Wesley J. Smith

Revenge! It turns out that we “husky,” as it was called tactfully when I was a kid, may live longer than thin people.  From the story:Health experts have long warned of the risk of obesity, but a new Japanese study warns that being very skinny is even more dangerous, and that . . . . Continue Reading »

A (probable) satire out of Claremont McKenna College urges that euthanasia be legalized as a form of health care cost contanment . Alas, the Smith Maxim on Satire and the Culture of Death , which holds that no parody can be sufficiently far out to escape the reality, holds true.  Killing the . . . . Continue Reading »

Given its source, a publication of Claremont McKenna College, not exactly a hotbed of radicalism, this article urging health care cost containment as a reason to legalize  euthanasia captures a  justification for assisted suicide that is ever lurking in the background of the debate. From . . . . Continue Reading »

Somehow an idea gets accepted—by this writer included—that seems true, but isn’t. Here’s one: Support for a wholesale overhaul of our health care system is higher than it’s ever been. Wrong. It’s far less than the last time we had this level of debate in . . . . Continue Reading »

As goes Rat, so goes the . . . . Continue Reading »

A new study has theorized that human beings are more closely related to orangutans than chimps.  Perhaps, but does it really matter—at least from a moral perspective? I say no.  I explain why over at Secondhand Smoke . . . . . Continue Reading »

A new study hypothesizes that human beings are more closely related to orangutans than to chimpanzees.  From the story:University of Pittsburgh and the Buffalo Museum of Science. Reporting in the June 18 edition of the Journal of Biogeography, the researchers reject as “problematic” . . . . Continue Reading »

When President Bush appointed Leon Kass to lead the President’s Council on Bioethics, the mainstream of the bioethics movement howled.  Kass believes in intrinsic human dignity—and that is anathema to the predominate view. “Stacked deck,” they screamed.  . . . . Continue Reading »

I recently wrote about the death of Jayne Murdock in Montana, who wanted assisted suicide but found no doctor willing to lethally prescribe.  I was and am pleased with that—which is not to say that I didn’t want her to receive the best of care, or course I did—because . . . . Continue Reading »

I have been warning this was coming, that the assurances from “the scientists” that eggs would not be commodified for cloning were false.  New York State is going to permit would-be human cloners up to $10,000 to conduct human cloning as part of its $600 million taxpayer funded . . . . Continue Reading »