When "bioethicist" Peter Singer moved to the United States, our loss was the rest of the world's gain. In the time Singer has been the DeCamp Professor in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton, he has continued pioneering (so to speak) new anti-life vistas.

He is best known to pro-lifers for writing that "a period of 28 days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to live as others." He added (in the book, "Should the Baby Live?"), "It does not seem wise to add to the burden on limited resources by increasing the number of severely disabled children." In a later volume Singer explained that the pool of candidates should include severe forms of spina bifida and Down syndrome.

But if we have had Peter Singer for a mere decade, England continues to have Helen Mary Warnock. The latest outrage from Baroness Warnock, a hugely influential "bioethicist" for decades, is that people suffering from dementia have a "duty to die." Baroness Warnock made her startling observations in an interview given to the Church of Scotland's magazine "Life and Work." They deserve extensive quotation.

*"If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives – your family's lives – and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service.

*"I'm absolutely, fully in agreement with the argument that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there's a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they're a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should be allowed to die.

*"If you've an advance directive, appointing someone else to act on your behalf, if you become incapacitated, then I think there is a hope that your advocate may say that you would not wish to live in this condition so please try to help her die." She added, ""I think that's the way the future will go, putting it rather brutally, you'd be licensing people to put others down."

Various advocates, such as the chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society in England, criticized the words and the tenor of the interview. But a conservative Member of Parliament, Nadine Dorries, caught the real significance of the remarks: "Because of her previous experiences and well-known standing on contentious moral issues, Baroness Warnock automatically gives moral authority to what are entirely immoral view points."

Wesley Smith may have put it best, when he commented on his blog, "Warnock's views could just as easily apply to those with developmental disabilities or those who have suffered serious brain injuries. And don't think that her views are materially different than some--although certainly not all--bioethicists here in the USA. She's just more blunt and candid."

The whole notion of a "duty to die" surfaced years ago but then went underground after a barrage of criticism. But it resurfaces time to time as a subplot of many proposals, euphemistically described as "assisting" someone to commit suicide. (See Part Three.)

Just where these proposals are taking us must be kept in mind at all times.

Please send any thoughts you have to daveandrusko@hotmail.com.