Human Exceptionalism

Center on Human Exceptionalism

Stem-Cell Sleight of Hand

FORMER NEW YORK GOVERNOR Mario Cuomo is one slick fella. Like all effective propagandists, he’s smooth, articulate, eloquent—and he doesn’t let the facts get in his way. Take for example his most recent polemic in the debate over embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). In “Not on Faith Alone,” published in the June 20 New York Times (where else?), Cuomo takes Read More ›

False Federalism

Does Oregon have the constitutional right to force the United States government to permit state doctors to assist patient suicides with federally controlled substances (narcotics)? Or is the federal government entitled under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) to prevent these federally regulated drugs from being prescribed for lethal use regardless of state law? The Supreme Court will tell us soon in Gonzales v. Oregon, a case that will not only influence the course of the euthanasia and assisted-suicide debate, but will also profoundly impact the delicate balance of power between “states rights” and the overarching sovereignty of the federal government.

So far, court decisions have favored Oregon. Most recently, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Oregon’s right to regulate medical practice within its borders prevents the federal government from punishing state doctors who prescribe federally controlled substances to end their terminally ill patients’ lives. Under this view, the federal government can punish doctors who prescribe lethal doses of controlled substances for use in assisted suicide in states where the act is illegal. But punishing Oregon doctors would violate the principle of federalism because assisted suicide has been explicitly made a proper medical practice under Oregon law.

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The English Patient

London THE MOST IMPORTANT BIOETHICS LITIGATION in the world today involves a 45-year-old Englishman, Leslie Burke. He isn’t asking for very much. Burke has a progressive neurological disease that may one day deprive him of the ability to swallow. If that happens, Burke wants to receive food and water through a tube. Knowing that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) rations Read More ›

Q&A with Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith

This article, published by National Review, contains an interview with Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith:

As the House of Representatives Tuesday votes on possibly expanding federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research — legislation the president has promised to veto — there are some real concerns about how far we’ve already stepped into a “Brave New World.” With those concerns in mind, and a big-picture look at all the issues involved in this new world, Wesley J. Smith, a lawyer and consumer activist (friend and collaborator of Ralph Nader even!) recently produced A Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World. He addressed some of these issues Monday in an interview with NRO editor Kathryn Lopez. Bottom line: All is certainly not lost. However ….

National Review Online: With the news out of South Korea last week, are we all one step closer to designer babies?

Wesley J. Smith: Absolutely. Apparently the South Korean researcher Wu Suk Hwang has learned how to reliably create human cloned embryos. Human cloning is the essential step toward biotechnologists learning how to genetically engineer progeny, a new eugenics project that enjoys great support among futurists, bioethicists, and some within the science establishment. For example, James Watson, the co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, is a big booster of creating designer babies who have been enhanced for intelligence, health, looks, etc. There is even a nascent social movement that has formed around creating a post human species known as transhumanism. Princeton biologist Lee Silver put it this way in his book Remaking Eden: Without cloning, genetic engineering is simply science fiction. But with cloning, genetic engineering moves into the realm of reality.

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Where’s the Leave-My-Money Alone Coalition?

This article, published by National Review, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: “Here in California,” says Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow with the Discovery Institute, “we are sacrificing present medical needs as our emergency rooms and trauma centers are shutting down for lack of funds as we borrow hundreds of millions of dollars each year to pay corporate welfare to Read More ›

PETA’s Non-Apology Apology

Ingrid Newkirk, the alpha wolf over at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), has just issued a classic non-apology “apology” for PETA’s odious “Holocaust on Your Plate” Campaign, which explicitly compared eating meat to participating in the gassing of millions of Jews. The purported equation between the Holocaust and normal practices of animal husbandry wasn’t presented between Read More ›

Misguidelines

IF THERE WERE EVER any doubts that the National Academy of Sciences is pursuing an “anything” goes approach to biotechnological research, they were erased by the organization’s recently published tome, Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research. The purported purpose of Guidelines is to create voluntary ethical protocols to govern human embryonic stem cell and therapeutic cloning research — “to Read More ›

It Didn’t Start with Dolly

HERE’S AN EASY POP QUIZ: What’s the name of the first cloned mammal? If you answered, “Dolly,” that would be . . . wrong. Wrong? But wasn’t Dolly the sheep touted by the media as the first mammal ever made “asexually” through the cell nuclear transfer cloning process? Yes, but there are a lot of things you hear from the Read More ›

The Legacy of Terry Schiavo

TERRI SCHIAVO IS DEAD. But her death by dehydration last week need not be in vain. Great good can still come from the harsh, two week ordeal she—and to a lesser extent, we—were forced to undergo by court order. Terri’s story generated a torrent of compassion. (The root meaning of compassion is to “suffer with,” which is precisely what her Read More ›

The Case Heard Round the Web

THE ARGUMENTS OVER THE FATE of Terri Schiavo have sowed distrust among the courts and the political branches of government, and forced a state legislature, a popular governor, both houses of Congress, and the president of the United States into tight, uncomfortable political corners. The pending death-by-dehydration of this disabled, 41-year-old Clearwater, Florida, woman—thanks to a court order sought by Read More ›