Wesley J. Smith
Lawyer and award winning author, Wesley J. Smith, is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. He is also a consultant to the Patients Rights Council. In May 2004, because of his work in bioethics, Smith was named one of the nation’s premier expert thinkers in bioengineering by the National Journal. In 2008, the Human Life Foundation named him a Great Defender of Life for his work against assisted suicide and euthanasia.
Smith left the full-time practice of law in 1985 to pursue a career in writing and public advocacy. He is the author or co-author of thirteen books. His Human Exceptionalism blog, hosted by National Review, is one of the premier blogs dealing with human life and dignity.
Smith’s latest book is The War on Humans (Discovery Institute Press, 2014) in which he investigates the views of anti-human activists who want to grant legal rights to animals, plants, and “Mother Earth,” and who want to reduce the human population by up to 90 percent.
His previous book was A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement, a searing critique of the ideology and tactics of the animal liberation movement and a rousing defense of the unique importance of human exceptionalism.
Smith’s book Forced Exit: Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide and the New Duty to Die (1997, Times Books), a broad-based criticism of the assisted suicide/euthanasia movement, has become a classic in anti-euthanasia advocacy and is now in its third edition, published by Encounter Books in 2006. Smith’s Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, a warning about the dangers of the modern bioethics movement, was named one of the Ten Outstanding Books of the Year and Best Health Book of the Year for 2001 (Independent Publisher Book Awards). Smith also wrote Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World, in which he explored the morality, science, and business aspects of human cloning, stem cell research, and genetic engineering. Smith is also a member of the editorial advisory board of Christian Bioethics, published by Oxford University Press.
He formerly collaborated with Ralph Nader, co-authoring four books with the consumer advocate. In addition, Smith co-authored (with Eric M. Chevlen, M.D.), Power Over Pain: How to Get the Pain Control You Need.
Smith has published hundreds of articles and opinion columns on issues such as the importance of being human (human exceptionalism), assisted suicide, bioethics, the morality of human cloning, the dangers of the animal-rights movement, anti-humanism within radical environmentalist advocacy, legal ethics, medical ethics, and public affairs. His writing has appeared nationally and internationally in Newsweek, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, the Weekly Standard, National Review, The Age (Australia), The Telegraph (United Kingdom), Western Journal of Medicine, and the American Journal of Bioethics. He has also been published in regional publications throughout the U.S. and internationally in newspapers in the U.K., Italy, Australia, and Canada.
Throughout his career in public advocacy, Smith has appeared on thousands of television and radio talk/interview programs, including such national shows as ABC Nightline, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, CNN’s World Report, the CBS Evening News, EWTN, C-SPAN, and Fox News Network, as well as nationally syndicated radio programs, including Coast to Coast and shows hosted by Dennis Miller, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, and Al Kresta. He has appeared internationally on Voice of America, CNN International, and programs originating in Great Britain (BBC), Australia (ABC), Canada (CBC), Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Germany, China, and Mexico.
Smith is often called upon by members of legislative and executive branches of government to advise on issues within his fields of expertise. He has testified as an expert witness in front of federal and state legislative committees, and has counseled government leaders internationally about matters of mutual concern.
Smith is an international lecturer and public speaker, appearing frequently at political, university, medical, legal, disability-rights, bioethics, religious, industry, and community gatherings across the U.S., Europe, Mexico, Canada, South Africa, and Australia and at the United Nations.
