"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."
You see where these people with warped minds are trying to take us. God help those who are helpless, or disfigured, or less than perfect in so many ways. They, too, will be unplugged one day.
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."
You see where these people with warped minds are trying to take us. God help those who are helpless, or disfigured, or less than perfect in so many ways. They, too, will be unplugged one day.
^^^^^^^^
This is the mindset of people who would support embryonic stem-cell research, cloning, production of designer babies, etc. Some life is definitely worth more than others.
PS: I wish we would change the expression "unplugged" as it allows a lot of people to believe that the person with a feeding tube is attached to a machine.
The NG or G-tube is independent of a machine. Food can be delivered by filling a syringe or even a funnel and putting the tip in the end of the tubing.