Wesley J. Smith

The attempt to legalize assisted suicide in California is dead for this year. After much hype and media attention, proselytizing visits from the nation’s most visible leaders in the pro euthanasia movement, the bill went nowhere. For this year, it is dead. Next year is an election year and . . . . Continue Reading »

As I wrote previously, barring any new and unforeseen events, I am not going to comment further in this Blog on the Terri Schiavo case. But my good pal Nat Hentoff continues the cause, knocking it out of the old ballpark in this important piece. It’s definitely worth a read.P.S. Nat reports . . . . Continue Reading »

First, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) compared eating meat to the worst crimes of the Holocaust. Then, PETA alpha wolf Ingrid Newkirk, issued her non apology “apology.” Now, PETA has a new propaganda campaign explicitly creating a moral equivalence between the . . . . Continue Reading »

Today’s New York Times Magazine carries an opinion article that strives to further normalize infanticide as an acceptable medical practice. (Registration may be required to access article.) The issue, apparently, isn’t whether life is sacrosanct but whether it is our duty to eliminate . . . . Continue Reading »

This article in the Journal of Clinical Investigation warns that medical treatments from embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) and therapeutic cloning may be very far away, if they ever come at all. ESCR and cloning have so many hurdles to overcome, ranging from tumor formation in animal studies, to . . . . Continue Reading »

A major medical association has gone on record as being indifferent to whether the laws of its country are changed to permit doctors to hasten the deaths of patients—in complete violation of Hippocratic values. This is a sign of how raw ideology has come to distort empirical thinking. Consider . . . . Continue Reading »

One need only look at the cloning experiments already being conducted in animals to realize that human therapeutic cloning will not long be contained to using early cloned embryos in Petri dishes. This published paper by the biotechnologists at Advance Cell Technology involved “therapeutic . . . . Continue Reading »

Bioethics ideology is generally relativist and roughly utilitarian. “Choice” is the keyword for “persons,” e.g., those with sufficient cognitive capacity to possess what the rest of us call human rights. (Persons can be non humans in this thinking.) If one is not a person, . . . . Continue Reading »

UK animal liberationists have commenced an arson campaign against companies that do business with Huntingdon Life Sciences. If the company is driven out of business by this tactic, not even McDonald’s will be safe. And the silence from the “peaceful” animal rights believers is . . . . Continue Reading »

James Thomson discovered human embryonic stem cells. In an interview, he makes several candid comments about the ongoing debate. One of the most important is set forth below. Dishonest cloning advocates are now claiming that therapeutic cloning does not create a human embryo or a human life, and . . . . Continue Reading »