Here is a link to a blog post by Wesley Smith discussing a recent interview with Peter Singer. In the interview, Singer repeats his controversial views that intellectually disabled human beings are less valuable than certain animals. Any other view, Singer states, is to engage in speciesism, that is, to prefer humans over other species.
Here is Smith’s response:
“But human beings and animals do not inhabit the same moral realm. It is not wrong or discrimination to view and treat us differently than we do them.
Moreover, the very concept of “speciesism”–-used liberally in animal rights activism and bioethics–-is inherently and invidiously anti-human because it reduces us to so many carbon molecules with no inherent value beyond our cognitive capabilities at the moment of measurement….[Smith continues], speciesism philosophy, like utilitarianism, makes universal human rights impossible to sustain intellectually. Assuming such utilitarian values would destroy the principles of Western Civilization.”