Clarifying View of Bioethicist

The recent article on Peter Singer [“The Philosopher as Provocateur,” Jan. 8] does not accurately reflect my estimation of Peter Singer’s place in the field of bioethics and in the debate over the value and quality of life of people with disabilities. I did not mean to say that Peter Singer and Jack Kevorkian are doing the same thing; the only way Singer can be compared with Kevorkian is in their questioning of the quality of life of people with disabilities. Singer puts forth proposals about infants and is not assisting in the deaths of adults. What I tried to say is that Singer is only one person in the field of bioethics and that many others of equal or greater prominence in the field share portions of his views. I said that the media should cease focusing on him and spend time examining the merits or problems with his beliefs about life with disability. It is his views, and those of many others in bioethics, that need to be discussed, not Peter Singer the person. Singer is not the only well-known bioethicist to have limited knowledge of the lives of people with disabilities and not the only person to share the erroneous belief that their lives are of lower quality and of less value to themselves and others than are the lives of those who are not disabled.

ADRIENNE ASCH, PhD

Henry R. Luce Professor in Biology,

Ethics, and the Politics of Human

Reproduction, Wellesley College

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