In a message dated 04/15/2001 11:16:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask]
writes:

> i do believe you have a point, betty.  pretty sad isn't it?

I know I'm nervous.  Hitler and the Nazi influence is probably not a bad
analogy either.  Take a look at Peter Singer.  He's in a position of great
influence with potential power under the right administration.  Why do I say
that?

Harold Shapiro, the president of Princeton University, sat on a federally
established bioethics committee as a Clinton appointee.  That was in between
the two time periods that Peter Singer came to Princeton.  The second time
Singer came was to accept a tenure position: The Ira W. DeCamp chair.
Shapiro knew what he was getting.  Singer isn't teaching statistical analysis
or random photon underwater basketweaving.  He's teaching bioethics.  He's
teaching his theories, and one of his theories is that some disabled people
aren't persons.

Singer advocates in his book, Animal Liberation, that infants under the age
of 28 days, as well as humans who are not self aware, should not be accorded
the status of "persons," nor should they be entitled to life (primates are,
however).  Moreover, he believes that parents who have infants with
disabilities under the age of 28 days should be able to have their infants
euthanized so that the family can have a normal child, thereby increasing the
happiness of that family.

"Dutch Minister 'Not Against' Suicide Pill
Very old people who are sick of life should be allowed to kill themselves
with a suicide pill, the Dutch health minister said in an interview."

That is the headline and bio for an AOL article currently running.  The
Netherlands just legalized euthanasia, although in one way or another, the
Netherlands has tolerated euthanasia for the past two decades.

The right-to-die movement is busy at work in America too, and I predict that
this nation will see the legalization of euthanasia long before disabled
people are regarded as equal.  Euthanasia is quietly tolerated now.  If that
were not true, then Jack Kavorkian would have been convicted after the first
time he gave assistance to someone who wanted to commit suicide.  He wasn't
though, and went on to kill other people, including two who's disabilities
were not life threatening, at least not at the time of their demise.

The public has never said anything about those two people.  Why would they?
They have been conditioned from the beginning of man's existence to believe
that no one with a severe disability could logically want to live.  That's
one of the reasons why so many of them patronizingly pat us on our precious
little heads.  They really believe that we don't want to live, and
congratulate us when we smile anyway.  That's beside the point though.  I
will digress, as you know.

The percentage of elderly people is increasing, and will continue to do so.
Due to disability rights legislation, we are enjoying ever increasing
visibility.  This is wonderful for elderly and disabled people, but we must
be ever mindful that we are doing all of this in a society filled with those
who believe in Darwin's survival of the fittest theory, and who have no
apparent compunction about applying that theory to the human race.

In my not-so-humble opinion, we'd better quit worrying about whether people
call us "gimps" or "persons with disabilities," and start worrying about the
people who want to kill us.  If you have a severe disability, and even if you
don't, it's important for you to realize the implications of our increasing
rates of survival, and increasing visibility, in a society that thinks we are
its drain.

I submit to you that Darwinism is synonymous with able body supremacy.


None of that scares me nearly as much, however, as coming to a list like
this, and asking for vocal support for the lives of conjoined twins, lives
that someone said should have been terminated for the betterment of society,
and not getting any.  That scares the hell out of me.

I've heard a number of people say that Gore would have been the disability
community's friend as President.  Personally, I don't think Gore is a bad
guy.  But he would have been a lot more likely to support right-to-die
legislation than Bush.  Additionally, and perhaps most immediately important,
with a major government on this planet that still subscribes (as should now
be obvious to the casual observer) to the maxim "Political power grows out of
the barrel of a gun," I want a guy like Dick Cheney close at hand.  Again
though, I digress (told ya I would).

International politics notwithstanding (even though it very much is), I
wanted to see one element that could serve to hurt us, albeit
unintentionally, out of the loop.  That is why I supported George W. Bush.  I
don't care for him, but for now I think he is the best person of the two to
have in the White House.  For disability rights purposes, I don't want the
party that loves Harold Shapiro -- who loves Peter Singer -- to be in power.
That, in conjunction with these other elements I have mentioned, might have
been a more potentially dangerous cocktail than some may realize.

Moreover, we find the environmentalist movement firmly rooted in the
Democratic party.  Where can we find more "Darwinettes" than in the
environmentalist movement?  Again I mention the survival of the fittest
theory.  Those people scare me, because they do not realize how much
influence Peter Singer has already had on the way they think.  If you go to
Amazon.com, and search "Animal Liberation," you will see that the reviews on
the first page give laud and praise to Singer, all except one, who targeted
Singer's sanction of infanticide and euthanasia.  The first review calls his
book the most important of the 20th century, and shares how it will change
the way people think about animal rights.

It has already done more than that.  Singer has been influencing the
environmentalist movement for a long time.  I haven't the proof to offer, but
I have heard that PETA based the tenets of their organization on Singer's
book, Animal Liberation.  If you pay close attention to that Amazon.com
reviews, you will see that the rave reviews on the first page make no mention
of infanticide or euthanasia.  They didn't miss reading about that, they just
missed putting it in the forefront of their thinking.

The point I am making is that when someone says some among us should die, it
is critically important that we not be silent.  It is not sufficient in a
society such as this to complain only amongst ourselves.

Someone once told me that many disabled people were afraid to speak up for
fear of what they may lose -- for fear of repercussion.  Is that not the
moment of truth for any human being?

Respectfully submitted,
Betty Alfred