When Murder is Okay

When is it okay to murder a human being? Most of society would say, "Never", but they don't seem to actually think that's true. And I'm just not getting it.

During World War II, a famous Nazi doctor by the name of Josef Mengele earned the nickname "the Angel of Death". He, of course, didn't see himself that way. He was merely a doctor, working for the good of his country and his people. Dr. Mengele used men, women, and children from the Nazi death camps for his experiments. He put them in pressure chambers, froze them to death, performed surgeries without anesthesia, tested isolation endurance, experimented with blood transfusions, injected them with lethal bacteria, and removed organs and limbs. But it was all right, because he was simply trying to figure out ways to save soldiers in the field or test the human ability to withstand conditions or further the field of medical science. How effective were the German incendiary weapons? Try them out on some of their Jewish prisoners. How high can a pilot fly? Put some prisoners in low-pressure chambers and find out when they die. How do you treat the soldiers on the Russian front who have been subjected to extreme cold? Freeze some prisoners and experiment. Can we make drinkable water out of salt water? Try it out and then give it to some prisoners. How effective are the malaria immunizations? How do you treat victims of a gas attack? Simply inflict the problem on some of your millions of prisoners and then see if you can treat them. All in the name of science.

Well, we know better than that. Mengele was a monster. The world knows that. You can't torture and kill little children even for the advancement of medicine. Or can you?

Peter Singer is a philosophy professor specializing in bioethics. On one hand, Dr. Singer is an avid animal rights advocate. He argues against "speciesism", the belief that humans are more valuable than animals. He thinks they should have equal rights with humans, another animal species. On the other hand, he advocates that humans shouldn't have any more rights than animals. The upshot of his view is this: If it furthers the welfare of others, it is acceptable to use humans to experiment on and even kill in the experimentation. He advocates using not only embryonic stem cells, but the disabled, very young, or very old for this advancement of medicine.

Singer's ideas suffer from many problems, perhaps, but they don't have the problem that most like him have: inconsistency. Singer is clearly wrong, but he is consistent. The standard "pro-choice" activist doesn't have that to commend him.

In a commercial against the incumbent senator here, his opponent bemoans the fact that John Kyl wants to make abortion illegal. He assures us, "I support a woman's right to make her own medical decisions." And the point is missed entirely. It's not a "medical decision" to murder an unborn child. In Missouri and here in Arizona, political ads are hitting the airways about how it's wrong to block embryonic stem cell research. Some of these ads are catching some real press. But they're not answering the question: When is it okay to murder a human being? Is Mengele right? Is it okay if it advances medicine? Is Singer right? The majority may approve of infanticide in the case of the unborn, but they're not answering the question. Why stop at the unborn? What makes their lives less valuable? Singer holds that the right to life is tied to one's ability to feel pain and participate in planning your own future. Animals, then, cannot be killed for food because they feel pain and live their lives. But the severely disabled can't participate in the planning of their future, so they can be used for medical research. On what possible basis can the "pro-choice" side disagree with Dr. Singer? Why is "birth" the artificial line drawn to say "You can kill them prior to this event in their lives, but not after"? When is it okay to murder a human being?