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The myths about the Terri Schiavo case are repeated so often, it can be a futile effort to keep the story straight. One such myth is that the family somehow edited videos of Terri to make it appear falsely that ... -
Medical Establishment Opposes Conscience Rights
The laws and regulations of the United States protects medical professionals from being forced to participate in abortion and sterilization and other procedures against their religious beliefs by prohibiting discrimination in employment. The Obama Administration was openly hostile to the ... -
Cloned Human Baby Closer with Monkey Success
Cloning research continues apace. Human embryos have been manufactured via somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT)–the same process as that which created Dolly the sheep–and allowed to develop to the blastocyst stage, the point that an embryo can be ... -
Delaware Push for Intellectually Disabled Assisted Suicide
Assisted suicide/euthanasia advocates want a very broad and easy latitude to have death by overdose or lethal jab. They hide this truth behind blithe assurances of strict protections and feigned desires to limit assisted suicide to the very few ... -
Story Recognizes Pro-Lifers' Pro-Science Arguments
The Left smugly claim to be the “pro-science” side of the political divide–until pro-lifers bring up the scientifically uncontestable biological humanity of fetuses and embryos, or, for example, that later term fetuses can feel pain or react in a ... -
Switzerland Follies
Switzerland has followed New Zealand and a few other localities to outlaw boiling live lobsters. It also requires them to be shipped in salt water. Supporters claim that lobsters can feel pain, a dubious prospect, given that they don’t ... -
Oregon's Permissive Assisted Suicide Regime
The media have always gone along with the nonsense that assisted suicide and euthanasia laws are governed by strict guidelines to prevent abuse. In actuality, the guidelines–such as they are–are merely to give an appearance of control. Since ... -
Canada Conjoining Euthanasia/Organ Donation
In my first anti-euthanasia column, published in Newsweek in 1993, I warned that eventually medicalized killing/suicide would be conjoined with organ harvesting “as a plum to society.” “Slippery slope argument!” my detractors yelled at me. “Alarmist!” It will never happen!” ... -
Here Comes Artificial Sperm
It is a profound irony that as we allow even very late term fetuses to be aborted on one hand, scientists are finding radical nature-bending ways to assist people have babies–including methods that could shatter familial norms. Newest possibility: ... -
Animal Researchers Should be Proud
We are often awed at the medical miracles that save so many of our lives and alleviate unquantifiable levels of human suffering. And yet, some of us decry a fundamental activity that makes it all possible; what I call the “... -
Baby Born After Living 24 Years as Frozen Embryo
An embryo created through IVF 24 years ago, has just been born. From the Daily Mail story: A 26-year-old woman has given birth to a baby girl from a donated embryo which was frozen for 24 years – the longest-ever frozen embryo to ... -
Fetal Body Parts Seller Forced to Donate Instead
Two companies that sold fetal body parts for profit have been put out of business. From the LA Times story: Two bioscience companies that once operated in Costa Mesa have reached a $7.785-million settlement with the Orange County district attorney’... -
Another U.K. Hospital: NO to Baby Transfer + End Life Support
Readers here may recall the infamous Charlie Gard case earlier this year. Charlie was a terminally ill baby with a progressive and terminal genetic disease. Charlie’s parents wanted to take their boy to a specialist in the US, but ... -
Forced to Bake a Cake Today, Assist Suicide Tomorrow
The Wall Street Journal editorialized in favor of the right of the Christian cake baker’s right to refuse his services in celebration of a same sex marriage. From the editorial: A ruling for Colorado could encourage other government burdens ... -
Science is Not ‘What Scientists Do’
Science is a method for determining facts about the natural world. As the dictionary definition has it, it is “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through ... -
Snuffing the IPAB and CFPB Technocracy
It is clear to me that progressives want to dispatch constitutional limited governance and replace it with a democratically unaccountable technocracy. Two super-agencies attest to that desire. First is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which has powers over Medicare cost ... -
Quebec MDs ‘Complete’ Suicides
Euthanasia costs lives. Not only do doctors kill people who ask to die–generally without even attempting suicide prevention services–but the ethics-altering values of euthanasia/assisted suicide devalue despairing lives generally. For example, several years ago, a woman named ... -
