Posted on 03/29/2005 7:20:51 AM PST by MisterRepublican
My debate about Terri Schiavo’s case with Florida bioethicist Bill Allen on Court TV Online eventually got down to the nitty-gritty:
Wesley Smith: "Bill, do you think Terri is a person?"
Bill Allen: "No, I do not. I think having awareness is an essential criterion for personhood. Even minimal awareness would support some criterion of personhood, but I don't think complete absence of awareness does."
If you want to know how it became acceptable to remove tube-supplied food and water from people with profound cognitive disabilities, this exchange brings you to the nub of the Schiavo case — the “first principle,” if you will. Bluntly stated, most bioethicists do not believe that membership in the human species accords any of us intrinsic moral worth. Rather, what matters is whether “a being” or “an organism,” or even a machine, is a “person,” a status achieved by having sufficient cognitive capacities. Those who don’t measure up are denigrated as “non-persons.”
Allen’s perspective is in fact relatively conservative within the mainstream bioethics movement. He is apparently willing to accept that “minimal awareness would support some criterion of personhood” — although he doesn’t say that awareness is determinative. Most of his colleagues are not so reticent. To them, it isn’t sentience per se that matters but rather demonstrable rationality.
Thus Peter Singer of Princeton argues that unless an organism is self-aware over time, the entity in question is a non-person. The British academic John Harris, the Sir David Alliance professor of bioethics at the University of Manchester, England, has defined a person as “a creature capable of valuing its own existence.” Other bioethicists argue that the basic threshold of personhood should include the capacity to experience desire.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Would you love to be a fly on the wall if this person were ever to find himself as one of these "nonpeople"? I bet he would be singing a different tune.
We've only just beguunnnnn....
Chilling. this reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode I saw decades ago. Now it's coming true . . .
"So I guess anyone in a coma, vegetative state, or severely disabled is no longer a person entitled to any rights."
With maybe a change of law or two our United States are free to relieve themselves of the care of thousands of wards of their respective state. Which will be the first? California?
Are there any bioethicists who actually advocate ethical treatment of human beings? Just curious.
Sounds strangely close to the way the Nazis thought about people in similar life situations!
Why is it so many of these bioethicists come across as charter members of the Hemlock Society?
I always love Wesley.
Speaking of bio-ethics, Howard Stern had a Schiavo bit on his radio show this morning. He played sounds from a Humpback Whale, a moaning porno star and Terri Schiavo. Listeners were supposed to guess which was which. Classy guy that Stern.
Like everything through the leftist looking glass, ethics is upside down.
They should name it anti-ethics.
That is, indeed, where we are heading.
If this is what "Bio-ethicists" believe, they are misnamed as far as I'm concerned. They should be more aptly called "Bio-ghouls" because ghoulish behavior is where their purported "ethics" is taking us.
Yep, he never grew up. I enjoyed him two decades ago when I was much younger and his bits had some freshness and cleverness to them, but I haven't heard him in years.
I actually got upset that the FCC inquiry brought him public attention again. He's made enough money. I'd rather see him just fade away as a has-been than become a martyr. Oddly enough, the culture has caught up to him and surpassed him. I like a good laugh but there are limits.
PS So some humans are not "people?" Are we going back to the Dred Scott decision? I thought the 14th Amendment addressed that.
The animosity towards the religious right has been increasing. I notice it on several different forums I particpate on. Even on this one it has reared it's ugly head in these threads.
If this is what "Bio-ethicists" believe, they are misnamed as far as I'm concerned. They should be more aptly called "Bio-ghouls" because ghoulish behavior is where their purported "ethics" is taking us.
Nazis in our midst.
Be afraid.
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