Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

July 16, 2009 By Fausta

Singer’s three-fifths

In today’s NYT, the article by Peter Singer, the Australian-born, pro-euthanasia, pro-infanticide resident “ethicist” at Princeton U: Why We Must Ration Health Care.

Singer can’t say in 20 words what he can say in 6,000, but I found his “human math” interesting:

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.

If you go by Singer’s “human math”, where the ratio is 6 non-quadraplegic years : 10 years with quadraplegia, then you get 3/5.

I don’t know about Singer’s native Australia, but haven’t we been at a “three fifths of all other Persons” attitude before?

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Think about it. Slavery was exactly about treating human life as a commodity that could be sold and bought by a third party. Singer is treating human life as a commodity that can be bought or sold by medical care decided by a third party.

Tammy Bruce: “For fascists, people are the budget.” So it was for slave owners.

Now, merely as an academic exercise – the kind Singer’s so fond of indulging – let’s compare 5 years of nondisabled life or 10 years with quadriplegia. Five years of Peter Singer’s nondisabled life with 10 years of Stephen W. Hawking’s quadraplegia. Which would you rather pay to extend?

———————————————

Update, In a lighter mode,
Over at the Health Administration Bureau,

And, by the way, private insurance will NOT be an option.

Another update, another video:
Paging Dr. Anil Ram

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Filed Under: Democrats, health, health care, healthcare, NYT, Princeton, Princeton University Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Peter Singer

Comments

  1. Obloodyhell says

    July 16, 2009 at 10:23 am

    > Now, merely as an academic exercise – the kind Singer’s so fond of indulging – let’s compare 5 years of nondisabled life or 10 years with quadriplegia. Five years of Peter Singer’s nondisabled life with 10 years of Stephen W. Hawking’s quadraplegia.

    I’d extend Hawking’s life over Singers’ without a moment’s hesitation, for as long as Hawking wanted to continue.

    ==============================

    “If All The World’s a Stage”, then I want to operate the trap door.

  2. Marzo says

    July 16, 2009 at 12:05 pm

    >If you go by Singer’s “human math”, where the ratio is 6 non-quadraplegic years : 10 years with quadraplegia, then you get 3/5.

    That’s not so: by Singer’s hypothetical figures, somebody choosing 6 years without quadriplegia over 10 years with quadriplegia means that those 6 years are worth (to that person!) more than those other 10 years. You never exchange equal values!

    Of course, value is subjective and non-aggregable.

  3. Karen says

    July 16, 2009 at 12:17 pm

    I am glad you brought up that article as I found it highly offensive as well. Singer is appealing to the idea that quality of life is preferable to quantity of life. I would agree, and in fact, I’d rather live a few years in freedom and die without health care than live a long life in a nanny state with no choices. I have been chronically ill and have spent years in bed, I didn’t not find that as pointless of an existence as living under tyranny.

    Singer states that he doesn’t believe that doctors should have to make decisions about who should live and who should die, that this isn’t a health care decision but a philosophical or political one and that it should be made in advance. I agree with that also. Indeed, this never has been about health care but about class warfare.

    Since most Americans do not want extraordinary care in their last years of life and wish to die a dignified death I don’t think that the argument to deny extremely expensive futile care to the elderly at tax payer expense is going to find much opposition, but perhaps Singer would be willing to discuss what he thinks should be done with extremely sick neonates and see if he garners more support. Remember, this is the man that said that argues that newborns lack the essential characteristics of personhood — “rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness” –and therefore “killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living.”

    Nationalized health care means that not only will there be a policy on denial of care for the elderly, but of all ages. With people like Singer making policy about babies what have we to fear?

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