Wesley J. Smith

Great apes are magnificent animals.  They are intelligent.  They are closest to us genetically.  But they are not us.I bring this up because a professor (of course!) named John C. Matani undercut a perfectly righteous call for us to work  harder to protect the world’s . . . . Continue Reading »

The NYT certainly has been writing about our emerging brave new world of industrial procreative manufacture and quality control lately. Today’s installment discusses how a new blood test of the mom can detect gender at 7 weeks—without ultrasound that can bond a mother to her gestating . . . . Continue Reading »

Over the years I have had people send me stories on aborted fetuses being consumed in China as a delicacy or a medicine. I haven’t gone with it because I wasn’t clear on the credibility,and because the idea seemed too revolting and sensationalistic. I’m still very uncertain, but . . . . Continue Reading »

An attempt to create a right to medical and non medical assisted suicide–in reality, all assisted suicides are non medical regardless of a doctor’s participation–has been thrown out of court. . . . . Continue Reading »

I have noticed an odd propensity among the generally politically liberal commenters and bloggers on stem cell research. Where some rail against the supposed greed and avarice of the pharmaceutical companies, they praise stem cell researchers to the hilt as altruistic scientific saviors. I never got . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m goin’ out to places I have never been and seein’ things I may never see again. So, blogging will slow, as I am traveling light and keeping the trusty old laptop in the barn. However, I will be taking my neat new Blackberry Playbook. That will permit me to monitor comments and . . . . Continue Reading »

I first realized the Canadian single payer system had terrible problems whilst in Toronto maybe 10 years ago, and seeing a front page headline that 900,000 Ontarians could not find their own primary care physician.  That stunned me.  Prior to then, I had urged that the USA adopt the . . . . Continue Reading »

I know this is celebrity junk, but there is a kernel of importance here.  Zsa Zsa Gabor is experiencing a difficult time with the kind of severe health problems and other vicissitudes of old age that one might expect in a woman of 94 years.  But her (creep) husband has told CNN he wants . . . . Continue Reading »

A professor of  the “politics and philosophy of food,” named Chad Levin, advocates for vegetarianism in a distinctly political advocacy paper in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Ironically, given what he writes, he claims that his vegetarianism is not . . . . Continue Reading »

I first heard the euphemistic term “selective reduction,” at a bioethics conference at which I was speaking in Banff, Alberta.  I don’t remember the year, probably about a decade ago.  I was speaking on assisted suicide, and as I awaited my turn, the speaker before me . . . . Continue Reading »