Wesley J. Smith

Sigh. The UK is in the midst of a renewed effort to legalize assisted suicide. Toward this end, one of the pro assisted suicide groups has published a poll showing that 2/3 of UK doctors have provided strong pain control knowing it could hasten death. Well good for them. That is like saying that 3/4 . . . . Continue Reading »

What is happening to the UK? Here is another in a series of recent medical futility cases that takes Futile Care Theory another step closer to a “duty to die.” A baby known publicly only as MB, has a degenerative disease called spinal muscular atrophy. The illness, which does not affect . . . . Continue Reading »

Editorialist Paul Greenberg has written a compelling critique of a society that prefers dehydrating the profoundly cognitively impaired rather than nurse and care for them. Key quote: “What arrogance to decree that, because we deem another’s life not worth living, it must be ended. But . . . . Continue Reading »

The KC Star is one of the most biased newspapers in the country when it comes to the cloning debate. I was given the courtesy of writing an op/ed piece on the issue last week, it is true, for which I am grateful. But the news reportage continues to misstate the science of what is sometimes called . . . . Continue Reading »

If doctors and bioethicists had gotten their way, little Haleigh Poutre would have been dehydrated to death via removal of feeding tube. But now, according to this story, she may be eating eggs. How unsurprising that the national media has generally ignored the case: It would demonstrate vividly the . . . . Continue Reading »

The essence of euthanasia consciousness has never been about “choice,” but about deciding that certain lives are not worth living. And, it leads inevitably to justifying infanticide since killing to end suffering has been redefined from bad to good. If that is your basic view, then in . . . . Continue Reading »

This is a good . . . . Continue Reading »

Regular readers of Secondhand Smoke know that I am absolutely fuming about the propaganda effort by cloning boosters to redefine terms and obfuscate basic science. I will be writing much about this in coming months. Whether SCNT is human cloning is one of the threshold issues in the upcoming . . . . Continue Reading »

An Iowa television station is following the story of Amy Foels, who was paralyzed in an auto accident. Last year, she went to Portugal and received an adult stem cell treatment from Dr. Carlos Lima, who pioneered a regenerative therapy that uses the patient’s own olfactory stem cells.Amy has . . . . Continue Reading »

I recall being in Canada a few years ago and the newspaper front page headline warned that 900,000 Ontarians had no primary care physician, despite having the right to one under the Canadian system. In other words, it was almost as if they were uninsured, meaning they had to get urgent care from . . . . Continue Reading »