Human Exceptionalism

The United Kingdom continues to provide vivid warnings about the dangers of centralized health-care planning — a real possibility under Obamacare. Within the last few years, the U.K.’s notorious rationing board, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), urged hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices to follow an end-of-life protocol known as the Liverpool Care Pathway. The Pathway’s guidelines Read More ›

This article, published by American Medical News , quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: “The argument is to replace assisted suicide with a euphemistic advocacy term in the statute,” said Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow in human rights and bioethics at the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank. “It’s an amazing and hubristic idea.” The rest of the Read More ›

It is one thing when ideological activists try to redefine terms to win a political debate. It is quite another when a judge does it by judicial fiat. But that is precisely what may happen in Connecticut. After advocates failed to legalize assisted suicide in the last legislative session, two Connecticut physicians—aided by the assisted suicide advocacy group Compassion and Read More ›

On July 4, 1995, Myrna Lebov, age 52, committed suicide in her Manhattan apartment. The case generated national headlines when her husband, George Delury, announced that he had assisted Lebov’s suicide at her request because she was suffering the debilitations of progressive multiple sclerosis. Delury became an instant celebrity. He was acclaimed as a dedicated husband willing to risk jail Read More ›

This article, published by Salvo Magazine, contains an interview with Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: Who better to ask than Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, an attorney for the Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. The rest of the article can Read More ›

Oh-oh: Here they come. For years, organ transplant ethicists and some in the bioethics community have agitated to increase the supply of donated organs. There is nothing wrong with that in the abstract, of course. Increasing the supply would alleviate much human suffering and is devoutly to be wished. But therein lurks a great danger. Increasing supply is a worthy Read More ›

The assisted-suicide movement has come a long way in just a couple of decades. Consider, for example, this recent item from the San Francisco Chronicle: “Charlotte Shultz [the wife of former secretary of state George Shultz] accepted the invitation to be honorary co- chair (with Dianne Feinstein) at a Nov. 5 luncheon and program for Compassion & Choices of Northern Read More ›

Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith was recently featured as part of a Family Research Council Town Hall on health care. Other guests included House Minority Leader John Boehner, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, Congressman Chris Smith and several others. To listen, click here.

Discovery President Bruce Chapman has an interesting take on National Review’s cover story by Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith at Discovery Blog. Click on the link above to read the story.

President Obama’s drive to remake the entire American health care system—dubbed “Obamacare” by friends and critics alike—has been seriously hobbled by fears of “death panels” and worries Grandma will be denied life-saving care by rationing boards or pushed by end-of-life counselors into “taking the pain pill” (to quote the president) rather than accepting life-extending treatment. With the Administration struggling to Read More ›