Wesley J. Smith

Woo-Suk-Hwang, the world’s first human cloner, has resigned all public posts because he paid for the human eggs used in cloning research and then mislead the journal Nature about it. (He will continue his research.) This may well doom the international cloned embryonic stem cell bank that . . . . Continue Reading »

Thanks to everyone who tunes into Secondhand Smoke. Have a wonderful . . . . Continue Reading »

This thoughtful commentary, published in the Brussels Journal, worries that Europeans, which have a form of health care rationing already in place to keep public health programs afloat, may turn to euthanasia as a form of controlling costs. Here is the key quote:“In Europe there are medical . . . . Continue Reading »

I have reported here about how one paralyzed woman in South Korea gained some feeling and mobility using umbilical cord blood stem cells. One patient, of course, does not an efficacious treatment make. But this study adds substantially to the belief that UC stem cells are going to do marvelous . . . . Continue Reading »

Bioethicists Art Caplan and Glenn McGee push for full federal funding of human cloning research in this opinion column. As is usual for articles such as this, the bioethicists claim, “A clear majority of Americans favor embryonic stem cell research. Yet there are no meaningful federal funds . . . . Continue Reading »

I like Bio Edge, which scours the world for cutting edge biotech and bioethics stories, which are adeptly summarized and sent to subscribers via e-mail. The writers generally get things right, but this Bio Edge story is both behind the times and factually wrong. It states that bioethicists are . . . . Continue Reading »

I really like Will Saletan’s writing on biotechnology in Slate. I don’t always agree with him. Heck, I often don’t agree with him. But he has a healthy skepticism about the political debate we are having on cloning/stem cells, and he unleashes it without fear or favor, including . . . . Continue Reading »

A Swiss assisted suicide organization called Dignitas has helped a depressed woman kill herself in Germany. True, the woman presented a fake medical report, stating she was very ill. But the head of Dignitas said it didn’t matter since, “in any case every person in Europe has the right . . . . Continue Reading »

I have been warning for some time now that the animal liberation movement seeks to change the law so that animals can be litigants in lawsuits. (What would really happen is the animal liberationists would be the litigants, with the animal as the unknowing “beard.”) Well it has happened . . . . Continue Reading »

Skin stem cells have been used to grow blood vessels. The good news just keeps on . . . . Continue Reading »