The ethicist/philosopher Peter Singer, now on the faculty at Princeton University, would agree with that question. Much of Singer's controversial thought is consonant with panetics. Now, just as John Warfield has identified a useful reader on the work of Foucault that is of great interest and utility for paneticists, a reader of Singer's work also been published: "Writings on an Ethical Life." It is a highly interesting and provocative body of thought and is highly recommended.

Singer suggests that all his views "have a common core. They rest on four quite simple claims:

"1. Pain is bad, and similar amounts of pain are equally bad, no matter whose pain it might be. By 'pain" here I would include suffering and distress of all kinds. This does not mean that pain of all kinds is equally bad, or that inflicting pain is always wrong. Sometimes it may be necessary to inflict pain and suffering on oneself or others. We do this to ourselves when we go to the dentist, and we do it to others when we reprimand a child or jail a criminal. But this is justified because it will lead to less suffering in the long run; the pain is still in itself a bad thing. Conversely, pleasure and happiness are good, no matter whose pleasure or happiness they might be, although doing things in order to gain pleasure or happiness may be wrong, for example, if doing so harms others.

"2. Humans are not the only beings capable of feeling pain or of suffering. Most nonhuman animals–certainly all the mammals and birds that we habitually eat, like cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens–can feel pain. Many of them can also experience other forms of suffering, for instance the distress that a mother feels when separated from her child, or the boredom that comes from being locked up in a cage with nothing to do all day except eat and sleep. Of course, the nature of the beings will affect how much pain they suffer in a given situation.

"3. When we consider how serious it is to take a life, we should take a look not at the race, sex, or species to which that being belongs, but at the characteristics of the individual being killed, for example, its own desires about continuing to live, or the kind of life it is capable of living.

"4. We are responsible not only for what we could have prevented. We would never kill a stranger, but we may know that our intervention will save the lives of many strangers in a distant country, and yet do nothing. We dot then think ourselves in any way responsible for the deaths of these strangers. This is a mistake. We should consider the consequences both of what we do and of what we decide not to do."