c. 1998 Religion News Service

PRINCETON, N.J. _ Princeton University has hired a bioethicist best known in this country for his views on animal rights but who has described people with birth defects and some disabilities as “defective,” leading to national attention on his controversial writings on euthanasia.

Australian Peter Singer, 52, has been named to the Ira W. DeCamp Professorship of Bioethics at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton, and will assume his post next July.

While he is well known in the United States for his defense of animal rights, in Europe Singer has become a target for advocates for the disabled, who object to his assertion that children with birth defects have less moral value than many animals and can be euthanized.

Singer’s work rejects the sanctity of human life, a concept central to many systems of ethical and religious thought. His theories consistently challenge conventional thought on life, death and the relative value of people and animals.

“That a being is a human being, in the sense of a member of the species homo sapiens, is not relevant to the wrongness of killing it,” Singer writes in his book “Practical Ethics.” “It is, rather, characteristics like rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness that make a difference.

“Defective infants can lack these characteristics,” he continues. “Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all.”

David Oderberg, a philosophy professor at the University of Reading, England, objected to Princeton’s hiring of Singer in a recent op-ed piece in The Washington Times.

“Many academics, politicians, religious figures, advocates for the disabled and elderly and other right-thinking people have been appalled at Prof. Singer’s ideas,” Oderberg wrote. “If Princeton University believes it is advancing respect for human values by its appointment of Prof. Singer, perhaps it should examine his views a little more closely.”

Singer was picked by a search committee, whose recommendation was approved by a board of senior deans and the university’s board of trustees.

“The appointment is for his quality as a scholar, not to endorse his point of view,” said university spokesman Justin Harmon. “He is a first-rate scholar who will help the scholarly debate on these issues. No one should think that his views won’t go unchallenged here. We can anticipate that the debate will be lively.”

Harmon said Singer’s interest in euthanasia is scholarly, unlike the high-profile work of Michigan’s Dr. Jack Kevorkian in facilitating assisted suicides.

“We’re talking about a man whose interest is in the theoretical and in scholarly debate, not an activist,” said Harmon.

Singer has taught at Oxford and New York University, and is currently director of the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University in Australia. His books include “Animal Liberation” and “Rethinking Life and Death.”

In 1992, Singer was elected president of the International Association of Bioethics. He is joint editor of the journal Bioethics along with another Monash scholar, Helga Kuhse.

Activists in other countries, especially in Germany, have taken exception to Singer’s scholarship. In 1989, several of Singer’s speaking engagements in Germany were canceled after disabled rights groups repeatedly disrupted his presentations.

Religious groups have also objected to Singer’s views on the sanctity of life, a critical principle in religious objections to abortion and euthanasia.

Singer said his views have been mischaracterized by Oderberg and other critics, making it more difficult to discuss his work.

“I have sometimes had some useful dialogue, though generally with individuals rather than with groups,” Singer said. “German groups tend to refuse to get into any discussion, which I find a bit frustrating.”

He said he is optimistic that the atmosphere at Princeton would allow his work a better hearing. “I think that the Anglo-American tradition is much more open to discussion and recognizes that the suppression of opinion is not a solution to any problem.”

The chapter on euthanasia in “Practical Ethics” is an accurate summation of his views on the topic, he said.

There, Singer argues that in some instances the distinction between passively allowing a baby to die and actively euthanizing it is meaningless, and the two acts are morally equivalent.

He rejects the live birth of an infant with birth defects as a relevant criterion in deciding whether it should live. If the parents would consider aborting the child in the womb, he argues, they should be equally prepared to consider euthanasia if birth reveals an unexpected imperfection in the child.

“In discussing abortion … birth does not mark a morally significant dividing line,” Singer writes. “The line between a developed fetus and a newborn infant is not a crucial moral divide.”

DEA END MILLER