Human Exceptionalism

This article, published by OSV Newsweekly, mentions Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: And, according to lawyer and bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute … anyone in the world now has the right to bring a lawsuit on behalf of Ecuador’s Pachamama or any part of it, like rocks, piranhas or pond scum. The Read More ›

What is it about embryonic stem cell research that turns politicians into courtiers? Bring up Big Pharma, and the anti-greed rhetoric soars. HMOs? Just try to shut them up about heartless corporate bean-counters. Yet even though the same get-rich, money-talks ethos drives Big Biotech, government leaders trip over each other to grant its policy agendas carte blanche. Case in point: Read More ›

A radical environmental group called the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is the brainchild behind a constitutional proposal, to be voted on Sunday, that would grant rights to “nature.” From the proposal: Persons and people have the fundamental rights guaranteed in this Constitution and in the international human rights instruments. Nature is subject to those rights given by this Constitution Read More ›

This article, published by Investor’s Business Daily, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: Wesley J. Smith sees Yamanaka’s breakthrough as helping all biotech research. Smith is a senior fellow in bioethics at a conservative think tank called the Discovery Institute. The rest of the article can be found here.

This article, published by National Post, mentions Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley Smith: Pro-lifers have discovered shared values with critics of biotechnological research and commercial reproductive technology, such as the former Ralph Nader lawyer, Wesley Smith.

A story just published in the UK’s Guardian is a diary account of the euthanasia death of Mieneke Weide-Boelkes, a woman with brain cancer, written by her son Marc Weide, who made it public. As such, and because it is so awful, it seemed to me that public comment is warranted. The story of Weide-Boelkes’ euthanasia amply demonstrates the abandonment Read More ›

There is a concerted advocacy campaign underway across several disciplines aimed at knocking human beings off our pedestal of moral exceptionalism and redefining us as merely another animal in the forest. Toward this end, elements of the natural world are being personalized by public intellectuals, even as they seek to strip personhood from some people. The point of this ideological Read More ›

When Samuel Golubchuk’s family told doctors at Winnipeg’s Grace General Hospital that they wanted his life support maintained, they were stunned to hear that his doctors intended to remove his life support—even though doing so would violate their patient’s religious beliefs. When the family took thehospital to court, Golubchuk’s doctors claimed that maintaining his life would violate their values by Read More ›

The Great Ape Project was launched just 15 years ago by Princeton utilitarian bioethicist Peter Singer and Italian animal rights philosopher Paola Cavalieri with the stated goal of obtaining a U.N. declaration welcoming apes into a “community of equals” with humans. But why grant apes rights? After all, if the Spanish parliament deems these animals insufficiently protected, it can enact Read More ›

PETA – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – is at it again. When actress Jessica Simpson recently wore a T-shirt bearing the words “Real Girls Eat Meat,” the animal-rights zealots pounced. “Jessica Simpson might have a right to wear what she wants,” a PETA spokesperson said, “but she doesn’t have a right to eat what she wants – Read More ›