by Joseph M. Valenzano, Jr.
Since around 1980, Peter Singer, Ph.D, a controversial professor at one of America’s most prestigious academic institutions, Princeton University, has through his lectures, writings and speeches, promoted public policy that would legalize the killing of infants born with a disability in the first month of life. More recently, on April 26, 2015 Dr. Singer on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” again rationalized the killing of infants with disabilities. Singer told Klein that health care rationing is already happening, and suggested that hospitals routinely make decisions not based on need but rather on cost. He then used this presumed practice to rationalize the killing of infants born with disabilities by arguing in support of “non-voluntary euthanisia” for human beings who Singer contends are not “capable of understanding the choice between life and death including severely disabled infants and people who through accident, illness or old age have permanently lost the capacity to understand the issue involved”
Now, I am an educated man but I cannot fathom what the phrase “non-voluntary euthanasia” means. If I strip away all the fancy Ivy League jargon, it sounds like murder to me!.
While I will fight to defend Singer’s right to express his warped opinions, because in this country our right of expression is guaranteed under the Constitution, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines paid with their sacred lives and honor to give him this right, it escapes me why Princeton University has, to this point, been unwilling to hire a bioethicist from the disability community to provide some perspective and a platform for views that contrast with those of Peter Singer. It also seems to me that this prestigious university should seriously consider creating a Disability Policy Curriculum to educate future leaders on the values of an all inclusive community.
As someone who has spent over forty years in the health care arena and who is the President & CEO of this nation’s oldest and most widely read publication serving families who care for people with disabilities, and as someone who has taught at the undergraduate and graduate school programs at some of this nation’s leading universities for over thirty five years, I would be happy to lend a hand and also to discuss these issues with Peter Singer anywhere, anytime. I invite him to participate in a discussion in the pages of our journal, Exceptional Parent, or in an on line forum on our website, to air his views with people with disabilities and those who have been serving them. I truly hope Dr. Singer accepts the invitation and embraces the opportunity to debate his views outside the hallowed halls of academia. After all, isn’t Princeton University preparing their students for the real world and the practicalities of life when they graduate? Surely there are other views than those of Dr. Peter Singer.
Joseph M. Valenzano, Jr.
President, CEO & Publisher ep Magazine (EP World, Inc.)