Environmentalist Attack Against Capitalism in NYT
The New York Times rarely publishes a guest op/ed piece with which its hard left-wing editors have a significant disagreement. Which makes a frontal attack on capitalism as the primary cause of environmental degradation and the global warming, by ... -
Berniecare Would Cover Illegal Aliens
I recently took a hard look at Berniecare — what he calls Medicare for All, but which is better described as Medicaid for All. It would really bust the bank — increase federal spending by $32 trillion according to the Urban Institute — require ... -
Environmentalism's Worsening Anti-Human Infection
As I wrote in The War on Humans, environmentalism has become increasingly anti-human, both in proposed policies — such as those that would reduce economic vitality and thwart human thriving — and in the goal of reducing human population. The latter goal ... -
MI, KS Push Back Against ‘Futile Care’ Laws
The push back against “futile care” laws has commenced! Futile care polices allow hospital death panels–I’m particularly talking to you, Texas–that permit wanted life-sustaining treatment to be stopped on the orders of a bioethics committee. Kansas recently ... -
Netherlands Moves Closer to Death on Demand
Once a society generally accepts killing as an appropriate response to suffering, there are few limits to the kind of “suffering” that will qualify for extermination. The Netherlands shows the danger. Permitted in a decriminalized form since 1972–and formally legalized ... -
Canada 4-Year Wait for Local Neurologist
Canada’s single payer system is not functioning as well as SP boosters like to think. It rations by wait times, as in this extreme example: An Ontario doctor says health-care wait times have reached “insane” lengths in the province, ... -
Surrogacy Contracts Can Ruin Lives
The multi-billion dollar international fertility industry preys on poor women to be surrogate mothers–known by the dehumanizing parlance as “gestational carriers.” Last Friday, I wrote a piece over at First Things on how ever-more radical fertility practices have the ... -
Man with Down Syndrome Justifies Life
Imagine feeling the need to justify your existence before a Congressional sub committee. From the Daily Beacon story: Frank Stephens, a man with Down syndrome and an advocate for those with the genetic disorder, told a congressional committee on Wednesday ... -
Judge Right to Order Feeding of Anorexic Woman
The primary purpose of society is to protect the lives of its citizens–even when they might not want their lives protected. That is why suicidal people can be involuntarily hospitalized for treatment–except for the terminally ill in five ... -
Media Matters Fails to Discredit Me
Media Matters must be running low on targets, since it chose to go after a piece I have in the Weekly Standard this week urging that Congress repeal Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). I argue that IPAB is ... -
NHS Tyranny Proposal to Ban Smokers, Obese from Surgery
Calling Bernie Sanders! Calling Bernie Sanders. STAT! A serious policy proposal in the UK would ban many surgeries for smokers and the obese. From the Telegraph story: The NHS will ban patients from surgery indefinitely unless they lose weight or ... -
Democrats Used to Know That Life Begins at Conception
Last week I posted about a proposed HHS strategic plan that will, if implemented, declare: HHS accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning ... -
HHS to Define Life as Beginning ‘at Conception’
The Department of Health and Human Services has published a draft strategic plan for 2018-2022 that includes some, shall we say, controversial language. See if you can spot it: Mission Statement The mission of the U.S. Department of Health ... -
Intentionally Risking HIV Transmission Now Misdemeanor in CA
Leave it to California to grow ever more radical and accepting of dysfunctional and anti-social behavior. It used to–and should–be a felony to knowingly risk HIV transmission without telling one’s sexual partner in California. No more. From ... -
Opening Door to Assisted Suicide Organ Donors
My very first anti-assisted suicide column in 1993 warned that it would lead to conjoining organ donation with euthanasia “as a plumb to society.” That is happening now in Netherlands and Belgium–including of people with mental illnesses, no less. Now–... -
Pushing Euthanasia for the Depressed
When it comes to euthanasia, I am rarely wrong. For years, I have argued that the terminal illness limitation is a ruse to get us used to killing as an acceptable answer to suffering. Once society swallowed the poisonous meme, ... -
Nature Rights Makes the New York Times
I keep warning that the nature rights movement is a real threat to human thriving, and I keep hearing people hoot and say, “It will never happen here.” (Anyone who says that has been in a coma for the last 50 ... -
