Here is a link to a blog post by Wesley Smith discussing a recent interview with Peter Singer. In the interview, Singer repeats his controversial views that intellectually disabled human beings are less valuable than certain animals. Any other view, Singer states, is to engage in speciesism, that is, to prefer humans over other species.
Here is Smith’s response:
“But human beings and animals do not inhabit the same moral realm. It is not wrong or discrimination to view and treat us differently than we do them.
Moreover, the very concept of “speciesism”–-used liberally in animal rights activism and bioethics–-is inherently and invidiously anti-human because it reduces us to so many carbon molecules with no inherent value beyond our cognitive capabilities at the moment of measurement….[Smith continues], speciesism philosophy, like utilitarianism, makes universal human rights impossible to sustain intellectually. Assuming such utilitarian values would destroy the principles of Western Civilization.”
Richard Myers
Richard S. Myers, the Vice-President of UFL, is Professor of Law at Ave Maria School of Law, where he teaches Antitrust, Civil Procedure, Conflict of Laws, Constitutional Law, and Religious Freedom. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Kenyon College and earned his law degree at Notre Dame, where he won the law school's highest academic prize. He began his legal career by clerking for Judge John F. Kilkenny of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Myers also worked for Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Washington, D.C. He taught at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law before joining the Ave Maria faculty. He is a co-editor of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives (Catholic University of American Press, 2004) and a co-editor of Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy (Scarecrow Press, 2007). He has also published extensively on constitutional law in law reviews and also testified before Congressional and state legislative hearings on life issues.
Married to Mollie Murphy, who is also on the faculty at Ave Maria School of Law, they are the proud parents of six children - Michael, Patrick, Clare, Kathleen, Matthew, and Andrew. http://www.avemarialaw.edu/index.cfm?event=faculty.bio&pid=11705E7D4E0111010366
