Human Exceptionalism

The bioethics committee at St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston, Texas has decreed that Andrea Clarke should die. Indeed, after a closed-door hearing, it ordered all further medical efforts to sustain her life while at St. Luke’s to cease. As a consequence, Clarke’s life support, required because of a heart condition and bleeding on the brain, is to be removed unilaterally Read More ›

THERE IS A PRETENSE in contemporary assisted suicide advocacy that goes something like this: “Aid in dying” (as it is euphemistically called) is merely to be a safety valve, a last resort only available to imminently dying patients for whom nothing else can be done to alleviate suffering. Meanwhile, in the real world, the founder of the Swiss suicide facilitating Read More ›

This article, published by the North Country Gazette, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley Smith: Award winning author Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute of Seattle, Washington, an attorney and consultant for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, notes that “the treatment is apparently being removed because it works, not because it doesn’t—which Read More ›

Former Gov. Booth Gardner, a Parkinson’s disease patient, hopes to place an initiative on the 2008 ballot to legalize assisted suicide in Washington. For the sake of Washington’s most weak and vulnerable people, he should reconsider. Assisted suicide can be spun to sound reasonable in theory, but once the real-world context in which assisted suicide would be carried out is Read More ›

The United States is an amazing country. Our system of liberty under law is the gold standard of political freedom. Our dynamic free market drives the world economy. Our sacrifices of blood and treasure to free subjugated peoples and succor victims of natural and man-made calamities are too many to recount. Yet, in our history we have also inflicted terrible Read More ›

At last a high government official in Europe got up the nerve to chastise the Dutch government for preparing to legalize infant euthanasia. Italy’s Parliamentary Affairs minister, Carlo Giovanardi, said during a radio debate: “Nazi legislation and Hitler’s ideas are reemerging in Europe via Dutch euthanasia laws and the debate on how to kill ill children.” Unsurprisingly, the Dutch, ever Read More ›

This article, published by the New York Sun, mentions Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley Smith: A senior fellow at the Discovery Institute who is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture, Wesley Smith, has been warning about this trend toward including killing as part of a medical act. The rest of the article can be found here.

This article, published by What the Bleep!?, mentions Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley Smith: Smith’s Consumer’s Guide presents an in-depth look at a range of issues involved in the current controversy regarding embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. The rest of the article can be found here.

In 2000, The New England Journal of Medicine reported that patients being euthanized in the Netherlands sometimes experienced significant side effects (apart from death, that is), such as nausea, convulsions, or coma. This belied the assertion oft made by euthanasia proponents that being killed by a doctor necessarily provides the euphemistic “gentle landing” of euthanasia lore. #ad#Responding to the Netherlands report, the NEJM published Read More ›

Petitions have only begun to be gathered to qualify the Missouri Stem Cell and Cures Initiative for November’s ballot, and already the controversy is white hot. Proponents contend that their proposal would merely permit embryonic stem cell research using a technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, while also banning human cloning. But opponents insist that the process is human Read More ›