I give too little attention here at Secondhand Smoke to the anti-human minions of the Deep Ecology movement. Deep ecologists view human beings as vermin that afflict the earth, which many believe is a living entity called Gaia. This story illustrates the twisted mindset by describing the anti-human . . . . Continue Reading »
The Financial Times has a story (sorry, no link for non subscribers) that describes the intense fight that the European Parliament is apparently having over whether to fund human cloning and embryonic stem cell research. Consensus will apparently not be reached. The quote of the article by far is . . . . Continue Reading »
Nature is reporting that scientists may be close to creating a protein “elixer” that would regress adult cells to an embryonic pluripotent state. According to the report, “Doctors might be able to take a simple biopsy of cells from a patient and reprogramme them, using one set of . . . . Continue Reading »
Scientists have used adult human skin stem cells to treat rats with neurological disease. From an article published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Neuroscience. . . . . Continue Reading »
Pamela Winnick sent me the following e-mail with permission to post here. You may recall, that she worried that “death doctors” were seeking to force the family to “pull the plug” on her seriously ill father.“Wes, a mere week after the death-loving doctors tried to get . . . . Continue Reading »
This non-story front page story in the San Francisco Chronicle proves many of the points I have been making about our roiling biotech controversies for the last several years:1. The headline, “Backers to Push Stem Cell Issue Across Country,” as if this is news, is laughable. Big Biotech . . . . Continue Reading »
I deeply admire Leon Kass. At a personal level, he is a true gentleman. I consider him to be one of our deepest thinkers. I have always thought that he has been unfairly pigeon-holed by lesser intellects in bioethics and this interview proves my point. I advise reading it in full, but for the . . . . Continue Reading »
Spain continues to debate giving “human” rights to great apes. According to the story in the Telegraph, “The law would eliminate the concept of ‘ownership’ for great apes, instead placing them under the ‘moral guardianship’ of the state, much as is the case . . . . Continue Reading »
Ah, the slippery slope: It just keeps slip-sliding away.The latest example comes (again) from the UK, where “one of the country’s leading ethicists” has called for the killing of patients who have not asked to be euthanized. As reported by the Guardian: “Len Doyal, emeritus . . . . Continue Reading »
Ben Stein, who I met at a dinner and spoke with about the problems emerging in bioethics, contacted me later to share the terrible experience his family had while his father, the economist Herb Stein, was dying. “They treated him like inventory,” Stein wrote me in a turn of phrase I will . . . . Continue Reading »
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