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Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the slippery slope: once we allow doctors to kill patients, we will not be able to limit the killing to those who want to die.

Peter Singer

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Peter Singer
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: July 6
Philosopher
Politician
Professor
Writer
Melbourne
Australia
Peter Albert David Singer
Peter A. D. Singer
Allow
Voluntary
Argument
Patients
Limits
Influential
Kill
Arguments
Dies
Limit
Slope
Able
Doctors
Euthanasia
Patient
Slopes
Killing
Slippery

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Marx saw that capitalism is a wasteful, irrational system, a system which controls us when we should be controlling it. That insight is still valid but we can now see that the construction of a free and equal society is a more difficult task than Marx realized.
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More often there's a compromise between ethics and expediency.
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I suppose what's happened recently has confirmed suspicions I voiced in the book, and I think made clearer some of those things that I point out. For instance I have a section of the book where I talk about the possibility of torture.
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We have a new generation of very rich people who want to do more with their money than buy a lot of expensive toys. They want to live meaningful lives.
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Somebody who eats twice as much factory-farmed products as he or she needs to is clearly doing twice as much damage to the planet. From a utilitarian point of view, that's twice as bad.
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Scholars have long dreamed of a universal library containing everything that has ever been written.
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We should give the same respect to the lives of animals as we do to the lives of humans.
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If we are prepared to take the life of another being merely in order to satisfy our taste for a particular type of food, then that being is no more than a means to our end.
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Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all.
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Ethics seems a morass which we have to cross, but get hopelessly bogged in when we make the attempt.
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Of course, infanticide needs to be strictly legally controlled and rare - but it should not be ruled out, any more than abortion.
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As we realize that more and more things have global impact, I think we're going to get people increasingly wanting to get away from a purely national interest.
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In appropriate circumstances we are justified in using humans to achieve goals (or the goal of assisting animals).
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The Internet, like the steam engine, is a technological breakthrough that changed the world.
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When children see animals in a circus, they learn that animals exist for our amusement. Quite apart from the cruelty involved in training and confining these animals, the whole idea that we should enjoy the humiliating spectacle of an elephant or lion made to perform circus tricks shows a lack of respect for the animals as individuals.
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I think ethics is always there it's not always a very thoughtful or reflective ethics.
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Will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible?
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It is a mistake to assume that the law should always enforce morality.
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Those who purchase meat, fur, and leather have no right to be shielded from the sights and sounds of the slaughterhouses from which these products were produced.
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No consideration at all is given to the interests of the pests - the very word pest seems to exclude any concern for the animals themselves. But the classification pest is our own, and a rabbit that is a pest is as capable of suffering, and as deserving of consideration, as a white rabbit who is a beloved companion animal.
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