Peter Singer

One speaker deserves special note. That speaker is Peter Singer, the Ira DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton.
Mr. Singer is primarily a philosopher. I was previously familiar with Mr. Singer’s work from my days at BCC where I read an essay of his taken from his well known book that I believe is called “Animal Rights”. In this essay, the main thrust of his argument was that all people everywhere in the world are morally compelled to become vegans. I’m not going to go into all the things I found wrong with his arguments, except to say that I came away from the article feeling that the man was a stone’s throw away from utter lunacy, and was shocked that someone would have printed his work.
When I found out that he was speaking at this conference, I was very curious to hear him, and I must say that I was not at all disappointed. He was thoughtful, articulate, a very good orator, good speaking voice, and did a very good job of staying on target. His talk was only 20 minutes or so, and he presented a basic argument for why we should be morally compelled to help in places like Africa, where people still die from diseases that are easily preventable. (Basically, to boil it down, he took the argument that if you saw a child drowning in a pool, and you could save the child’s life, assuming the only cost to you was one of convenience, i.e., you’d ruin your shoes & pants, you should do it, because his life is worth more than your pants. Expand & extend, and you have the idea. Much of the death in Africa is easily preventable at fractional costs, therefore we in the West who have so much should do so.)
Even though I still completely disagree with him related to animals, I was glad to hear him speak, was impressed with his presentation, have a healthy amount of respect for him now. I see that I was out of line to have thought so lowly of him previously, and have been glad for the chance to have my mind changed.