Wesley J. Smith

The CBS Web site has posted my NRO piece on Jack Kevorkian, which provides information in Kevorkian’s own words about his actual motives and history, important issues that most media simply won’t discuss. Thanks to CBS for the attempt at . . . . Continue Reading »

I just watched the 60 Minutes interview of Kevorkian, and it was everything I expected it wouldn’t be. First, “the hug” is not shown. The video of Kevorkian’s release is shown, and when Wallace is meeting Kevorkian, the video cuts just before Wallace’s infamous smiling . . . . Continue Reading »

Jan Grzebski has awakened after 19 years of unconsciousness. When he was in an accident, Poland was in the throes of a communist tyranny. Now it is free, and rocking and rolling (which I also saw on my recent visit there). From the story:“When I went into a coma there was only tea and vinegar . . . . Continue Reading »

Swiss authorities are surprised, nay, SHOCKED, that Swiss suicide clinics help the depressed to kill themselves. Well, of course they do! After all, the Swiss Supreme Court has ruled that the mentally ill have a constitutional right to assisted suicide.If you “own” your body and killing . . . . Continue Reading »

Well, I bit. It turns out that the Dutch television show in which a woman was going to decide who would receive her kidney was a hoax designed to pressure the government into changing the organ procurement laws. The reason the hoax was so successful is that such a program seemed quite believable. In . . . . Continue Reading »

Detroit Free Press columnist Brian Dickerson opines that Kevorkian was just a man ahead of his time. Imagine the “reality show” television potential, he writes, if Kevorkian were working today:How differently things might have turned out if the nation’s first shock doc had waited . . . . Continue Reading »

This Reuters sugar piece on Kevorkian leaves out some of the most pertinent parts of his story. Here are five other facts that would seem to be more relevant than Kevorkian teaching himself Japanese:1. The majority of his assisted suicides were not people with terminal illnesses, and indeed, five . . . . Continue Reading »

Dutch scientists are trying to create meat in the lab. If they succeed, the hope is that people can eat pork—and presumably other meats—without the need to raise and butcher food animals, which is seen as more humane and environmentally friendly. From the story:Under the process, . . . . Continue Reading »

This is my last planned installment on the release of Jack Kevorkian from prison. The article could have been called “Kevorkian in His Own Words,” for I present his motives for engaging in his assisted suicide campaign, as he stated them—the right to engage in human experimentation . . . . Continue Reading »

The nation’s leading hospice professional organization, the NHPCO, has reiterated its opposition to the legalization of assisted suicide. Good. Assisted suicide is directly contrary to the hospice philosophy. Indeed, as the statement notes, it constitutes (often unintentional) abandonment. For . . . . Continue Reading »