Wesley J. Smith

Is it any wonder that people are confused about stem cell research? Take this article published by Tiscali.Europe, apparently one of the continent’s premier providers of internet services, as one example of hopeless cluelessness. (I bring this up because millions of people may have accessed . . . . Continue Reading »

I have been asked to contribute some thoughts on the First Things blog. For those who don’t know FT, it is perhaps the country’s most prominent religious journal. It is headed by the imcomparable Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and edited by my good friend Joseph Bottum.My work is entirely . . . . Continue Reading »

Like Fr. Oakes , I am intrigued by the pope’s warnings against “the dictatorship of relativism”¯for relativism poses a far more profound problem than behavioral license. The value of human life itself is being relativized. Indeed, it strikes me that the most crucial question . . . . Continue Reading »

The Weekly Standard has now made my adult stem cell column available to non subscribers. Here is the . . . . Continue Reading »

The instrumentalization of human life continues to spread like a wild fire. Apparently, a San Antonio fertility clinic is now going to make embryos from donated egg and sperm, not to help the biological parents get pregnant but for sale to infertile couples. The Abraham Center of Life claims to have . . . . Continue Reading »

A Concise History of Euthanasia by Ian Dowbiggin. Rowan and Littlefield, 176 pages, $22.95 To read Ian Dowbiggins’s A Concise History of Euthanasia is to learn that in more than a century of advocacy for euthanasia, the arguments have barely changed at all. The drive to legalize killing . . . . Continue Reading »

There has been some agitating lately to legalize assisted suicide/euthanasia in India, of all places. Apparently, the government has turned a firm thumb’s down. . . . . Continue Reading »

Jonathan Alter goes after Bush’s veto of the ESCR funding expansion bill in this Newsweek column. But he is ignorant about the actual policy, as demonstrated by this line, “No lab that receives federal financing can take part in embryonic-stem-cell research.”This isn’t true, . . . . Continue Reading »

I have a piece in the newly released Weekly Standard about “embryonic stem cell mantra,” and the lack of coverage about adult stem cell research advances. I think it requires a subscription to access, but here is the link (which may be generally accessible later).For those who . . . . Continue Reading »

Another apparent adult stem cell advance: A hospital in the UK is pioneering a treatment for people whose broken bones do not heal—perhaps preventing the need for amputations. From the Telegraph report:“Doctors at the Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, Oswestry, Shropshire, . . . . Continue Reading »