Health knowledge made personal
 In last week'sNew York Times Magazine, Princeton Professor Peter Singer wrote a very nice obituary for Harriet McBryde Johnson, a severely disabled lawyer, with whom he had a respecful and rewarding academic relationship. In part:"I pointed out that physicians routinely withdraw life support from severely disabled newborns, and I argued that this is not very different from allowing parents to decide, in consultation with their doctors, to end the life of a baby when the child has disabilities so serious that the family believes this will be best for the child or for the family as a whole." "When I finished, Johnson, who was born with a muscle-wasting disease, spoke up. I was saying, she pointed out, that her parents should have been permitted to kill her shortly after her birth. But she was now a lawyer, enjoying her life as much as anyone. It is a mistake, she said, to believe that having a disability makes life less worth living."
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