Wesley J. Smith

Oxford professor Nick Bostrom, one of the leading lights of the transhumanist movement, has a new paper out (“In Defense of Post Human Dignity”) in which he argues that there is no need to fear the post human future if we all agree that all forms of post humanity have equal dignity. Here . . . . Continue Reading »

With little fanfare, President Bush signed into law the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, making it easier to punish animal liberation thugs who engage in “tertiary targeting.” Still, as I said in this recent blog entry, the real contest will be in the ideological sphere, particularly . . . . Continue Reading »

This is wonderful news and demonstrates the great potential for morally uncontentious stem cell research. But don’t expect the media or politicians to notice. There is campaign money in them thar embryonic stem cell hills. Big Biotech has spent many tens of millions in propagandizing the . . . . Continue Reading »

A Genetic Bill of Rights—From Lori Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, who chaired the federal ethics advisory committee to the Human Genome Project. * You should have the right to refuse genetic testing and not to disclose genetic information, except in criminal cases in . . . . Continue Reading »

Apparently the first patient to receive a “face transplant” is doing well. Good. I never understood what all the fuss was about anyway. If we can transplant livers and kidneys from cadavers, why not facial . . . . Continue Reading »

My new podcast is now available. In it, I discuss the dangers of personhood theory and its potential lethal consequences. If you are of a mind, check it . . . . Continue Reading »

There was a wonderful article published in the Times of London by a father and the parenting of a child with Down syndrome. I thought of writing about it here at Secondhand Smoke, but thought the best place for it would be over at the First Things blog. It is out today.In the article, among other . . . . Continue Reading »

Like Fr. Neuhaus , I too was taken with the article "I’m Not a Saint, Just a Parent" by Simon Barnes in the Times of London. It recalled to my mind a speech I gave several years ago to a medical school in which I urged the students to always look at their patients through the lens . . . . Continue Reading »

We have seen this before in the UK, and now in Australia: Humans exhibited in zoos as if we were merely another animal in the forest. But we are not mere animals. We are the exceptional species, human beings, unlike any other known species in the universe. We are moral beings, meaning that we have . . . . Continue Reading »

One of the great and terrible jokes about assisted suicide/euthanasia is the old platitude that “guidelines” will protect against abuse. They don’t, of course. They are not even there to effectively constrain assisted suicide. Rather, in my view, they primarily exist to allow . . . . Continue Reading »