Wesley J. Smith

In his recent book, Imagining the Future, Yuval Levin succinctly identified the source of so many of our cultural problems today. It was a real “Bingo!” moment for me: Society has ceased to be primarily about promoting virtue. Rather, our primary drive as a culture today is to prevent . . . . Continue Reading »

A few days ago I wrote that Ted Goodwin, one of the Final Exit Network assisted suicide defendants, was a mainstream figure in the assisted suicide movement. He certainly is that. But I made an error by writing that he had resigned as vice president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies. . . . . Continue Reading »

Readers of SHS will recall the awful case of the baby who survived a late term abortion only to be—allegedly—put in a medical waste bag and literally thrown away. The abortionist already lost his license in the case, and now there has been an arrest. From the story:An abortion clinic . . . . Continue Reading »

The assisted suicide movement has the media eating out of the palm of its collective hand, by often getting reporters to adopt their lexicon—the euphemistic “aid in dying” as opposed to the accurately descriptive “assisted suicide”—and writing as if suicide were a . . . . Continue Reading »

I don’t believe a word of it. The notorious Italian fertility doctor claims that nine years ago he was able to bring three cloned babies to birth. From the story:A controversial Italian doctor known for his work allowing post-menopausal women to have children has claimed in an interview to . . . . Continue Reading »

The other day I posted about how a lawyer for one of the Final Exit Network defendants said that hospice is just assisted suicide in slow motion. This is dangerous demagoguery that could convince people not to seek the benefits that hospice can provide. The National Hospice and Palliative Care . . . . Continue Reading »

The Hastings Center published an article in its journal IRB: Ethics and Human Research (“Including Persons with Alzheimer Disease in Research on Comorbid Conditions,” 31, no. 1 (2009): 1-6) that I found both alarming and a sign of the increased desire among some in the bioethics and . . . . Continue Reading »

Remember when we were told that IVF, coupled with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), would only be used to prevent serious genetic health maladies from being passed to the next generation? That was never true, of course. The intent was to get people to accept the principle that parents should . . . . Continue Reading »

President Obama still hasn’t rescinded the Bush stem cell policy. He will, but it may matter a lot less than people once thought. The IPSC advances continue, opening the door possibly for a way forward in biotechnology that all Americans can support. And, it is reported in the Washington Post! . . . . Continue Reading »

I knew the assisted suicide crowd would try to make the four defendants in the assisted suicide of a man who had been treated successfully of cancer, but was undergoing difficult reconstruction surgery and needed a hip replacement, into some kind of civil rights-type heroes. Toward this end, some . . . . Continue Reading »