Human Exceptionalism

IAN WILMUT, the creator of Dolly the sheep and newly appointed director of Edinburgh University’s Centre for Regenerative Medicine, wants to experiment on dying people with embryonic stem cells—even though he admits that such potential treatments “have not been properly tested.” Wilmut’s plan, which in essence would use people with terminal neurological conditions as lab rats, is the latest example Read More ›

In February 2004, Woo—Suk Hwang made world headlines when he claimed to have cloned human embryos using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, and then to have derived a line of stem cells from the embryos that could be used for medical research. Enthusiasm for this first “successful” experiment in human cloning, published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Science, Read More ›

This article, published by the Los Angeles Daily News, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: But whether its research will ever yield the sorts of miraculous cures that Proposition 71 backers promised is highly doubtful. Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, sees CIRM as “a state unto itself” and “a political institute, not a Read More ›

According to recent showbiz news, jailed murderer Jack Kevorkian may soon be the subject of a laudatory movie biopic. (No, it is not intended as a horror movie.) Unfortunately, this seems to be a serious project. The announced director is Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple. The screenwriter is Barbara Turner (Pollock). Stars touted as potentially playing the lead include Read More ›

FOUR MILLION BABIES ARE BORN in this country every year, bearing gifts of inestimable value. Foremost among these, of course, is the love they bring into the world and elicit from it. More practically, however, these infants bring with them something that we are learning has great potential to alleviate human suffering: the stem cells contained in the blood of Read More ›

MUCH OF THE CURRENT DEBATE over what is generally known as therapeutic cloning—that is, somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) cloning conducted for research purposes rather than reproduction—centers on the nature of the thing that is created by the cloning process. Until recently, this issue wasn’t controversial: Cloning, it was widely agreed, created a new human embryo. Thus, in 1997, President Read More ›

This article, published by The New York Sun, mentions Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley Smith: How I wish the award ceremony had been televised on C-Span or elsewhere so that the nation could have heard the warning hurled by the man who introduced Mr. Hentoff, Wesley Smith. Mr. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in California who Read More ›

Brave New World is rushing toward us at mach speed: Scientists have already created cloned human embryos; a Stanford biotechnologist may bioengineer a mouse to have a human brain; “designer babies” have already been created to provide stem cells for sick siblings. Some believe such research is leading us toward a veritable utopia: “By the end of the 21st Century,” Read More ›

“By the end of the 21st century,” writes Reason magazine science editor Ronald Bailey in his book “Liberation Biology,” “the typical American may attend a family reunion in which five generations are playing together. And great-great-great grandma, at 150 years old, will be as vital … as her 30-year-old great-great grandson with whom she’s playing touch football.” UCLA futurist Gregory Read More ›

Advocates of assisted suicide label hastened death a “compassionate choice.” But such gooey euphemisms seek to hide the harsh truth: Assisted suicide isn’t about caring: It is about the intentional ending of human life – an act barred by the Hippocratic Oath for more than 2000 years. We are told that assisted suicide would be restricted to cases of unbearable Read More ›