Persistently Unconscious Patient Awakened
Ever since Terri Schiavo, writing about the wrongness of removing feeding tubes from patients diagnosed with persistent unconsciousness (PVS)–we should never call them “vegetables,” a term as denigrating and dehumanizing a racial epithet–is like spitting in the wind. ... -
Quebec Alzheimer's Caregivers Support Medical Homicide
My wife and I cared for my late mother in our home for the last five months of her life. She had Alzheimer’s, so I know what that disease is up close and personal. Believe me, it’s more ... -
Regulate Embryo Research Before Too Late
Scientists have successfully cloned human embryos using the same technique that created Dolly the sheep, potentially transforming human reproduction into a matter of manufacture and quality control. Scientists have learned to genetically engineer any organism or cell through a technique ... -
American College of Physicians Opposes Assisted Suicide
Excellent. The American College of Physicians, after studying the issue, has issued a policy statement against the legalization of assisted suicide. From the ACP Position Paper: Society’s goal should be to make dying less, not more, medical. Physician-assisted suicide ... -
Courts Should Punish PETA
As long as courts continue to permit the animal rights fanatics at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to sow subversion through their frivolous litigation tactics–such as when it tried to have a federal court declare Sea ... -
15th Annual (Invisible) World Suicide Prevention Day
Today is World Suicide Prevention Day! From the International Association for Suicide Prevention brochure: 2017 marks the 15th World Suicide Prevention Day. The day was first recognised in 2003, as an initiative of the International Association for Suicide Prevention and endorsed by ... -
Judge Rules Jahi McMath May Not be Dead
This could be one of the biggest bioethics cases since Terri Schiavo. A judge has ruled that the teenager, declared dead in California, may not be dead. From the East Bay Express story: Jahi McMath, the Oakland teenager whose brain ... -
Ethical Stem Cells Relieve Parkinson's in Monkeys
The advance of ethical stem cell research continues exponentially. Neurons made from induced pluripotent stem cells–which were, in turn, made from skin cells–have relieved Parkinson’s symptoms in monkeys. From the Nature story: Takahashi’s team transformed iPS ... -
India Court Privacy Ruling Corrodes Societal Glue
Courts have usurped legislatures in determining some of the most important issues of public policy in society. The latest example comes from India, in which the Supreme Court declared that privacy is such a profound fundamental right that it would ... -
Dying of Despair
I began my work against assisted suicide in 1993. In the intervening years, I have witnessed a very disturbing change. When I began, the emotional zeitgeist of society focused intensely on preventing suicide. Today, in many cases, the emotional oomph (if ... -
‘Nature's Rights’ Constitutional Amendment Proposed
The California secession movement is active again, gathering signatures for a vote. One group, perhaps knowing that won’t happen, is pushing for changes to the U.S. Constitution, including a new amendment guaranteeing the “Nature’s rights.” From the ... -
Joint Elder Euthanasia in Netherlands
Remember when society considered it a tragedy when old people killed themselves? Now, apparently, it is celebrated as a splendid “death with dignity” choice. From the Telegraph story: An elderly couple died holding hands surrounded by loved ones in a ... -
Canadian MDs Want More $ To Kill
Some Canadian homicide doctors–those that euthanize patients–believe they aren’t paid enough. From the Maclean’s article: All in, a MAID [medical assistance in dying, e.g., lethal injection] provider can claim a maximum of $440. That would be ... -
Is Euthanasia Corrupting Transplant Medical Ethics?
In my very first anti-euthanasia column, published by Newsweek in 1993, I worried that once medicalized killing became accepted, it would soon be joined by “organ harvesting as a plum to society.” “Alarmist!” I was called. “Slippery slope arguer!” It will ... -
The Worst MDs can Become Death Prescribers
The New York Times is on an assisted suicide/euthanasia promotion juggernaut. Recently, it had a magazine-length, front page story swooning story about a euthanasia party in Canada. Today, a major front-page opinion section column by a doctor supporting assisted ... -
Genetic Engineering with ‘Strict Guidelines?’ Ha!
Human genetic engineering is moving forward exponentially and we are still not having any meaningful societal, regulatory, or legislative conversations about whether, how, and to what extent we should permit the human genome to be altered in ways that flow ...
