Human Exceptionalism

I have been warning and warning that a virulent anti-humanism is becoming rampant on the left side of the scale, and even within the MSM. A site on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (roughly akin to the BBC) Website—Planet Slayer—specifically, “Professor Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator” tells you to enter and “find you when you should die!” I kid you not. Hit the Read More ›

For the past two decades, euthanasia/assisted-suicide ideologues have worked overtime to conflate palliative care—the medical alleviation of pain and other distressing symptoms of serious illness—with intentionally ending the life of the patient. The movement’s first target was the hospice, a specialized form of care for the dying created forty years ago in the United Kingdom by the late, great medical Read More ›

This article, published by National Review, mentions Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: Koontz goes on to recommend Culture of Death, a book by Wesley J. Smith that makes a similar argument. At the time, he didn’t know Smith (who has written for National Review). Since then, they’ve become friends. The rest of the article can be found here.

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the “dignity” of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called “plant rights” is being seriously debated. A few years ago the Swiss added to Read More ›

Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith will be inteviewed by Tony Snow on today’s Bill O’Reilly radio program. Check your local listings for air times.

It is a bitter irony that even as we are enlarging our commitment to human equality in many areas, we are turning our backs on it in others. In particular, we may be about to eliminate from our society people with Down syndrome (DS) and other genetically caused disabilities. With the development of prenatal genetic diagnosis, the drive toward eugenics Read More ›

The culture of death is like heroin: Once you start to mainline, it is never enough. Consider the experience of the Netherlands. When euthanasia was quasi-legalized there by court order in 1973, access to mercy killing and assisted suicide were supposed to be limited to the very few. The killing would all be governed by euthanasia guidelines that, the Dutch Read More ›

This article, published by BreakPoint, mentions Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: Timmerman was quoted recently by bioethicist Wesley J. Smith in the online publication To the Source. Smith rightly claims that while infanticide was commonly accepted in ancient times, only the Jews and the Christians actively opposed it. The rest of the article can be found here.

In Liberalism’s Troubled Search for Equality , Robert P. Jones takes the measure of contemporary assisted-suicide advocacy through a distinctly liberal lens. He has impeccable credentials for this task: He is the director and senior fellow at the progressive think tank Center for American Values in Public Life, given birth by the progressive political-advocacy group People for the American Way. Read More ›

Support for infanticide is becoming positively trendy. Where once support for killing babies born with birth defects was a fringe belief, it became respectable — even mainstream — after doctors from Groningen University Medical Center in the Netherlands admitted in 2004 that they euthanized dying and profoundly disabled babies under the terms of what has come to be called the Read More ›

This article, published by CitizenLink, is about Discovery Institute Fellow Wesley J. Smith: Since leaving his legal career in 1985 to pursue writing and public advocacy, Wesley J. Smith has worn many hats in the bioethics arena. He is an award-winning author, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide and Read More ›

Four months ago, a little girl in Samoa was born with serious disabilities. Doctors did not believe the baby could survive, so they urged the parents not to feed their daughter. But the parents loved their daughter and snuck food to Miracle. Beyond all medical expectations, Miracle survived. Ponder, if you will, what I just wrote: Miracle’s parents had to Read More ›