Human Exceptionalism

Center on Human Exceptionalism

Smith a Hit in Poland

Discovery Senior Fellow Wesley Smith’s book, The Culture of Death, has now been translated into Polish and was the center of attention at his addresses this week to a conference on bioethics and to another gathering of 1000 doctors in Krakow. Wesley was interviewed by at least three print media, featured in a book review and hosted on TV and Read More ›

Wesley Smith Texas Testimony

Wesley J. Smith Testifies Before Texas State Senate

Discovery Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith appeared before the Texas State Senate Committee on Health and Human Services to advocate in favor of SB2089. The purpose of the bill is to improve Texas’s medical futility provisions and to make end of life healthcare disputes between patients, providers, and their families cooperative rather coercive, which Smith currently believes to be the …

Wesley-Smith-Testifying-2019b

Wesley J. Smith Testifies Before Texas State Senate Against Futile Care

Discovery Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith appeared before the Texas State Senate Committee on Health and Human Services to advocate in favor of SB2089. The purpose of the bill is to improve Texas’s medical futility provisions and to make end of life healthcare disputes between patients, providers, and their families cooperative rather coercive, which Smith currently believes to be the Read More ›

Sophia-AI-for-Good-Summit
Photo by ITU Pictures from Geneva, Switzerland via Wiki Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Transhumanism, the Lazy Way to Human ‘Improvement’

Sometimes you have to laugh. In “Transhumanism and the Death of Human Exceptionalism,”published in Aero, Peter Clarke quotes criticism I leveled against transhumanism from a piece I wrote entitled, “The Transhumanist Bill of Wrongs” From my piece: Transhumanism would shatter human exceptionalism. The moral philosophy of the West holds that each human being is possessed of natural rights that adhere solely and merely because we Read More ›

zhang-dayong-138186-unsplash
Photo by zhang dayong on Unsplash

Is Society Now Adopting the Values of ‘Blade Runner’?

“Blade Runner” may be the most influential science fiction movie of my lifetime.  The 1982 film starred a terrific Harrison Ford as a world-weary detective assigned to find a terrorist cell of artificially intelligent cyborgs with super human capacities. Led by Rutger Hauer, the cyborgs have traveled to earth from space colonies in a desperate attempt to force their designer Read More ›

Euthanasia Zealots Push Starvation as ‘Death with Dignity’

It’s getting very dark in euthanasia-land. Not content with legalizing assisted suicide for the terminally ill in six states plus the District of Columbia — with Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Colombia allowing lethal jab euthanasia — and unsatiated with Switzerland’s suicide clinics to which people from around the world attend — the so-called “death with dignity” movement now is pushing self-starvation as a splendid way to die. Read More ›

in-vitro-fertilisation-ivf-macro-concept-stockpack-adobe-stock.jpeg
In vitro fertilisation, IVF macro concept

Oversight Needed

Somewhere in the Great Beyond, Aldous Huxley must have been shaking his head and saying “I told you so” after Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced the birth of twin girls whose genes he claimed to have edited. If true, these are the first genetically engineered human babies. After creating the embryos via in vitro fertilization, He — known in the Read More ›

Canadian Doctors Get Ready for Child Euthanasia

It never made any sense. The assurance that active euthanasia would always be limited to terminally ill, competent adults just never made any sense. Here’s the problem: Once a society widely supports eliminating suffering by eliminating the sufferer and redefines as a “medical treatment” the act whereby doctors kill seriously ill patients, there is no logical argument for limiting euthanasia to adults …

Transhumanist Bill of Wrongs

Transhumanists have seen the future and it is authoritarian. More specifically, it is both authoritarian and anti-human. To make matters even worse, transhumanism would coercively bankrupt the world economy. Beyond that, it’s a pipe dream that threatens venerable Western values. What’s not to like? For those who may not know, transhumanism is an increasingly influential futuristic social movement that flowed Read More ›

A Gruesome Plan

The Hippocratic Oath is dead. “Do no harm” medicine is fast becoming extinct. Contemporary health care is increasingly under the sway of a utilitarian bioethics that makes the elimination of suffering the prime directive—to the detriment of traditional standards of medical morality that deem all human life equally worthy of care and protection. The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has been …