Wesley J. Smith

The stem cell issue sure didn’t turn out to be as potent—or as important—as people expected this time last year. With the IPSC breakthrough, President Bush’s funding limitations ceased to be a cutting edge issue in the presidential campaign. That won’t matter to Senator . . . . Continue Reading »

This is a new angle on the right of patients to demand treatment and when doctors can say no. This time it involves a religious objection to providing artificial insemination for a lesbian.The doctor believed it was immoral to help a homosexual get pregnant and refused to participate, but referred . . . . Continue Reading »

Senator Barack Obama said Saturday night that the time in which human rights should apply are “above my pay grade.” When do you think human rights apply? ( . . . . Continue Reading »

Last week I posted two criticisms of the NEJM article advocating the dismantling of the dead donor rule (here and here) that requires death before the taking of vital organs. I got some backstage blowback that I painted with too broad a brush about the kind of support such proposals have within . . . . Continue Reading »

Oh, oh. A-list movie star Gwyneth Paltrow has endorsed a clothing company that uses animal skin in some of its products, and predictably, the animal rights ideologues are coming unglued. From the story: The Hollywood star has been signed up by Italian designer Tod’s and is pictured draped in . . . . Continue Reading »

Usually my wife Debra J. Saunders—better known as Secondhand Smokette—and I plow different fields in our writing. But once in a while, our interests converge, as in a few weeks ago when she wrote a splendid column about animal rights violence directed against researchers in Santa Cruz, . . . . Continue Reading »

This bit from Monty Python’s THE MEANING OF LIFE, PART 1, is terribly gross and over the top, but it has the germ of a point and came to mind in our discussion of the growing advocacy within bioethics and organ transplant medicine to do away with the dead donor rule and allow living patients . . . . Continue Reading »

This is Part 2 of my deconstruction of an article in the NEJM proposing to end the dead donor rule in organ transplantation. Hit this link to read Part 1:In the end, since the authors of “The Dead Donor Rule and Organ Transplantation” apparently believe we can’t really get many . . . . Continue Reading »

I have now read “The Dead Donor Rule and Organ Transplantation” in the NEJM (359:7, August 14, 2008), by Robert D. Troug, MD, a physician at Harvard Medical School, and Franklin D. Miller, a bioethicist at the NIH. It makes for frightening reading. My comments will of necessity be long, . . . . Continue Reading »

The drive to instill Futile Care Theory is back in high gear after a bit of a respite. But here’s a pleasant surprise: One Eric Gampel, a bioethicist from California State University, Chico, pushes back against the concept of imposing “professional autonomy” in the futile care . . . . Continue Reading »