Human Exceptionalism

Terri Schiavo continues to prick our collective conscience, our sensitivity to the way she died—deprived of all food and water, even the balm of ice chips for nearly two weeks—as raw today as on the day she drew her last breath five years ago next March.  Usually, the trauma remains just beneath the surface. But every once in a while Read More ›

The case of Terri Schiavo—who died five years ago next March, deprived for nearly two weeks of food and water, even the balm of ice chips—continues to prick consciences. That may be one reason the case of Rom Houben, a Belgian man who was misdiagnosed for 23 years as being in a persistent vegetative state, is now receiving international attention. Read More ›

“Flash Forward” is a new and interesting television drama presented on the ABC Television Network. The premise is brilliant – due to reasons still unknown, everyone in the world (except the bad guys) blackout for two minutes seventeen seconds. Planes crash, people collapse on the streets, swimmers drown, it is an utter catastrophe that results in the deaths of 20 Read More ›

This article, published by The Jewish Press, provides a review of Discovery Institute Senior Fellow George Gilder and his book The Israel Test: George Gilder’s latest book, The Israel Test (Vigilante Books), is so unabashedly pro-Jewish and pro-Israel that it would make many Jews blush. The rest of the article can be found here.

Over the past fifty years, the purposes and practices of medicine have changed radically. Where medical ethics was once life-affirming, today’s treatments and medical procedures increasingly involve the legal taking of human life. The litany is familiar: More than one million pregnancies are extinguished each year in the United States, thousands late-term. Physician-assisted suicide is legal in Oregon, Washington, and, Read More ›

The international assisted suicide movement has many faces. America’s “Dr. Death,” Jack Kevorkian probably comes most readily to mind. The activist groups Compassion and Choices and Final Exit Network, are also well known. Then there is Australia’s own suicide promoter Philip Nitschke, who travels the world teaching people how to commit suicide with helium and a plastic bag or animal Read More ›

Each year, the CBC asks me to predict what will happen in bioethics/biotechnology in the coming year. In November 2008, I saw a “dark year” coming, caused by what I perceived to be a “cultural earthquake” caused by the election of President Obama and the legalization of assisted suicide in Washington State. Indeed, I worried that “the people now in Read More ›

This article, published by BreakPoint, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: Here, the distinction is between those they will and will not save. It’s designating, in advance, those groups whom are regarded as expendable. And, as ethicist Wesley J. Smith pointed out, removing people from ventilators goes beyond triage principles to “indiscriminate rationing.” The rest of the article Read More ›

The international assisted-suicide movement has many faces. America’s “Dr. Death,” Jack Kevorkian, probably comes most readily to mind. The activist groups, Compassion & Choices and Final Exit Network, are also well known. Then there is Australia’s “Dr. Death,” Philip Nitschke, who travels the world teaching people how to commit suicide with helium or animal-euthanasia drugs obtained from Mexico. On Sunday, Read More ›

Society’s belief in the unique moral value and importance of human life is under unprecedented assault. Most people still believe in human exceptionalism and are unaware that powerful social and cultural forces are working diligently to dismantle the sanctity of life ethic as the fundamental value of our social order. But the time has come to pay attention. If human life Read More ›