Wesley J. Smith

I am sure Tom Cruise was kidding when he said he would eat his new baby’s placenta. I shrugged it off, and firgured the idea was an urban legend. Then, I began to see some items that it is not unheard of. Which got me to thinking: The placenta is a human organ. Wouldn’t eating one be a . . . . Continue Reading »

There is an ongoing pretense in assisted suicide advocacy the euthanasia/assisted suicide is merely a medical matter of “last resort” that is to be reserved only for dying people when nothing else can be done to alleviate suffering. But this planned assisted suicide clinic that will . . . . Continue Reading »

This story details what we have heard before: The private money is voting with their closed checkbooks about the prospects for the near and mid range futures of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning. Issues of uncertainty of the technology, patent disputes, the continuing moral . . . . Continue Reading »

This story from Wired remains anecdotal, but it illustrates two important points: First, there is far more going on to help people with degenerative conditions than therapeutic cloning or embryonic stem cells. In this experiment, rats were injected with a hydrogel, similar to that found during . . . . Continue Reading »

This note from a reader seems right to me: “I have noticed in stories about Hwang’s research, the media almost always gets SCNT right. But when it comes to an initiative or funding in the U.S. they always get it wrong and overtly refuse to get it right. It is really curious. Maybe it is . . . . Continue Reading »

This Bloomberg report about how Harvard and California’s Geron Corporation plan to try to accomplish what Woo-suk Hwang lied about doing: human cloning and extraction of embryonic stem cells. No surprise there. But what is refreshing is that the story reports accurately that human cloning . . . . Continue Reading »

Russian doctors have been arrested for being part of a plot to take patients’ organs for sale on the black market. This is one small piece in a larger puzzle involving organ sales and exploitation of poor and sick people around the world. Losing the concept of the intrinsic moral value of . . . . Continue Reading »

This is a good story on the potential benefits of umbilical cord blood stem cells. Check it . . . . Continue Reading »

This column goes where the entire “Futile Care Theory” (aka medical futility) movement wants to take us. If you don’t want to receive life-sustaining treatment, you should have the absolute right to refuse. If you do want it, you may or may not get your way depending on whether the . . . . Continue Reading »

Three UK animal rights terrorists have admitted to robbing a grave to force a farm family to quit raising guinea pigs for science. This despicable act was the culmination of a campaign of intimidation, threats, false accusations, such as of pedophilia, that did finally force the family to stop . . . . Continue Reading »