Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Richard Dawkins: 'immoral' not to abort if foetus has Down's syndrome
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/21/richard-dawkins-immoral-not-to-abort-a-downs-syndrome-foetusThe scientist Richard Dawkins has become embroiled in another Twitter row, claiming it would be “immoral” to carry on with a pregnancy if the mother knew the foetus had Down’s syndrome.
The British author made the comment in response to another user who said she would be faced with “a real ethical dilemma” if she became pregnant and learned that the baby would be born with the disorder.
Dawkins tweeted: “Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”
He faced a backlash for his comment, with one mother, who has a child with the genetic condition, saying: “I would fight till my last breath for the life of my son. No dilemma.”
The British author made the comment in response to another user who said she would be faced with “a real ethical dilemma” if she became pregnant and learned that the baby would be born with the disorder.
Dawkins tweeted: “Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”
He faced a backlash for his comment, with one mother, who has a child with the genetic condition, saying: “I would fight till my last breath for the life of my son. No dilemma.”
11 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
The idea of live and let live . . . totally lost on him.
Has he made statements like this before? Perhaps this is just the one thing that bothers him about human beings? I dunno - not a student of his work . . . but I honestly- I wouldn't trade my cousin Felicia's daughter for the world. He might not think we are right for loving her - but he doesn't have to be in our family. 
We aren't holding a gun to his head and making him accept her - so I suppose he has the right to his opinion.
Still - Live and let live. He shouldn't be worrying about what anyone else is doing as long as we aren't forcing him to do something he feels is morally wrong.
http://www.notdeadyet.org/2009/07/peter-singer-in-ny-times-disabled-lives.html
The New York Times, which seems to be absolutely enthralled with Peter Singer, has a long essay written by him in its magazine section right now – and which will be in Sunday’s edition.
Titled “Why We Must Ration Health Care,” it’s a complex discussion of public policy and health care drawing on a multitude of facts, statistics, surveys and studies.
Complex, that is, until he gets to a certain segment of the population. Then he relies solely on the “hypothetical.” That segment of the population would be people with disabilities, of course:
Health care does more than save lives: it also reduces pain and suffering. How can we compare saving a person’s life with, say, making it possible for someone who was confined to bed to return to an active life? We can elicit people’s values on that too. One common method is to describe medical conditions to people — let’s say being a quadriplegic — and tell them that they can choose between 10 years in that condition or some smaller number of years without it. If most would prefer, say, 10 years as a quadriplegic to 4 years of nondisabled life, but would choose 6 years of nondisabled life over 10 with quadriplegia, but have difficulty deciding between 5 years of nondisabled life or 10 years with quadriplegia, then they are, in effect, assessing life with quadriplegia as half as good as nondisabled life. (These are hypothetical figures, chosen to keep the math simple, and not based on any actual surveys.) If that judgment represents a rough average across the population, we might conclude that restoring to nondisabled life two people who would otherwise be quadriplegics is equivalent in value to saving the life of one person, provided the life expectancies of all involved are similar.
Titled “Why We Must Ration Health Care,” it’s a complex discussion of public policy and health care drawing on a multitude of facts, statistics, surveys and studies.
Complex, that is, until he gets to a certain segment of the population. Then he relies solely on the “hypothetical.” That segment of the population would be people with disabilities, of course:
Health care does more than save lives: it also reduces pain and suffering. How can we compare saving a person’s life with, say, making it possible for someone who was confined to bed to return to an active life? We can elicit people’s values on that too. One common method is to describe medical conditions to people — let’s say being a quadriplegic — and tell them that they can choose between 10 years in that condition or some smaller number of years without it. If most would prefer, say, 10 years as a quadriplegic to 4 years of nondisabled life, but would choose 6 years of nondisabled life over 10 with quadriplegia, but have difficulty deciding between 5 years of nondisabled life or 10 years with quadriplegia, then they are, in effect, assessing life with quadriplegia as half as good as nondisabled life. (These are hypothetical figures, chosen to keep the math simple, and not based on any actual surveys.) If that judgment represents a rough average across the population, we might conclude that restoring to nondisabled life two people who would otherwise be quadriplegics is equivalent in value to saving the life of one person, provided the life expectancies of all involved are similar.
And yet he's rah-rah pro-animal rights. 
