Wesley J. Smith

I have a piece in the current Weekly Standard about Ecuador granting “rights” to nature. (I wrote this several weeks ago, but for obvious reasons having to do with all of the political news lately, it was delayed until now.) From my column:Rights, properly understood, are moral . . . . Continue Reading »

It wasn’t easy, a thicket of opposition, sometimes very threatening, from animal rights activists, impeded progress, but the new Oxford animal research center has finally opened. From the story on BBC:Four years ago, Cambridge University cancelled plans for a primate research centre, because . . . . Continue Reading »

There is a terrible mental illness called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), aka “amputee wannabe” because the sufferer becomes obsessed with having healthy limbs cut off. I have written before that some are actually arguing that a proper treatment for the disorder would be to cut . . . . Continue Reading »

Barbara Walters joins People and Oprah Winfry before her (three of our most destructive cultural wrecking balls) in cooing over Thomas Beatie, the “man” who gave birth. Why is he back in the news? Well, apparently Beatie is pregnant again, and despite early on having claimed to be . . . . Continue Reading »

Just because assisted suicide is legal in Oregon and Washington-State, that does make it right. The time has come for a very public and vibrant declaration of non cooperation with the culture of death.Toward that end, a new campaign to “Take the Pledge” against assisted suicide has . . . . Continue Reading »

All of the advocacy and tub thumping promoting the euphemist phrase “death with dignity,” accompanied by widepread media and the public support for the suicides of people with disabilities or serious illnesses, sends the insidious message to similarly situated people that they are . . . . Continue Reading »

I have written previously of the case of Dr. Hootan Roozrokh in San Luis Obispo, who is accused of attempting to hasten a patient’s death in order to be able to harvest his organs. A letter to the editor by a physician named John P. Okerblom, M. D. , objects. He writes:Case sends . . . . Continue Reading »

I have met people with severe chronic pain in my travels and at my speeches. These people live very difficult lives that requires strong medical and emotional support from family, friends, and communities to help them keep going. Unsurprisingly, suicide levels among sever chronic pain sufferers is . . . . Continue Reading »

In my recent First Things article on the passage of I-1000’s assisted suicide license, I warned:And with that success, the sails of the ghost ship Euthanasia rippled with the briskly rising breeze, and once again began to plow through the waves toward other shores, far and near. Soon, . . . . Continue Reading »

I am back in the podcast business, renamed from Brave New Bioethics to What It Means to be Human. After consulting with my colleagues at the Discovery Institute—which is producing the broadcast—we decided that since I am dealing with issues well beyond bioethics now, the new title was . . . . Continue Reading »