“In the first edition of this book, I rejected this view on the grounds that it requires us to think that bringing a being into existence confers a benefit on that being—and to hold this, we must believe that it is possible to benefit a nonexistent being. This, I thought, was nonsense. But now I am not so sure. (My unequivocal rejection of this view is, in fact, the only philosophical point made in the earlier edition on which I have changed my mind.) After all, most of us would agree that it would be wrong to bring a child into the world if we knew, before the child was conceived, that it would have a genetic defect that would make its life brief and miserable. To conceive such a child is to cause it harm. So can we really deny that to bring into the world a being who will have a pleasant life is to confer on that being a benefit? To deny this, we would need to explain why the two cases are different, and I cannot find a satisfactory way of doing that.20…” (Peter Singer, Animal Liberation)