Wesley J. Smith

California is once again sinking into the quicksand of red ink. Latest estimates show that the state must cut its budget by $10 billion! This will come out of the hides of university students, poor people needing health care, and other areas of urgent state concern.But “the scientists” . . . . Continue Reading »

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson has a very good column in today’s paper about the recent stem cell breakthrough. After giving President Bush due credit for the part his policy played in the recent development, and recounting some of the past debate, he suggests that the pro-ESCR/human . . . . Continue Reading »

A new Texas Supreme Court decision validates a Lone Star State law that treats the killing of unborn life—other than in the abortion context—as potentially murder. From the story:Texas laws allow the killing of a fetus to be prosecuted as murder, regardless of the fetus’ stage of . . . . Continue Reading »

As we celebrate the creation and potential of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, adult stem cell research continues to bear fruit in animal and human studies. The latest is a truly exciting find out of Stanford University: Blood stem cells taken from a donor with a healthy immune system effectively . . . . Continue Reading »

My pal Joseph Bottum over at First Things had a piece on the FT blog the other day (that I partially quoted previously), concerning the great breakthrough. But his analysis ranged beyond the apparent capability now to obtain ethical pluripotent stem cells. He suggests that the wild media bias on . . . . Continue Reading »

As “the scientists” and industrialists who wanted to do human cloning spin the media that spending billions to perfect human SCNT is still necessary and that the new iPS cells are not really that big a deal, James Thomson, the scientist who derived the first human embryonic stem cell . . . . Continue Reading »

Abraham Lincoln, one of my great heroes, declared the first Thanksgiving National Holiday on October 3, 1863 in the midst of the worst crisis in American history. Here is what he proclaimed:The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and . . . . Continue Reading »

The NRO has published a mini-symposium containing the views of William Hurlbut, Jennifer Lahl (of the CBC), Carter Snead, and other notable commentators about the great stem cell breakthrough. They are all worth reading.But I thought Leon Kass’s perspective was most worthy of discussion here . . . . Continue Reading »

So much anti-humanism being expressed by people who live at a time of the greatest prosperity in history and who are members of the first moral species in the known history of the universe. The latest example of self-loathing concludes a book review written for Nature (no link) by one Chris D. . . . . Continue Reading »

The editors of the NRO lauded yesterday’s big stem cell announcement and the part played by President Bush, also credit my pal Bill Hurlbut for his strenuous and often selfless efforts—which I witnessed and that including late nights, travel away from family, castigation by some in the . . . . Continue Reading »