Wesley J. Smith

I have today’s lead letter in the New York Times reacting to the paper’s palliative sedation article (thanks NYT!), about which I wrote more extensively here.  From my letter:Bravo to The New York Times for its in-depth reporting on palliative sedation. When death is imminent, . . . . Continue Reading »

Stories like this one don’t help the cause of making people believe we should become hysterical about global warming.  Apparently a part of Peru is growing ever colder, threatening the people who live there.  The cause?  Global warming! Aaugh! From the story:The few hundred . . . . Continue Reading »

Chris Mooney is a partisan author (The Republican War on Science) and a leftist political advocate.  He has made a career of pushing ideological goals as if they were objective scientific agendas. And of course many science journalists—often in name only—have followed his lead, . . . . Continue Reading »

This can’t be right.  As much of the USA chatters in the deep freeze—N. Carolina facing a once in a generation cold snap—weather folk in the UK warn it is facing one of the coldest winter in 100 years.  From the story:Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest . . . . Continue Reading »

C.W. Nevius has a good column in today’s San Francisco Chronicle that dovetails with a post I wrote the other day about the abuse of medical marijuana laws by patients, doctors, and “clinics.”  Apparently in San Francisco—where nothing aberrant should ever surprise . . . . Continue Reading »

Obamacare will be partially paid for by cuts in compensation to doctors and hospitals—already being short-shrifted by Medicare. It will also seek to control rates of compensation from Obamacare Central.  That may or may not cut costs, but it will result in fewer physicians participating . . . . Continue Reading »

The SF Chronicle published an important column today by Dr. Lynn Ponton, a psychiatrist and professor at UCSF Medical School.  He describes a patient victimized by a physician writing a letter for medical marijuana.  From the column:“It’s my medicine, Doc,” said . . . . Continue Reading »

In a very strange decision, the Montana Supreme Court ruled that the living will statute of Montana can be used as a defense by doctors who lethally prescribe, when the patient is terminally ill and the poison is self administered.  This is an audacious decision in one regard—as far as I . . . . Continue Reading »

The Supreme Court of Montana vacated a trial judge’s ruling that the Constitution of Montana prohibited assisted suicide for the terminally ill—but construed the state’s living will law as permitting doctors to prescribe lethal overdoses if the patient self administers.  This . . . . Continue Reading »

These stories happen so often, they are called “the Gore effect” from the propensity of the weather to turn frigid wherever he appears to wail about global warming.  A demonstration yesterday fizzled due to a blizzard. From the story:A downtown protest of the climate change talks in . . . . Continue Reading »