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Utah Bill: Assisted Suicide = Manslaughter
A bill to explicitly criminalize assisted suicide has passed its first committee hurdle. The bill would add to the definition of “manslaughter” the act of providing the means for someone to commit suicide with knowledge of the suicidal person’s ... -
Get Ready for a Meat Tax Push
Remember the old saw, “If it moves, tax it?” Well now, there’s a corollary, “If it once mooed, baaed, clucked, quacked, or gobbled, tax it.” Yes, here comes the meat tax push–because you know, eating meat to environmentalists ... -
Congress: Create Private Right to Protect Medical Conscience
The Trump Administration has proposed new federal rules–and proposed a new enforcement office–to strengthen the government’s administrative ability to protect medical conscience of healthcare workers who object to participating in certain procedures based on religious belief. That’... -
Belgian Palliative Care MDs and Nurses Flee Euthanasia
You become a doctor or nurse to be a healer palliator of people in serious pain and distress. You have a special place in your heart for the dying, and so you enter the specialized field of palliative care and ... -
Trump to Protect Medical Conscience
I am sometimes asked how religious people could vote for a man with the personal history of Donald Trump. Consider this Smith on the Election, but I always answer that I think it was an act of self defense. The ... -
Elderly Indian Couple Ask for Joint Active Euthanasia
A healthy elderly couple in India is asking for joint euthanasia because their lives are of no use. From the Telegraph story: Mumbai: A city-based elderly couple have sought President Ram Nath Kovind’s permission for active euthanasia or “assisted ... -
Zinke Listens to ‘the People’ Instead of ‘the Animals’
Anti-humanism permeates the modern environmental movement, details of which I recounted in The War on Humans. That misanthropy can lead to decisions that create risk to human life and well-being. Example: In 2014, President Obama’s secretary of the interior, Sally ... -
Sacrificing Pain Patients to Stop Opioid Epidemic?
I’m all for fighting the opioid epidemic. But not at the price of preventing patients from receiving quality medical care. And that may be happening. Nevada doctors are apparently up in arms at a new Nevada law that they ... -
National Slavery & Human Trafficking Prevention Month
Human exceptionalism holds that every one of us is inherently equal, both in moral value, and properly, under the law. Or to put it another way, no human being should ever be treated as an object, only and always a ... -
Time for Trump to Confront Biotech's Life-Altering Power
Over at First Things, I have an essay provocatively entitled, “Trump Letting Scientists Play God.” Not only has he apparently not pondered one of the most epochal issues of our time, but he hasn’t even Tweeted. SAD! Trump isn’... -
Bruni ‘Gets It’ about Disability Bias — Except for Assisted Suicide
When New York Times columnist Frank Bruni isn’t driving me nuts, it’s usually because he’s on vacation from his (very well written) column. Today was an exception. Bruni writes evocatively about how people with disabilities “disappear” from ... -
Jerry Brown's Pot versus Donald Trump's Kettle
The radical governor of California–who signed bills legalizing assisted suicide, allowing non-doctors to be abortionists, and forcing pro-life pregnancy counseling centers to notify clients where to access free abortion (now before the Supreme Court)–has brought the Lord into ... -
Make Radicals Pay a Cost for Abusing Courts
The lawsuit to declare the Colorado River a “person” entitled to human type rights has been dropped. It isn’t that the environmental radicals who brought the case realized that geological phenomena should never be considered rights-bearing entities. The point ... -
Bioethicist: Sex with the Dead OK
Opponents of human exceptionalism work overtime to normalize or OK behavior long deemed inherently wrong. The latest example appears in Big Think, where a South African bioethicist named Tauriq Moosa argues that copulating with the dead should not be considered ... -
Of Course Animals Have Emotions
I am always surprised when stories breathlessly report that scientists have discovered new levels of animal emotions. Here’s a current example. Good grief, who anymore asserts that they don’t experience emotions? Anyone who has owned a dog knows ... -
Professor to Students: Think Don't "Feel"
Well, this is refreshing. A law professor at Faulkner University’s Jones School of Law is combating the scourge of young people “feeling” instead of thinking. Professor Adam MacLeod told his students to stop emoting and relying on labels that ... -
Euthanasia Virus Spreads to Australia
One hundred years ago, people did often die in agony, and yet there was very little talk about legalizing euthanasia. Today, suffering can be greatly ameliorated in almost all cases, and yet the cause of “death with dignity” is promoted ... -
Assisted Suicide Should Be in Suicide Statistics
Assisted suicide corrupts everything it touches. This includes the seemingly uncontroversial field of vital statistics, in which suicides assisted legally, or homicides, by doctors are not usually included in suicide statistics. Thus, in Washington (as just one example), doctors who ... -
Uh-Oh
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Elephants Sue for Habeas Corpus
Here we go again. Having failed to get courts to declare chimpanzees “persons,” animal-rights fanatic lawyer Stephen Wise is suing as an attorney for elephants seeking a writ of habeas corpus. From the Washington Post story: Minnie, Beulah and Karen ... -
Acid Attack Leading to Euthanasia a Murder?
