Daily Telegraph (Sydney)

Sunday 3 October 1999

"Lecturer guarded"

A MELBOURNE academic is being given protection by security guards at a prestigious US
university following protests over his radical views on euthanasia.

Bioethicist Peter Singer has been besieged with protests since beginning lectures at
Princeton University two weeks ago.

He works in an unmarked office and teaches students in a guarded classroom.

The 53-year-old scholar, who once stood for the Australian Senate, has come under
fierce criticism over his view that parents should be able to have severely disabled
infants painlessly put to death.

Right-to-life groups are pressuring the Ivy League school in New Jersey to sack the
Australian.

Last week 250 protesters – many in wheelchairs – barricaded entrances to the
University’s Centre for Human Values.

Protestors have continued to follow the professor around the campus, bombarding the
university with threatening phone calls, letters and e-mails.

The appointment has become an election issue among ultra right-wing members of the
Republican Party.  Would-be presidential candidate and millionaire Steve Forbes, who
owns the Forbes publishing empire, says he will not donate another dollar to the
institution while Professor Singer remains there.

"Children’s rights"

The flaw in Professor Peter Singer’s argument (Herald, September 25) that any resources
acquired by individuals in excess of their own basic needs should be contributed to saving
destitute children is the assumption that child poverty and misery arise out of nothing
with nothing and no-one to blame.

The main moral duty in relation to child poverty and misery rests with those that cause
child poverty and misery. It is not charity, love and gentleness after the fact that is
primarily called for, but absence of greed, hate and violence before the fact.

The primary moral spin-off from this main moral duty is that the perpetrators of
actions that lead to child destitution should be prevented from committing their crimes.
The secondary moral spin-off is that poor, miserable children should be helped.

Singer’s article tries to put all the responsibility for eradicating child poverty and
misery on individuals that through industry and thrift can afford a little or a lot of
luxury. He tells them that, really, they should feel guilty and give it all away. This is
an unfair argument.

To answer Singer’s question of what the ethical distinction is between a Brazilian who
sells a homeless child to organ pedlars and an Australian who has a TV and upgrades to a
better one: enormous, as long as the upgrade is not funded through involvement in organ
peddling.

Paul Versteege, Marrickville. [Letters, Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 29 September
1999]

"An attack of guilt caused by dining out"

After reading Peter Singer’s article, "Saving Children" (Spectrum, September
25), I was immediately struck by intense guilt over last night’s $15 purchase of a
Coonawarra cabernet.

Perceiving this as an act of a profligate spendthrift, his missive stirred me into
action. I made a solemn pledge: never again shall rich and expensive fare pass these lips,
nor Armani adorn my less than emaciated frame. Henceforth, beans, rice and St Vinnies’
seconds.

Singer’s ethical superiority over us moral midgets, to a religious man like myself, was
a sign of avatar visitation. Singer’s tacitly self-proclaimed probity considerably
diminished, however, when I recalled that this same man argues that killing a 12-month-old
child is less offensive than eating a fully-grown chicken because the farmer cannot
demonstrate self-awareness.

Obviously dwelling in the rarefied Olympian moral high ground of Princeton has slowly
asphyxiated Singer’s memory of "people in glass houses". Marc Kay, Kensington.

Without detracting from Professor Singer’s analysis of the ultimate in human ethical
dilemmas – dining out in preference to saving a life – I do wonder at the practice of
those who, in making that choice, pay not only for the dinner but then make a donation – a
"tip" – to, of all places, the restaurant.

Were the practice to redirect the donation at the end of a meal to an aid organisation
– readily facilitated on any credit card slip – some, if only little, impact on lives
might be made. M.H. Murray, Balmain.

Peter Singer’s recent attempt to mitigate his middle-class guilt demands that we all
pay $300 to support children in the Third World. Mr Singer claims that we
"waste" money on non-essentials like flash dinners and new fashionable clothes,
which are supernumerary to our basic needs.

But, surely, if expenses and activities which are "above" our basic need are
seen as causing harm to Third World children, then following Mr Singer’s arguments, we
should all wear sack cloth and ashes, live in the barest of accommodation, consume the
minimum amount of resources, and receive the lowest common wage. Thus global
redistribution of wealth would occur through various relief agencies.

This latest attack on the bourgeoisie – which seeks to reduce all of the world to the
Third World – may be the ultimate solution to the "embarrassment of riches"
Peter’s middle-class upbringing has cursed him with.

Maybe Peter should stick to vegetable rights – rather than this alien corn. Richard
Gray Drummoyne.

I agree with Peter Singer that our "taste for foie gras, fast cars and foreign
holidays is starving children". Since the 1990 World Summit for Children, we’ve seen
our foreign aid decline steadily as a percentage of GDP.

In these troubled social and financial times, we need supportive programs for both the
poor of Australia and especially those throughout the world.

Some of those dollars from our proposed tax cuts would be better in the hands of the
world’s poor, through more Australian foreign aid. Cancelling Third World debt would be
another way to provide money for vital necessities like food, education and primary health
services. The deaths of 35,000 children each day are preventable. Providing money for
starving children by cancelling debt would be to our credit.

Peter Graves, Campbell (ACT). [Sydney Morning Herald, Letters: Tuesday 28 September
1999]

Decent plonk?

Marc Kay (Letters, September 28), responding to Peter Singer’s article "Saving
Children" (Spectrum, September 25) expresses immense guilt over the purchase of a $15
Coonawarra cabernet. Where does he buy a decent Coonawarra cabernet for $15?

Brian Coombe, Avalon. [ – Letters, Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 1 October 1999]