Wesley J. Smith

The Brave New World crowd and the media continually pretend that the only objections to scientific projects such as human cloning are religiously based.  The latest example is in a profile of the new head of the NIH, Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian, in the New York Times.  From . . . . Continue Reading »

The drive to “stop” global warming—relabeled climate change—does not depend on facts on the ground.  Yes, the earth has warmed in the last one hundred years and there is evidence that some or all of it may be due to human activities.  But it is by no means a sure . . . . Continue Reading »

I never know what entry will attract the most attention, or why the number of readers ebbs and flows.  Just before the switch to First Things, I had hit the 50,000 visits a month mark, from about 42,000 visitors.  Then, numbers fell, as they usually do in the summer.  They have begun . . . . Continue Reading »

I have a piece up on CNS News.Com on the renewed drive to dismantle the dead donor rule that requires vital organ donors to be dead before procurement. From my column:Oh-oh: Here they come. For years, organ transplant ethicists and some in the bioethics community have agitated to increase the supply . . . . Continue Reading »

They are so obvious—but too often, it works: If any limits are placed on experiments or funding of biotechnology, “the scientists” and their media apologists wring their hands, and warn darkly of a “brain drain” that will destroy competitiveness, cause people to die, or . . . . Continue Reading »

What a debacle: California has borrowed hundreds of millions to fund ESCR/human cloning, almost $300 million of which went into the most expensive, luxurious buildings that money can buy—all to “show Bush.” Fine, but now we are worse than broke, we are in danger of being a . . . . Continue Reading »

The articles urging that the dead donor rule be discarded to allow doctors to kill for organs are proliferating. I reported on a Nature editorial so advocating just a few days ago. Now a similar piece has been published in the Journal of Medical Ethics , written by F.G. Miller. I think it is . . . . Continue Reading »

I reported the other day that Nature editorialized in favor of loosening the rules to allow living patients to be killed for their organs (more about which, soon). And now, we see more advocacy for lethal medicine in The Journal of Medical Ethics, an international publication.  From the article . . . . Continue Reading »

As promised, I have written more extensively about the head prosecutor in the UK decriminalizing inter-familial assisted suicide. From my piece in the current Weekly Standard:On July 4, 1995, Myrna Lebov, age 52, committed suicide in her Manhattan apartment. The case generated national headlines . . . . Continue Reading »

Another day, another “NHS Meltdown” story. In this chapter, the majority of women who have a mastectomy for breast cancer are not offered reconstructive surgery. From the story:The NHS is letting down women with breast cancer by offering less than half of sufferers the chance to have . . . . Continue Reading »