Wesley J. Smith

Health care rationing is a polite name for invidious medical discrimination against the weak and vulnerable. The Obama Administration seems to be pushing the USA toward rationing by hinting that it will support establishing a utilitarian bioethics oversite board that would determine the levels of . . . . Continue Reading »

A UK bioethicist named Daniel K. Sokol, who writes nary a word in opposition to Futile Care Theory, aka medical futility (meaning, I suspect, he is a futilitarian), has nonetheless written a valuable informative essay in the British Medical Journal (no link, 13 JUNE 2009 | Volume 338) called . . . . Continue Reading »

This is a warning of what could befall the USA if we allow centralized bioethical planning to become part of health care reform.  In the UK, utilitarian bioethicists control who gets—and who is denied—treatment via the Orwellian named organization NICE (National Institute for Health . . . . Continue Reading »

Assisted suicide is many things; abandonment, lethal, dangerous, discriminatory—but to its supporters, merciful and respectful of individual autonomy.  But it is not medicine.  Everyone knows this, of course. But to gain public respectability and thereby gain legalization, advocates . . . . Continue Reading »

Assisted suicide advocates can be so disingenuous. A woman in the UK with multiple sclerosis committed suicide the Derek Humphry way—and that death is being used by assisted suicide advocates to promote legalization of assisted suicide for the terminally ill. Also notice how the argument is . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s about time: Other than the disability rights movement and Nat Hentoff, it seems to me that the Left has been not only supine in the face of the oncoming “duty to die,” but its enablers.  Maybe the worm is beginning to turn. Mickey Kaus at Slate believes—silly . . . . Continue Reading »

Revenge! It turns out that we “husky,” as it was called tactfully when I was a kid, may live longer than thin people.  From the story:Health experts have long warned of the risk of obesity, but a new Japanese study warns that being very skinny is even more dangerous, and that . . . . Continue Reading »

A (probable) satire out of Claremont McKenna College urges that euthanasia be legalized as a form of health care cost contanment . Alas, the Smith Maxim on Satire and the Culture of Death , which holds that no parody can be sufficiently far out to escape the reality, holds true.  Killing the . . . . Continue Reading »

Given its source, a publication of Claremont McKenna College, not exactly a hotbed of radicalism, this article urging health care cost containment as a reason to legalize  euthanasia captures a  justification for assisted suicide that is ever lurking in the background of the debate. From . . . . Continue Reading »

Somehow an idea gets accepted—by this writer included—that seems true, but isn’t. Here’s one: Support for a wholesale overhaul of our health care system is higher than it’s ever been. Wrong. It’s far less than the last time we had this level of debate in . . . . Continue Reading »