of ethicist at Princeton criticized

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 23, 1998

An Australian philosopher and ethicist is poised to begin a tenured professorship at Princeton University next fall, much to the dismay of those who oppose his views on issues such as abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.

Peter Singer, currently the head of the Center for Human Bioethics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, is to become the DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton's University Center for Human Values in the fall of 1999.

The author or editor of some 15 books and numerous articles and a frequent lecturer at colleges and universities, Singer has written in favor of killing severely disabled babies, as well as those with Down syndrome who "would need more care and attention than a normal child."

He also has said that adults who are comatose or in a persistent vegetative state "do not differ importantly from disabled infants," and their lives could be ended without their consent or that of their families.

Mary Jane Owen, executive director of the National Catholic Office for Persons with Disabilities, said Singer's approach to suffering as something to be eliminated at all costs "seems superficial" both to Catholics and to the disabled.

"His repeated projections of personal fears about suffering upon those of us with disabling conditions hardly appears scholarly," said Owen, who is herself blind with partial hearing and uses a wheelchair. "His position on life issues mirrors his less credentialed colleagues and can be summarized as `I'd rather be dead than disabled.'"

Amy Gutmann, director of Princeton's University Center for Human Values, said in a statement that Singer's "scholarly achievements are extraordinarily impressive" and that his appointment "will add enormously to our teaching and scholarly strength in these fields." By appointing Singer, "Princeton demonstrates its continuing commitment to honest, creative and open intellectual engagement with the most important issues concerning the human condition, no matter how controversial those issues may be," Gutmann added.