Wesley J. Smith

Things have been getting a little too heavy around here lately. That’s when I turn to Pearl’s Before . . . . Continue Reading »

James asks:Wesley, What’s your take on the Lauren Richardson case in Delaware? Can you get involved to protect the life of this young woman?Lauren Richardson, for those who may not know, is a young woman diagnosed to be persistently unconscious whose parents are fighting in court over who . . . . Continue Reading »

A man’s jaw was refashioned using adult stem cells from his own fat. From the story: Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a 65-year-old patient’s upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen...Using a . . . . Continue Reading »

A bill in Mississippi would make it illegal to serve obese patrons. When I first read this, words escaped me, and that is rare. Then I thought: Hey, send a copy to the UK. They love surrealistic nonsense like this. Then, I thought: This is too fat a target. So I went to the Mississippi Legislature . . . . Continue Reading »

This is unbelievable: The NHS is seriously considering paying 15,000 Pounds (about $32,000) to surrogate mothers to gestate babies for infertile couples. This, from the same NHS that rations care to the elderly. From the story:Surrogate mothers could be given up to £15,000 of Health Service . . . . Continue Reading »

Korean scientists have created pluripotent stem cells from normal skin cells and have further improved the technique. From the story: Park said the overall process of making the stem cells is similar to those by U.S. and Japanese scientists, there has been a marked improvement in the success rate. . . . . Continue Reading »

A story from Japan I think is metaphorical to a larger ennui or nihilism in the West. Suicide rates are at very disturbing proportions. From the story:If the Golden Gate Bridge had been built in Japan, there might be little discussion about erecting a barrier to keep people from jumping off. Since . . . . Continue Reading »

I have been warning anyone who will listen about the coming huge policy fight over medical futility—what I call Futile Care Theory—that allows a doctor to refuse wanted life sustaining treatment when the doctor doesn’t believe that the quality of the patient’s life is worth . . . . Continue Reading »

Ian Wilmut’s old cloning team is furious, apparently, that he is receiving a knighthood for his “service to science.” Their point is that Wilmut did not actually clone Dolly or do anything other than administer the lab in which the groundbreaking cloning experiment took place. From . . . . Continue Reading »

Ignoring that New Jersey voters recently rejected a $450 boondoggle bond issue to pay for embryonic stem cell research, New York State is funding the research to the tune of $600 million without even giving the people a chance to vote on the issue. And those behind the effort have no intention of . . . . Continue Reading »