Wesley J. Smith

Who does the doctor serve?  When we lived in a society with common values, the answer was easy—the patient.  Today, not so easy.Now, doctors sometimes are asked to take lives, not just save them.  And there is a push within organized medicine to create a destructive dual . . . . Continue Reading »

Disgust was widespread in the attacks against Rick Santorum and his wife for taking their dead baby home to allow the family to grieve his death together.  Washington Post liberal columnist Eugene Robinson gratuitously brought the issue up on the Rachel Maddow show:“He’s . . . . Continue Reading »

I get banning smoking at the workplace.  But employers should not have the power to control what people do in their private time.  But USA Today has an interesting story out in which so many companies ban smoking by their workers wherever it happens, that to the point that they . . . . Continue Reading »

The American College of Physicians has issued new ethical guidelines. It is making for interesting reading and may provide future fodder for Secondhand Smoke.  But I wanted to discuss the College’s position on assisted suicide. First, it states that the College does not support . . . . Continue Reading »

Cosmetic surgery (not reconstructive) is a waste of medical resources and deprofessonalizes medicine by diverting medical assets—doctors, nurses, medical facilities etc.—out of the healing arts and into lifestyle-enhancing procedures. It can also be unsafe.  People have . . . . Continue Reading »

I did about 15 minutes on WSAU AM radio this morning on Obamacare and the growing threat of “nature rights.”  If you have nothing else to do while washing the dishes, check it out here.  . . . . Continue Reading »

Republicans believe that in close elections, recounters will keep counting, and counting, and counting—until the Democrat leads—after which, the counting stops.  I don’t want to get into that (comments about Bush v Gore will not be posted), but that alleged formula is . . . . Continue Reading »

Every year, the Center for Bioethics and Culture asks me to predict the next year’s events in bioethics.  Each year, I comply—and generally have a pretty good record of seeing the events that our way come. But last year, I scored close to perfect. That’s because I bought a . . . . Continue Reading »

I never understood the logic of Obamacare’s tax on durable medical equipment. If the point is to lower health care costs—supposedly one of the two primary raisons d’ etre for this awful law (the other being to expand coverage)—the last thing you do is tax medical equipment . . . . Continue Reading »

The headline seemed controversial, but I don’t think it is. Scientists have removed male germ cells from the testes of mice and transformed them into sperm, from whence they come in the normal functioning male body. From the Telegraph story:Researchers in Germany and Israel were able to . . . . Continue Reading »