Wesley J. Smith

The e-mail has been pouring in on my article in today’s NRO on the deconstruction of the Hippocratic Oath. They are so interesting and varied, I thought I’d share some of them with the readers of Secondhand Smoke. I intend to keep posting some of the newer communications as I receive . . . . Continue Reading »

A while ago, I posted several entries at Secondhand Smoke about the ongoing deconstruction of the Hippocratic Oath. As I promised, I have written a longer article analyzing what it all may mean. It is in today’s National Review Online. I am getting a lot of response already. I will post some . . . . Continue Reading »

So the country of forced abortions, femaile infanticide, and selling of executed prisoners’ organs wants to get into the euthanasia game. How . . . . Continue Reading »

This story reveals that Britain’s National Health Service, the socialized funder of medical care in the UK, is running deeply in the red. Some hospital wards are closing, surgeries may be delayed, and cost cutting is the order of the day.I have always worried that money would become a big part . . . . Continue Reading »

Sir Paul McCartney is a fantastic musician and composer. As someone who grew up in the era of The Beatles, I can only smile when I watch him perform. But he is dead wrong in his attempts to impeded necessary animal testing in medical research. Here, he writes to Arizona’s governor urging her . . . . Continue Reading »

Sigh. The UK is in the midst of a renewed effort to legalize assisted suicide. Toward this end, one of the pro assisted suicide groups has published a poll showing that 2/3 of UK doctors have provided strong pain control knowing it could hasten death. Well good for them. That is like saying that 3/4 . . . . Continue Reading »

What is happening to the UK? Here is another in a series of recent medical futility cases that takes Futile Care Theory another step closer to a “duty to die.” A baby known publicly only as MB, has a degenerative disease called spinal muscular atrophy. The illness, which does not affect . . . . Continue Reading »

Editorialist Paul Greenberg has written a compelling critique of a society that prefers dehydrating the profoundly cognitively impaired rather than nurse and care for them. Key quote: “What arrogance to decree that, because we deem another’s life not worth living, it must be ended. But . . . . Continue Reading »

The KC Star is one of the most biased newspapers in the country when it comes to the cloning debate. I was given the courtesy of writing an op/ed piece on the issue last week, it is true, for which I am grateful. But the news reportage continues to misstate the science of what is sometimes called . . . . Continue Reading »

If doctors and bioethicists had gotten their way, little Haleigh Poutre would have been dehydrated to death via removal of feeding tube. But now, according to this story, she may be eating eggs. How unsurprising that the national media has generally ignored the case: It would demonstrate vividly the . . . . Continue Reading »