What's missing is simple. Joy-stick terrorism-coupled with overly long, clichéd, and bloody movie plots-lack moral centering without which "anything goes," even (and perhaps especially) the sanctity of human life.

Nevertheless, a few years back, an irate college student, soundly indoctrinated in postmodern thought, lamented his being "profoundly disturbed" that laboratory rats were subjected to "deplorable living conditions." As a result, animal-rights activists sued; and the Agricultural Department at Johns Hopkins University subsequently required researchers to keep tabs on tens of thousands of mice and rats.

While humans remain fair game for popularized human elimination-by-design schemes-i.e., managed death options, as abortion, euthanasia, and "the good death" (suicide)-rats apparently do not. After all, who's to say human life takes precedence over less evolved creatures of the Planet? According to publisher Joel Belz (World, 13 December 2003), there is good reason to presume that the relativistic question, "Who's to say?" is destined to settle this-and, in fact, all-ethical issues brought to the table.

Indeed, Australian born and bred PhD from Oxford University, Peter Singer, is credited with "more success in effecting changes in acceptable behavior" than any one philosopher since Bertrand Russell (New England Journal of Medicine). Both, by the way, have indelibly marked progressive state schools with their respective philosophical grids.

A soft-spoken teacher of Practical Ethics, Singer fills minds of gullible undergraduates with his decidedly atheistic and culturally extreme views. Alarmingly, The New Yorker dubs Singer the "most influential philosopher alive." Yet, lamentably, Singer affirms mutual consent as sole criterion for engaging in egregious acts of necrophilia (sex with a corpse-previously agreed to, of course), bestiality (sex with animals), and human breeding for spare parts.

In Singer's sorry economy, the value of a life varies according to subjective criteria as self-awareness and rationality. Accordingly, Singer makes little distinction between an adult chimp and a human infant-except that, given a life-or-death choice, the chimp rightly trumps the babe. Not surprisingly, Singer first became known for jump-starting the animal rights movement among the world's intelligentsia.

Founding president of the International Association of Bioethics, this seemingly kindly professor has written countless books and articles that have appeared in as many as nineteen languages. His skewed morality resonates with the mainstream media, as well as academia. Indeed, big corporations and generous alumni donors fund Singer's "ethics programs" in America's leading universities. Given the absence of legitimate debate, students readily imbibe the manifold gray hues inherent in Singer's liberally nuanced, alleged reality. The same is strategically promulgated by guilt-infused ridicule.

What then follows?: Large scale warming up to blanket acceptance of partial- and live-birth ("therapeutic") abortion; embryonic stem-cell experimentation; selling baby parts in the name of science; and cannibalizing babies to make them into medicine. While the list is endless, the salient question remains singular-that being, "Who's to say what is right or wrong?"

This philosophically charged query evades only one-in-four adults and one-in-ten teens standing as lone rangers for absolute moral truth. It was pioneer atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair who in 1963 gave rise to it by purging mandatory prayer and Bible reading-i.e., absolute truth-from public schools. Mirroring her characteristic brand of evolving truth, O'Hair engaged in marital infidelity, bore illegitimate sons, and (albeit unsuccessfully) attempted to assume Soviet citizenship at the height of the Cold War.

Herself having fallen prey to kidnappers, thieves, and murderers, the late O'Hair (if given another chance at life) might well give ear to the strong evangelical voice of her devout Presbyterian upbringing. It is unlikely that she would lightly dismiss her untimely demise-shared by her son and granddaughter-with the popularly employed one-liner, "Who's to say what is right or wrong?"

Notwithstanding, given no plumb line for truth and no right-or-wrong answers, students today readily embrace the morally relativistic and ethically defunct Malthusian Culture of Death influenced by the likes of Dr. Singer and the most unfortunate Ms. O'Hair. This regretful trend renders superfluous the sanctity of human life. But then, "Who's to say" anyway?

Copyright Debra Rae 2005 Reprinted with Permission. Rae is the author of the "ABCs of Globalism" and The Hijacking of State Schools