This is an awful story but it shows how the assisted suicide movement greatly harms the culture and despairing individuals at their times of greatest vulnerability. Mark van Dongen was paralyzed by his former girlfriend with acid–a horrific crime. ... -
South Dakota Assisted Suicide Bid Fails
Assisted suicide legalization has failed in yet another attempt. In South Dakota, proponents tried to qualify a voter initiative for the 2018 ballot. But they were unable to garner enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Good news and another in ... -
American Association of Suicidology Betrays Some Suicidal
Assisted suicide advocacy corrupts everything it touches; medical ethics, our views about the worth of the dying–even suicide prevention. The latter corruption usually comes in suicide prevention campaigns that ignore assisted suicide advocacy as a cause of some suicides–... -
Never Enough Euthanasia in Canada
The ink is barely dry on Canada’s expansive right to euthanasia and there is already much talk of expanding the killing to new categories–such as children. Now, after more than 600 sick people were put down in Quebec 2016-2017–... -
Canada Child Euthanasia: A Matter of Time?
Once euthanasia consciousness is unleashed, it never stops expanding. The law is still brand new, and yet there is already talk about allowing dementia patients to be killed and a mentally ill patient was euthanized with the permission of a ... -
Let's Give Suicidal People in 70s Poison Pills!
Phillip Nitschke is the Jack Kevorkian of Australia–without the dead K’s courage, as he avoids being at the assisted suicides he helps facilitate to avoid legal entanglements. Still, he has had his troubles. Back in 2001, I was instrumental ... -
No, Dolphins Could Not Create Our Technology
These days, it is sometimes difficult to discern when “science” ends and ideology begins. This is particularly so when the belief system is infected with anti-human exceptionalist anthropomorphism–as when Jane Goodall imbued the chimps she so expertly observed with ... -
Contraception Mandate Litigation: DOJ Settles
The nuns have won. Well, not quite yet. See Update below. So have others who opposed the Obamacare contraception mandate based on religious objections. From the National Catholic Register story: A week after issuing new religious-freedom guidelines to all administrative ... -
Circumcision Good forWomen's Health
“Intactivists”–the nutty name anti-circumcision activists have given themselves–who aim to outlaw infant circumcision, claim that the procedure has no benefits and constitutes child abuse. Baloney. There are at least mild health benefits for men, to the point that ... -
Can Publicly Traded Companies Have Religious Beliefs?
Generally, I applaud the Trump Administration’s rollback of the Obamacare rules that infringed on religious liberty of individuals, non-profits, and closely held businesses by forcing them to act contrary to their religious faith in providing coverage for birth control ... -
Bye-Bye Contraception Obamacare Mandate
The Obama Administration used the Affordable Care Act to engage in cultural imperialism. The way-too-rigid contraception mandate is a case in point. Rather than respecting a broad societal comity by permitting easy religious exemptions–such as, say, allowing an order ... -
Being "Alive" is Necessary for Attaining Moral Value
With the sequel to Blade Runner, the first movie in some time that I really want to see, we again are witnessing a discussion about when AI machines should be given human-style rights. From, “Are Blade Runner’s Replicants Human?” ... -
Lethal Threats to Alzheimer's Patients
The culture of death is an aggressive virus. Its pushers are now moving to permit Alzheimer’s patients to be killed if the person so requested in writing before becoming incompetent. (That “if” won’t last long if such homicides ... -
Now It’s ‘Resourcism!’
The movement to grant “nature” human type rights continues with insufficient pushback. In fact, law schools are getting into the act. The first annual “Rights of Nature Symposium” will be held at Tulane University Law School in October. And now, ... -
What Did Porn Have to do with Weiner's Perversion?
