Ethical chic

Today's moralists want to construct rules to make them righteous without all that guilt | Gene Edward Veith

Some medical ethics experts are complaining that the government is ignoring ethical issues in its plans to deal with a potential bird-flu epidemic. The spokesman for the group? Princeton ethicist Peter Singer, champion of animal rights, euthanasia, and infanticide.

So what might the government's bird-flu policy be like if Mr. Singer, based on his professional expertise and his leadership in the field of medical ethics, became the U.S. Ethics Czar? Based on his writings, we could assume that he would stop scarce bird-flu vaccine from going to infants, since they are not fully human yet. He would also prevent it being wasted on the elderly, since they will die anyway.

And why would Mr. Singer give flu medicine to human beings at all? According to his beliefs, there are no intrinsic differences between human beings and animals. Which species is most at risk? If there is a bird-flu epidemic, Mr. Singer would probably give all the medicine to the birds.