Wesley J. Smith

I have noticed an odd propensity among the generally politically liberal commenters and bloggers on stem cell research. Where some rail against the supposed greed and avarice of the pharmaceutical companies, they praise stem cell researchers to the hilt as altruistic scientific saviors. I never got . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m goin’ out to places I have never been and seein’ things I may never see again. So, blogging will slow, as I am traveling light and keeping the trusty old laptop in the barn. However, I will be taking my neat new Blackberry Playbook. That will permit me to monitor comments and . . . . Continue Reading »

I first realized the Canadian single payer system had terrible problems whilst in Toronto maybe 10 years ago, and seeing a front page headline that 900,000 Ontarians could not find their own primary care physician.  That stunned me.  Prior to then, I had urged that the USA adopt the . . . . Continue Reading »

I know this is celebrity junk, but there is a kernel of importance here.  Zsa Zsa Gabor is experiencing a difficult time with the kind of severe health problems and other vicissitudes of old age that one might expect in a woman of 94 years.  But her (creep) husband has told CNN he wants . . . . Continue Reading »

A professor of  the “politics and philosophy of food,” named Chad Levin, advocates for vegetarianism in a distinctly political advocacy paper in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Ironically, given what he writes, he claims that his vegetarianism is not . . . . Continue Reading »

I first heard the euphemistic term “selective reduction,” at a bioethics conference at which I was speaking in Banff, Alberta.  I don’t remember the year, probably about a decade ago.  I was speaking on assisted suicide, and as I awaited my turn, the speaker before me . . . . Continue Reading »

This is funny, given our recent conversation about bioethicist Julian Savulescu’s support for “morally enhancing”  people through drugs or implants.  Apparently the UK Government plotted to do the same thing to Hitler by feminizing him with estrogen. From the Telegraph . . . . Continue Reading »

I am worried that we are going full circle around the bioethical issue informed consent.  Where once, patients and families weren’t allowed to decide to stop heroic medical efforts—the dreaded “paternalism,” as it came to be called—today a neo paternalism movement . . . . Continue Reading »

There has been a lot of justifiable worry expressed about moral decay in the wake of the UK riots.  Apparently, the issue has also been on the minds of two among bioethics’ most notorious notable utilitarian practitioners, who are having a collegial disagreement about whether the field . . . . Continue Reading »

The New York Times editorialists sure are dense.  Today, they decry the inability of Medicaid recipients to sue governments to prevent cuts in compensation to doctors and hospitals, and hope the Supreme Court will order that such suits be permitted.  From “A Scalpal, Not An Ax for . . . . Continue Reading »