Now that the redoubtable philosopher Peter Singer has weighed in on the Ashley Treatment, one must ask the question: "When is it admissable to skip the first rule of medicine?" Singer's defense of the procedure in which a mentally impaired child was subjected to invasive surgery and hormone therapy in order to keep her small, in the name of her parents' convenience, relies on the notion that critics, who claim the treatment is "unnatural" are simply missing the point–nothing medical is natural and no one should imagine that utilitarian thinking is in any way reducible to matters of nature. This is what one expects from a Benthamite: an easy shrug, a simple moue of weariness, for after all, disability is itself a tabula rasa for medicine, a field of experimentation, and not much more. On the matter of what constitutes "harm"–the concerns of medical ethicists that removing a girl's breast buds and uterus and subjecting her to hormone treatments for the rest of her life–that's tossed aside by Mr. Singer. The first rule of medicine is conditional in Singer's world. What's interesting is Singer's weak conception of human health–his position is subborned by his unacknowledged metaphorization of disability as a pejorative and hence, inconvenient circumstance. Utilitarianism indeed. That I do not care for Singer's position is of course no surprise. That I think his intellectual acumen is fading is worth saying. His capacity for ethical assessment is fading, and it wasn't particularly muscular even twenty years ago.
Planet of the Blind 
Thank you for this post. I was unaware of this.
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