Human Exceptionalism

Norman Ornstein had a piece in the Washington Post railing against “death panels” in Indiana and Arizona, both of which involved Medicaid budget limits. He omitted the death panel in Oregon — perhaps because it is a liberal state? — which has explicitly rationed care under Medicaid since being allowed to conduct rationing under the Clinton administration. In Oregon, Medicaid has a list of Read More ›

This article, published by The Gospel Coalition, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley Smith: “The new rules are a full frontal assault on religious liberty at an institutional level,” says Wesley Smith, a bioethicist who serves as a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Human Exceptionalism, as a consultant for the Center for Bioethics and Culture, and with the Read More ›

When I learned today that the federal bureaucracy had promulgated a rule compensating physicians for the time they spend counseling patients on end-of-life health-care decisions, I wasn’t surprised. A similar provision was dropped from the Obamacare bill, but anyone who understands the profoundly bureaucratic nature of contemporary government knew that that was not necessarily the end of it. The 2,700-page Read More ›

Hubris: No better word describes the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s plan to persuade Californians to borrow another $3 billion to keep it in business funding stem cell research. The CIRM was created in 2004 in the wake of President George W. Bush’s order restricting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Knowing that many Californians perceived themselves as “the Read More ›

This article, published by EWTN News, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: Bioethics writer Wesley J. Smith, a consultant for the pro-life International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, told EWTN News in a Dec. 22 interview that such registries have their place. The rest of the article can be found here.

My, how time flies. It seems only yesterday that I issued my predictions for 2010. That turned out pretty well. But the prediction business is never done. Time marches on, after all, and eventually old predictions become about as interesting as yesterday’s newspaper. So, once again and with trepidation, I enter the Prognostication Zone to put my prophetic reputation on the line. Read More ›

It’s that time of year when the CBC asks me to look back on my annual predictions in the world of bioethics to see how I did. The answer? Quite well. In fact, I think it was my best year ever. Obamacare First, I predicted that what has come to be known generically as Obamacare—actually the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—would Read More ›

The day after the Obama administration’s shellacking at the polls, Peter Orszag, former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, defended Obamacare from the ramparts of the New York Times. Dubiously asserting that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a money saver, Orszag extolled the establishment of an arcane new commission to oversee the Medicare budget: Read More ›

Wow. I am surprised–and very flattered. SHSer Lauren tells me that President Bush’s new book Decision Points quotes me. The Corner also takes note, because the quote is from something I wrote on NRO. Here’s what Bush wrote: Those on the other side of the debate argued that government support for the destruction of human life would cross a moral line. “Embryonic stem cell research Read More ›