Center on Human Exceptionalism
My taskmasters at the CBC never allow me to rest on my laurels. Fresh off several years of stellar prognosticating, I am now forced to answer the question: “But what have you predicted, lately?” Okay, let’s take a look. Oh! Oh my. Please remember, the following predictions are what I see happening. They do not reflect what I want to happen. Affordable Care Act, Read More ›
Since Jack Kevorkian first made headlines in 1990, the media have touted assisted suicide by the dying and severely disabled in positive, sometimes even glowing, terms. Actually, “touted” may be too weak a word. For two decades, the media have repeatedly presented emotional narratives of very ill or disabled people who “just want to die,” along with sympathetic depictions of Read More ›
Can you believe a year has come and gone since I last told you what would happen, before it happened, in bioethics? Maybe it’s my increasing age, but time is passing too fast! So, how did I do? Not as well as in years past, but still an A-. Let’s take a look: The Affordable Care Act The Affordable Care Act, Read More ›
One Sunday morning in the middle of last January, I was busily preparing my church for the coming liturgy as part of my sub-deacon duties. My friend Mark greeted me, pointed to flowers in vases on each side of the altar, and asked, “Can you tell the difference between the two bouquets?” The flowers to which Mark referred were identical Read More ›
Last month, a thirteen-year-old girl named Jahi McMath entered Children’s Hospital Oakland for elective surgery to treat sleep apnea. She later suffered a catastrophic cardiac arrest, and was soon declared “brain dead.” The hospital told Jahi’s mother and extended family she had died and that they would turn off her ventilator. Her family protested. She was warm, they noted, and Read More ›
Advocates of assisted suicide tell two—no, three—lies that act as the honey to help the hemlock go down. The first is that assisted suicide/euthanasia is a strictly medical act. Second, they falsely assure us that medicalized killing is only for the terminally ill. Finally, they promise that strict guidelines will be rigorously enforced to protect against abuse. Recent legislative proposals Read More ›
The Nonhuman Rights Project made headlines recently by filing three lawsuits seeking to have chimpanzees declared legal persons entitled to “bodily liberty,” and hence, writs of habeas corpus to end their forced captivity. The lawsuits—predicated on the intelligence of chimps, their sophisticated behavior, a supposed autonomy similar to that of human beings, and an alleged empathy—were promptly thrown out of court. Read More ›
“Tommy” and other chimpanzees are the subjects of several lawsuits in New York seeking writs of habeas corpus and “immediate release from illegal detention.” These lawsuits, the doing of the Nonhuman Rights Project, are not a surprise. As already noted in these pages (“Animal Desires,” April 9, 2012), NRP volunteer lawyers have spent years researching the common law of states, Read More ›
This article, published by The Daily Caller, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: The offensive comparison is a dangerous and self-serving effort by progressives to win legal rights for animals via courtroom decisions, said a fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Wash., Wesley J. Smith, an author and a critic of the claim that legal rights should be Read More ›
The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. —Merchant of Venice I recently received an unexpected mercy. In the scheme of things, it wasn’t a huge deal. But I had never experienced the joy of pure gratitude as I did then Mercy is a long stride beyond forgiveness—encompassing the concepts of gift, undeserved Read More ›