Peter Singer has seen the future, and it does not include the sanctity of life. To be more specific, Singer presents his argument about the future in a forum published in the September/October 2005 edition of Foreign Policy. The magazine asked a number of leading intellectuals to suggest what ideas, institutions, and features of contemporary life will be left behind as human beings rush into a bold new future. As Peter Singer sees it, confidence in the sanctity of human life must be abandoned in order for humanity to be redefined in the new millennium.

Singer is no stranger to controversy, of course. He currently serves as Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. The very fact that Peter Singer holds a distinguished chair in the field of bioethics at a major American university should signal all morally sensitive persons that the world of academia is in big trouble.

Singer attracted international attention and controversy with the publication of his 1975 book, Animal Liberation. Then a professor at LaTrobe University in Canada, Singer argued that the concept of animal species is, in itself, "as irrelevant to moral status as race or sex." As he explained his own position, Singer argued that "all beings with interest are entitled to equal consideration." In other words, animals should be accorded equal rights with human beings, and the very fact that an individual is a member of the species Homo sapiens does not mean that individual is entitled to human rights and the presumption of a right to live. In other words, every human being is not necessarily a human person.

"During the next 35 years, the traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological, and demographic developments," Singer asserts in his Foreign Policy essay. "By 2040, it may be that only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists will defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is sacrosanct."

Looking over the last several months, Singer argues that the year 2005 "may be seen as the year in which that position [the sanctity of human life] became untenable." In his view, controversy over embryonic stem cell research, the acceptance of human cloning experiments by South Korean scientists, and the tortuous controversy over Terri Schiavo, may lead to a basic change in American public opinion. Singer believes that technological developments will "drive this debate" and lead to a new understanding of the human organism--an understanding that accepts a basic distinction between a human body and a human person. "Hence, a decision to remove the feeding tube will be less controversial, for it will be a decision to end the life of a human body, but not of a person," he explains.

Singer is also confident that the acceptance of euthanasia in Europe--including the euthanasia of newborns, young children, and the elderly--will lead to a growing acceptance in the United States. "As we approach 2040, the Netherlands and Belgium will have had decades of experience with legalized euthanasia, and other jurisdictions will also have permitted either voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide for varying lengths of time." Thus, "This experience will puncture exaggerated fears that the legalization of these practices would be a first step toward a new holocaust. By then, an increasing proportion of the population in developed countries will be more than 75 years old and thinking about how their lives will end. The political pressure for allowing terminally or chronically ill patients to choose when to die will be irresistible."