Wesley J. Smith

Korean scientists have created pluripotent stem cells from normal skin cells and have further improved the technique. From the story: Park said the overall process of making the stem cells is similar to those by U.S. and Japanese scientists, there has been a marked improvement in the success rate. . . . . Continue Reading »

A story from Japan I think is metaphorical to a larger ennui or nihilism in the West. Suicide rates are at very disturbing proportions. From the story:If the Golden Gate Bridge had been built in Japan, there might be little discussion about erecting a barrier to keep people from jumping off. Since . . . . Continue Reading »

I have been warning anyone who will listen about the coming huge policy fight over medical futility—what I call Futile Care Theory—that allows a doctor to refuse wanted life sustaining treatment when the doctor doesn’t believe that the quality of the patient’s life is worth . . . . Continue Reading »

Ian Wilmut’s old cloning team is furious, apparently, that he is receiving a knighthood for his “service to science.” Their point is that Wilmut did not actually clone Dolly or do anything other than administer the lab in which the groundbreaking cloning experiment took place. From . . . . Continue Reading »

Ignoring that New Jersey voters recently rejected a $450 boondoggle bond issue to pay for embryonic stem cell research, New York State is funding the research to the tune of $600 million without even giving the people a chance to vote on the issue. And those behind the effort have no intention of . . . . Continue Reading »

I don’t know why the media is surprised when animal rights group are never satisfied. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine—which is a creature of PETA with only about 4% of its members being doctors—wants to stop medical schools from using animals in their teaching. From . . . . Continue Reading »

More of this please. California regulators have hit Pacificare with a huge fine. From the story:After an unprecedented eight-month joint state probe triggered by hundreds of complaints, state health insurance regulators Tuesday slapped the PacifiCare unit of UnitedHealthcare with a record $3.5 . . . . Continue Reading »

Newsman Mike Wallace is recovering from a triple bypass surgery. Why is this a matter of interest to SHS other than to wish him well? Because under age-dictated health care rationing of the kind practiced in the UK and urged upon us by some very notable bioethicists here in America, Wallace would . . . . Continue Reading »

In the Netherlands, doctors sometimes euthanize babies born with spina bifida. There (and here), doctors sometimes refuse to treat them so that they will die. But now, a new journal article calls expose these lethal actions and non actions as the bigotry (my term) that they are. Writing in Childs . . . . Continue Reading »

India is searching for a monster who convinced the destitute to sell their kidneys at bargain basement prices and sold them for a huge profit. But the real empowerers of this atrocity are the foreigners who wanted new kidneys and didn’t care who got hurt in the process. From the story: India . . . . Continue Reading »