Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18T H E S U M M E R my brother Duane turned twenty, a formidable young man stayed with us on a break from the Ivy League. He had never, to anyone’s knowledge, lost an argument. Several weeks into his visit, my mother walked into the dining room where my brother and his friend were, in theory, eating lunch. In reality, both men were sitting at the table with locked jaws. One didn’t have to say, “I need you to eat.” The other didn’t need to say, “Hell, no.” They both knew exactly what was going on: the Ivy Leaguer was losing an argument to my brother, who had never learned to speak. Duane was born healthy, as far as anyone could tell, but when he was three months old he was attacked by his first grand-mal seizure, with countless more to follow. He was diagnosed with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy, and his seizures were so brutal that the doctors didn’t think he’d live out the year. That one year turned into thirty- one and a half. Often when I tell people about my brother, I see questions in their faces: “Why was he ever born? Why put him through needless suffering? Why dedicate your family’s time and energy to a hopeless case? Why spend all that money?” These questions reflect a worldview so widely accepted today that most people don’t even realize they hold it: that of utilitarianism. Yet its principles are constantly invoked in debates over right or wrong, for instance in regard to abortion or physician-assisted suicide. Most famously advanced by John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism argues that an action is good only because it maximizes a given benefit. This school of thought’s most prominent champion today is the Australian philosopher Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University. In Singer’s version of utilitarianism – which is in many ways just an especially forthright articulation of our culture’s worldview – to act ethically means to seek to maximize the satisfaction of people’s desires. This, in Singer’s view, also means that we must seek to minimize the suffering of people unable to have or express preferences – if necessary, through terminating their lives before or after birth. People such as Duane. The Teacher Who Never Spoke M AUR E E N S W ING E R How my brother who could never walk or talk coached dozens of his peers into manhood Opposite, Federico Marcolla, Sacred Gaze Photograph from flickr.com