Treating lower capacity to benefit as a priori reflects the prejudice that disabled lives are of intrinsically less value.

Some disability advocates argue that there is no real dilemma here since “capacity to benefit” is merely a cloak for the prejudice that the life of disabled person, like that of the elderly, is of intrinsically less value and deserving of less effort to preserve or improve (Asch 2001). These advocates have a point since precisely this view can be seen in the pronouncements of respectable bioethicists who do assert that the “disabled life” is fundamentally inferior (Kuhse & Singer 1985; Singe