Wesley J. Smith

So much time is spent by the media (and SHS) arguing about technologies like cloning and ESCR, that I like to feature non-controversial biotech stories from time to time in order to help us all keep a proper perspective. This story seems a good example: New biomarkers are being tested that may . . . . Continue Reading »

Assisted suicide advocates pushing Washington’s I 1000 are resorting to coercion to pressure the media into using their advocacy phrases when describing the pro-assisted suicide initiative. From the Eye on Olympia blog :I-1000 proponents have been pressing news organizations not to use the . . . . Continue Reading »

The BBC’s science and technology magazine Focus has a feature on the “most dangerous jobs in the world.” They include HazMat teams, snake venom farmers, vulcanologists—and animal researchers. From the story (no link available) that includes what has happened to our friend and . . . . Continue Reading »

Cloning reduces procreation to a matter of mere manufacture and transforms human life into an instrumentalized natural resource, whether that life is a nascent cloned embryo created and destroyed for its stem cells or women exploited for their eggs—since an egg is required for each cloning . . . . Continue Reading »

Whilst a woman in the UK with MS seeks the right to have her husband take her to Switzerland for assisted suicide to the cheers of euthanasia advocates and the media, other MS patients have been effectively treated with their own bone marrow stem cells. From the press release: “All patients . . . . Continue Reading »

And the media wonder why they are so distrusted: The Orlando Sentinel continually describes Terri Schiavo’s medical condition as “brain dead.” This is clearly wrong. Brain dead is a popular term for death by neurological criteria and it means that the whole brain and every . . . . Continue Reading »

We have seen much wailing and gnashing of teeth in recent years by the usual suspects who repeatedly have insisted that the USA is falling behind in science due to President Bush’s stem cell funding policy and the supposed anti-intellectualism that they claim permeates society because many . . . . Continue Reading »

A Frenchman who suffered a severe heart attack has apparently spontaneously awakened after 1 1/2 hours without a normal heartbeat (but mechanical heart message). From the story: A man whose heart had stopped beating woke up just as surgeons were about to remove his organs for donation, it was . . . . Continue Reading »

A Swiss Court has banned the use of the macaque monkey in brain experiments. From the Nature story (no link):Zurich’s two largest institutes are appealing to the country’s supreme court after a lower court decided to ban two primate experiments studying how the brain adapts to change. . . . . Continue Reading »

From Leah Garchik’s “Public Eavesdropping” feature in the San Francisco Chronicle: “I don’t have a dad, I have a donor.”—One boy to another—do donor’s get ties on Father’s Day?—overheard in a kindergarten class by T. A. Francis.Worse . . . . Continue Reading »