Wesley J. Smith

Holy cow! My pal William B. Hurlbut is on the podium behind President Bush as he makes his stem cell speech in the East Room. What a moment for Bill! I knew he was meeting with the president, but I had no idea it would result in such a public and high profile presidential pat on the back. I am so . . . . Continue Reading »

Euthanasia activists are obsessed with lexicon. They believe that if only they can find the right words to use in identifying mercy killing and assisted suicide, people will see the wisdom of their proposal and embrace medicalized homicide.This obsession with words and terms has marked the . . . . Continue Reading »

I had heard this was in the offing: When President Bush vetoes the bill today that would overturn his embryonic stem cell federal funding policy, he will also sign an executive order intended to ultimately fund research into “alternatives,” to destructive embryonic stem cell research, . . . . Continue Reading »

Last year, Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, claimed to have derived human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos. That report turned out to be, shall we say, exaggerated. In fact, ACT’s researchers had destroyed all the embryos they worked on.Now, Lanza has announced that . . . . Continue Reading »

This is a fun story about a school that trains dogs to assist people with disabilities that came up with a novel way of raising funds for their important work: Dog “art.” Here’s the story:The owner of a fledgling dog-training academy in Salisbury has come up with a bizarre . . . . Continue Reading »

The New York Times Magazine published an important article today about pain control and the fear put into doctors by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that treating patients too aggressively with opioids (narcotics) could be dangerous to one’s freedom.The story, byline Tina Rosenberg, . . . . Continue Reading »

I don’t really care what bioethicist Ronald M. Green thinks (and, I am sure, he doesn’t care about my opinions). I bring Green up because he is the head of the Advanced Cell Technology bioethics advisory committee, and a professor at Dartmouth, who has just published an opinion piece in . . . . Continue Reading »

This is an ugly story: Children are being enslaved as brick makers in China. From the London Times report: More than 1,000 children may have been kidnapped and sold into slave labour in a brutal human trafficking ring that has shocked and outraged China. The children, some as young as 8, worked in . . . . Continue Reading »

Governor Mitt Romney, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, has a piece in today’s NRO promoting “alternatives” to embryonic stem cell research. Skipping over his partisan arguments, here is the crux of his column:I studied the issue for many months, and . . . . Continue Reading »

New York Times columnist David Brooks weighs in on human genetic engineering with some pithy points and a disturbing passivity. (No link available.) First, the pithy points:[A]Harris poll suggested that more than 40 percent of Americans would use genetic engineering to upgrade their children . . . . Continue Reading »