In Wild Earth, Vol. 1, No. 2, a writer using the pseudonym Les U. Knight said, "The extinction of Homo sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental." As extreme as AR's "final solution" is, it nonetheless has influential advocates, such as Peter Singer.

Singer is recognized as the AR "Messiah," credited with founding the movement with the 1975 publication of his book "Animal Liberation". His sphere of influence is vast. In 1977 he was appointed to a chair of philosophy at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and subsequently became founding director of the university's Centre for Human Bioethics. He was the founding president of the International Association of Bioethics. In 1999 he became the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in Princeton's University Center for Human Values here in the U.S. His numerous books and articles on ethics, society and animal rights have been published in 19 languages worldwide. He is the author of the major article on ethics in the current edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica".

Shared outdoor experiences create wonderful and lasting bonds between young siblings. The need to take kids fishing and hunting is now more pressing than ever; the future of both the sport and the species we hunt hangs in the balance.

As impressive as his credentials may be, Singer's greatest claim to fame is a bit more insidious: He is best known as the world's most ardent advocate of infanticide.

Singer thinks that when a baby is born severely disabled, the parents should have the right to kill it up to 28 days after birth. "Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person," he writes-a belief he says is justified because infants are not self-aware, and therefore are not "people." On the other hand, Singer believes animals are self-aware, ergo, "the life of a newborn baby is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog or a chimpanzee." He says the notion that human life is sacred is a "speciesist illusion."

The venerable Dr. Singer is not alone in his beliefs. Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a New York Times article about mothers killing their babies that they should not be treated harshly under the law, because newborns are not persons and therefore do not enjoy the right to life.

Pinker notes that "several moral philosophers have concluded that neonates are not persons, and thus neonaticide should not be classified as murder."

Michael Tooley, a University of Colorado philosophy professor, wrote in his 1972 essay "Abortion and Infanticide," "An organism possesses a serious right to life only if it possesses the concept of a self as a continuing subject of experiences and other mental states, and believes that it is itself such a continuing entity." He also wrote, "If it could be shown that there is no moral objection to infanticide, the happiness of society could be significantly and justifiably increased."

It is bad enough that people with such ideas are teaching at American universities, but the contagion is spreading. According to New Jersey State Assembly candidate Sharon Hes, public middle school students in her district were given the following writing assignment:

Please respond to the following statement in at least 3 paragraphs. Choose a "for or against" point of view and defend your opinion.: When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effects on the others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him.

Although no direct connection can be proven, I mention on a point of collateral interest that the federal Birth Defects Prevention Act of 1998 authorizes $70 million for setting up a registry of infants with birth defects. The bill passed the house near-unanimously, with only Texas representatives Ron Paul and Sam Johnson voting "Nay."

New York Magazine recently crowned animal rights as "The No. 1 hip cause on the planet, eclipsing AIDS, homelessness, and other human tragedies."

On reflection, it seems that George Orwell might have been wrong in observing that, "You have to be an intellectual to believe such nonsense. No ordinary man could be such a fool."