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An Alleged Incompetent', reprinted in B. Steinbock (ed.), Killing and
Letting Die (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1980). John Lorber describes his
practice of passive euthanasia for selected cases of spina bifida in 'Early
Results of Selective Treatment of Spina Bifida Cystica', British Medical
Journal, 27 October 1973, pp. 201-4. The statistics for survival of untreated
spina bifida infants come from the articles by Lorber and G. K.
and E. D. Smith, cited above. Different doctors report different figures.
For further discussion of the treatment of infants with spina bifida, see
Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live?, chap. 3.
Lorber's objection to active euthanasia quoted at the start of the
section 'The Slippery Slope' is from p. 204 of his British Medical Journal
article cited above. The argument that Nazi crimes developed out of
the euthanasia programme is quoted from Leo Alexander, 'Medical
Science under Dictatorship', New England Journal of Medicine, vo1.241
(14 July 1949): 39-47. Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness: From Mercy
Killing to Mass Murder (London, 1974) makes a similar claim in tracing
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Notes and References
the career of Franz Stangl from the euthanasia centres to the death
camp at Treblinka; but in so doing she reveals how different the Nazi
'euthanasia' programme was from what is now advocated (see especially
pp. 51-5). For an example of a survey showing that people
regularly evaluate some health states as worse than death, see G. W.
Torrance, 'Utility Approach to Measuring Health-Related Quality of
Life', Journal of Chronic Diseases, vol. 40 (1987): 6.
On euthanasia among the Eskimo (and the rarity of homicide outside
such special circumstances), see E. Westermarck, The Origin and
Development of Moral Ideas, vol. 1, pp. 329-34, 387, n.l, and 392, nn.
1-3.
Chapter 8: Rich and poor
The summary of world poverty was compiled from a number of sources,
including Alan B. Durning, 'Ending Poverty' in the Worldwatch Institute
report edited by Lester Brown et aI., State of the World 1990
(Washington D.C., 1990); the United Nations Development Programme's
Human Development Report 1991; and the report of the World
Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future
(Oxford, 1987). The first quotation from Robert McNamara in the
section 'Some Facts about Poverty' is from the Summary Proceedings of
the 1976 Annual Meeting of the World BankiIFCIIDA, p. 14; the following
quotation is from the World Bank's World Development Report,
1978 (New York 1978), p. iii.
For the wastage involved in feeding crops to animals instead of
directly to humans, see Francis Moore Lappe, Diet for a Small Planet
(New York, 1971; 10th anniversary ed., 1982); A. Durning and H.
Brough, Taking Stock, Worldwatch Paper 103 (Washington, D.C. 1991);
and J. Rifkin, Beyond Beef (New York, 1991), chap. 23.
On the difference - or lack of it - between killing and allowing to
die, see (in addition to the previous references to active and passive
euthanasia) Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives, chap. 7;
Richard Trammel, 'Saving Life and Taking Life', Journal of Philosophy,
vol. 72 (1975); John Harris, 'The Marxist Conception of Violence',
Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 3 (1974); John Harris, Violence and
Responsibility (London, 1980); and S. Kagan, The Limits of Morality
(Oxford, 1989).
John Locke's view of rights is developed in his Second Treatise on Civil
Government, and Robert Nozick's in Anarchy, State and Utopia (New
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Notes and References
York, 1974). Thomas Aquinas's quite different view is quoted from
Summa Theologica, 2, ii, Question 66, article 7.
Garrett Hardin proposed his 'lifeboat ethic' in 'Living on a Lifeboat',
Bioscience, October 1974, another version of which has been reprinted
in W. Aiken and H. La Follette (eds.), World Hunger and Moral Obligation
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1977). Hardin elaborates on the argument in
The Limits of Altruism (Bloomington, Indiana, 1977). An earlier argument
against aid was voiced by W. and P. Paddock in their mistitled
Famine 19751 (Boston 1967) but pride of place in the history of this
view must go to Thomas Malthus for An Essay on the Principle of Population
(London, 1798).
Opposition to the view that the world is over-populated comes from
Susan George, How the Other Half Dies, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
1977), chap. 2. See also T. Hayter The Creation of World Poverty
(London, 1981). The estimates of population in various countries by the
year 2000 are taken from the Human Development Report, 1991. For evidence
that more equal distribution of income, better education, and better
health facilities can reduce population growth, see John W. Ratcliffe,
'Poverty, Politics and Fertility: The Anomaly of Kerala', Hastings Center
Report, vol. 7 (1977); for a more general discussion of the idea of demographic
transition, see William Rich, Smaller Families through Social and
Economic Progress, Overseas Development Council Monograph no. 7
(1973); and Julian Simon, The Effects of Income on Fertility, Carolina Population
Center Monograph (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1974). On ethical issues
relating to population control, see Robert Young, 'Population Policies,
Coercion and Morality', in D. Mannison, R. Routley, and M. McRobbie
(eds.), Environmental Philosophy (Canberra, 1979).
The objection that a position such as mine poses too high a standard
is put by Susan Wolf, 'Moral Saints', Journal of Philosophy, vol. 79
(1982): 419-39. See also the 'Symposium on Impartiality and Ethical
Theory', Ethics, vol. 10 1 (July 1991): 4. For a forceful defence of impartialist
ethics see S. Kagan, The Limits of Morality (Oxford, 1989).
For a summary of the issues, see Nigel Dower, 'World Poverty', in
P. Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics. A fuller account by the same
author is World Poverty: Challenge and Response (York, 1983). For a
rights approach, see H. Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence and U.S.
Policy (Princeton, 1980); and for a Kantian approach, Onora O'Neill,
Faces of Hunger (London, 1986). A useful general collection is W. Aiken
and H. La Follette (eds.), World Hunger and MoralObligation (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J., 1977). On the efficacy of overseas aid, see R. Riddell, Foreign
Aid Reconsidered (Baltimore, 1987).
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