¹ We shall refer to Singer, 's book Animal Liberation (New York: Avon Books, 1977)Google Scholar and to his paper ‘All Animals are Equal’ in Regan, T. and Singer, P. (eds), Animal Rights and Human Obligations (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1976)Google Scholar. Further page references to these two works, abbreviated as A.L. and as R.S. respectively, occur parenthetically in the text. Arguments similar to the ones we discuss in this paper can be found in other papers in the Regan and Singer anthology, notably those by Feinberg, Regan and Rachels. Although we criticize Singer in this paper, we should like to acknowledge that his work has substantially affected our thinking on the issue.

² See Wilson, Edward O., Sociobiology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), especially Ch. 26.Google Scholar

³ See for example Bower, T. G. R., A Primer of Infant Development (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1977), especially Ch. 3Google Scholar; Kagan, Jerome, Change and Continuity in Infancy (New York: John Wiley, 1971), especially Ch.7.Google Scholar

⁴ See for example Kamisar, Yale, ‘Some Nonreligious Views Against Proposed “Mercy-Killing” Legislation’ Minnesota Law Review 42 (1958) 929Google Scholar; Veatch, Robert M., ‘Choosing Not to Prolong Dying’, Medical Dimensions (1972)Google Scholar; Glover, Jonathan, Causing Death and Saving Lives (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977)Google Scholar; and papers in Williams, Robert H., ed., To Live and Die: When, Why and How (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1973).Google Scholar

⁵ See for example Duff, R. S. and Campbell, A. G. M., ‘Moral and Ethical Dilemmas in the Special Care Nursery’, N. Engl. J. Med. 289 (1973), pp. 890–894CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Gustafson, James M., ‘Mongolism, Parental Desires and the Right to Life’, Perspect. Biol. Med. 16 (1973), pp. 529–557CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; McCormick, Richard A., ‘To Save or Let Die: the Dilemma of Modern Medicine’, Journal of the American Medical Association 229 (1974), pp. 172–176CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Rachels, James, ‘Active and Passive Euthanasia’, N. Engl. J. Med. 292 (1975), pp. 78–80CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Shaw, A., ‘Dilemmas of “Informed” Consent in Children’, N. Engl. J. Med. 289, 914 (1973)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Lorber, J., ‘Spina Bifida Cystica: Results of 270 Cases with Criteria for Selection for the Future’, Arch. Dis. Child. 47, 854 (1972)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Robertson, John A., ‘Involuntary Euthanasia of Defective Newborns: A Legal Analysis’, Stanford Law Review 27 (1975) 213.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

⁶ See for example Glover, , op. cit., p. 165Google Scholar. For a dissenting view, see Foot, Philippa, ‘Euthanasia’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 6 (1977), pp. 85–112.Google ScholarPubMed

⁷ See Gustafson, op. cit.

⁸ See for example Kempe, C. Henry, Silver, Henry K., and O'Brien, Donough et al. , Current Pediatric Diagnosis and Treatment (Los Angeles: Lange Medical Publications, 1978), pp. 942 ff.Google Scholar; and Forfar, and Arneil, , eds, Textbook of Paediatrics (Edinburgh and London: Churchill Livingstone, 1973), pp. 880 ff.Google Scholar

⁹ See for example Benda, C. E., Down's Syndrome: Mongolism and its Management (New York and London: Grune and Stratton, 1969).Google Scholar

¹⁰ See Hayden, Alice H. and Haring, Norris G., ‘Early Intervention for High Risk Infants and Young Children: Programs for Down's Syndrome Children’, in Tjossein, , ed., Intervention Strategies for High Risk Infants and Young Children (Baltimore: University Park Press, 1976), pp. 573–608.Google Scholar

¹¹ A stronger requirement—too strong, in our view—would be that, for a creature's continued life to be morally significant, that creature must possess the concepts of a continuing self and/or of life and death. See for example Tooley, Michael, ‘Abortion and Infanticide’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 2, no. 1 (1972)Google Scholar, and Glover, Jonathan, op. cit., pp. 157–158.Google Scholar

¹² See for example Bray, P. F., Neurology in Pediatrics (Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, 1969), pp. 135 ff.Google Scholar

¹³ McCormick, , op. cit., p. 174.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See the literature cited in note 5.

¹⁵ Regan, and Singer, , op. cit., pp. 85 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Regan, and Singer, , op. cit., pp. 215 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Wilson, , op. cit., p. 191.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Ibid., p. 190.

¹⁹ Regan, and Singer, , op. cit., pp. 202–203.Google Scholar

²⁰ A crucial question here would be how general or specific a sense should be attached to ‘obligation’. If ‘A has an obligation to do X’ means simply ‘A ought to do X’, then we would certainly assert that human beings have obligations towards animals, and that these obligations do not depend for their existence on characteristically human relations.

²¹ Wilson, , op. cit., p. 10.Google Scholar

²² Wilson, , op. cit., p. 182.Google Scholar

²³ See note 3.

²⁴ Wilson, , op. cit., p. 183.Google Scholar

²⁵ Bernstein, Basil, Class, Codes and Control (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁶ For a wealth of material, see Sebeok, Thomas, ed., How Animals Communicate (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

²⁷ According to Wilson, none of the non-human species can be said to have an economy, even among themselves (op. cit., p. 557).

²⁸ Wilson claims that there is little interspecies communication among the it non-human animals, mainly for reproductive reasons (op. cit., p. 183).

²⁹ We should like to thank Virgil Aldrich, M. P. Battin, Mendel Cohen, Peter Windt, Tom Harrison, and Stewart Richards for their advice and comments, and Carolann McClure for her typing (and appropriate non-philosophical comments).