Abstract
In the Netherlands, a few years ago, an observer reported on the lives of some people confined in a new kind of institution. These people were not at all impaired physically, but intellectually they were well below the normal human level; they could not speak, although they made noises and gestures. In standard institutions, they had tended to spend much of their time making repetitive movements, and rocking their bodies to and fro. This institution was an unusual one, in that its policy was to allow the inmates the maximum possible freedom to live their own lives and form their own community. This freedom extended even to sexual relationships, which led to pregnancy, birth and child-rearing.
Die Einzigartigkeit menschlichen Lebens verbietet es, Menschsein mit anderen Lebewesen, ihren Lebensformen und Interessen zu vergleichen bzw. gleichzusetzen. Vorstand der Bundesvereinigung Lebenshilfe für geistig Behinderte, Ethische Grundaussagen, Marburg, 1990. 1
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Notes
‘The uniqueness of human life forbids any comparison — or more specifically, equation — of human existence with other living beings, with their forms of life or interests.’ Board of the Federal Association ‘Lebenshilfe’ for intellectually disabled people, Ethical Foundational Statements, Marburg, 1990.
John Locke’s definition of a person is to be found in his Essay on Human Understanding, Bk.II, Ch.9, Par.29.
The description comes from Frans de Waal’s fascinating book, Chimpanzee Politics, Jonathan Cape, London, 1982.
First published in Science, and often reprinted, for example in Garrett de Bell, ed., The Environmental Handbook (Ballantine/Friends of the Earth, New York, 1970, 12–26.
ibid., 20.
ibid., 24.
For discussion of the Baby Fae case, see the six commentaries collected under the heading ‘The Subject is Baby Fae’, Hastings Center Report 15:1 (February 1985), 8-13.
See Arthur Caplan, ‘Foetuses or Infants as Organ Donors’, Bioethics 1:2 (April 1987), especially 122–124.
ibid., 128.
See J.A. Gray, ‘In Defence of Speciesism’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (1990), 22–23; ‘On Strangerism and Speciesism’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (1991), 756-757; and ‘On the Morality of Speciesism’, The Psychologist 4:5 (May 1991), 196-198.
See Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live? Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985.
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© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Singer, P. (1998). On Comparing the Value of Human and Nonhuman Life. In: Morscher, E., Neumaier, O., Simons, P. (eds) Applied Ethics in a Troubled World. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 73. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5186-3_5
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