I have never liked Anthony Weiner, but who can’t be moved by the prospect of his family destroyed and his son’s life forever impacted adversely by his yielding to perverse sexual obsessions? Now that he has been sentenced ... -
Texas Futile Care Law in the Dock
Imagine your dad is in the ICU with a stroke, struggling for life. Imagine, having listened to the wise voices in bioethics, that he wrote an advance directive, leaving instructions about the medical treatment he wanted if incapacitated. Imagine, that ... -
‘Great’ Minds Think the Universe Is a Computer Program
The Matrix, the first episode, was a fun movie. But a description for reality? Please. And yet, some of our most prominent scientific and tech thinkers seriously propose we are living in a computer program. From the BBC story: The ... -
Normalizing Suicide Parties
Back in the early 1990s, my late friend Frances invited me and other of her friends to attend her suicide party. We all said no with an exclamation point! Such a thing was unthinkable. We would help Frances through the ... -
Desperate Refugees Sell Kidneys
The black market in human organs is apparently active in the European refugee crisis, a Dutch television program is reporting: Some refugees are paying smugglers to bring them into Europe by selling a kidney, a Dutch television investigation will say ... -
NY High Court Rejects Assisted Suicide Right
There is no constitutional right to assisted suicide, so the courts keep ruling. In Washington v Glucksberg (1997), the Supreme Court of United States rejected an attempt to impose an assisted suicide Roe v. Wade. State supreme courts have rejected state ... -
Because There Can Never be Enough Suicide
In the Netherlands, there can never be enough suicide and euthanasia. Think about it. Terminally ill people can be terminated by doctors. Chronically ill people can be terminated by doctors. Elderly people with normal physical aging, can be terminated by ... -
AI Should Never Have ‘Rights’
Efforts to expand rights beyond the human realm are ubiquitous and reflect, in my view, a deep misanthropy and a threat to universal human rights. That includes the movement to declare sophisticated artificial intelligent machines (“strong AI,” not yet here) ... -
Humans Are Not Just Another Animal
There is too much anti-humanism around these days, efforts large and small that either state–or insinuate–that we are just another animal in the forest. Here’s a small example that I think it is worth noting for those ... -
Should We Starve Alzheimer's Patients?
The idea of starving a helpless elderly person to death used to be thought of as the most egregious crime. An abhorrence. Now, for some, it is merely another form of “death with dignity.” The assisted suicide advocacy organization Compassion ... -
Texas Requires MDs to Get Permission for DNRs
Texas’s futile care law is a disgrace, permitting hospital bioethics committees to kick patients off of wanted life-sustaining treatment. Until now, they could even impose DNRs on a patient’s chart before asking permission, and then notify the sick ... -
California Hospital Sued for Refusing to Assist Suicide
This lawsuit is a little before its time. Should assisted suicide become widely accepted in this country, activists will try to force all doctors to participate–either by doing the deed or referring to a doctor known to be willing ... -
U.N. Pushes ‘Right to Life’ for Some
The United Nations Rapporteur on the human “right to life” indicates that the UN is determined to make the right to life more relative and elastic than robust and near-absolute. The interpretation reluctantly allows the death penalty “for the most ... -
French Revolution Attacking the American Revolution
The Google firing confirms a working hypothesis I have been pondering recently. The French Revolution is attacking the American Revolution. The American Revolution was sparked by the Enlightenment, Judeo/Christian moral beliefs, mixed with Greek and Roman philosophy and political ... -
From "Pro-Choice" to "Reproductive Justice"
Listening to WAMU (NPR) guest Dorothy E. Roberts bemoan her belief that “pro-choice” doesn’t cut it any more as an effective advocacy slogan. As a replacement, she suggests, “reproductive justice,” which, Roberts opined, would allow abortion advocates to tie ... -
California to Outlaw Pet Stores Selling Many Pets
The animal rights movement–which must be distinguished from animal welfare–intends to outlaw all animal husbandry and the human use of animals. That includes pets. But they will be at the back end of the multi-generational animal rights project. ...