Wesley J. Smith

This is a great picture published in the UK’s Daily Mail memorializing a meeting between the world’s tallest and shortest men. It’s a hoot. And it got me to thinking about the wonderful diversity of our species.Bao Xishun is 7 ft. 9 in., while Pingping is 2 ft. 4 in. Because we . . . . Continue Reading »

This story is quite pertinent to the trend among some in society to dismiss suicide prevention as paternalistic, and to promote assisted suicide for even the mentally ill. Treatment for depression reduces suicide attempts:The study, in the American Journal of Psychiatry, involved an analysis of . . . . Continue Reading »

Can you blame them? The housing association where the Swiss assisted suicide organization Dignitas maintains a death apartment, has evicted the group because other residents are sick of the suicide parade.It is a familiar sight for the residents of Zurich’s Getrud Strasse number 84. Three or . . . . Continue Reading »

The International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide is an invaluable educational resource in the fight against euthanasia. The Task Force publishes the highly informative Update, an essential tool to keeping up to date on the fast-moving euthanasia issue.The current edition is now out. . . . . Continue Reading »

I received an e-mail from David Undis, the executive director of LifeSharers, alerting me to a column he wrote promoting the creation of an organ transplant priority list that would put those who signed donor cards at the front of the organ transplantation line. Thus, Undis writes:[R]egistered organ . . . . Continue Reading »

Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo’s brother, has commented on a phenomenon I have also noticed: The propensity of the media to continually distinguish Terri’s case from other examples when purportedly unconscious people awaken, or dehydrations are stopped because the patient is found to be . . . . Continue Reading »

The Seattle Times has a hopeful story about a patient who couldn’t find a compatible bone marrow donor, being effectively treated for leukemia by umbilical cord blood stem cells. UCB stem cells are much easier to match than bone marrow, but for adults there has always been a problem:But adults . . . . Continue Reading »

I do not believe for a second that in the long term, embryonic stem cell research will be limited to early pre-implantation embryos destroyed in Petri dishes. Indeed, as I have repeatedly noted, New Jersey has already legalized human cloned fetal farming, only requiring that cloned fetuses be . . . . Continue Reading »

This story makes the Naderite in me itch: The actual cloner of Dolly the sheep, Keith Campbell—Ian Wilmut supervised rather than doing the hands on work—is advocating that farmers raise cloned animals rather than those created sexually, as a way of bringing stronger and better animal . . . . Continue Reading »

There is a historical exhibit about eugenics at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. From the column by Rick Martinez, in The News and Observer, it seems the curators did a fine job. Here are few excerpts from Martinez’s reaction:EUGENICS WAS SOLD AS THE SCIENCE of improving the . . . . Continue Reading »