Human Exceptionalism

During the first three decades of the 20th century the eugenics movement thrived in the United States and throughout much of the Western world. Meaning “good in birth,” eugenicists believed that society could improve the physical, mental, cultural, and social health of humanity through selective breeding techniques that would eventually eliminate feeblemindedness, epilepsy, criminality, insanity, alcoholism, and pauperism. This utopia Read More ›

We reserve the right to refuse service: Most people have seen these signs at restaurants and retail shops. But now, metaphorically, some hospitals are hanging such notices over their entryways by promulgating “futile care” protocols that grant doctors the right to say no to wanted life-extending medical treatment to patients whose lives they consider lacking in sufficient quality to justify Read More ›

ALAS, POOR MARY. She’s the conjoined twin in England, united at the chest with her stronger sister Jodie, and she’s been called a parasite, a tumor, a bloodsucker: someone whose “primitive” brain makes her life unworthy of protecting. And all that by two British courts, which have wrenched away from her parents the right to decide whether or not to Read More ›

ON THE FACE OF IT, representative Tom Coburn and New York assemblywoman Nettie Mayersohn are mirror opposites: He’s a staunch Republican, she’s a fiery Democrat; he’s pro-life, she’s pro-choice; he’s socially conservative, she’s a booster of gay rights; he’s a fundamentalist Christian, she’s Jewish; he’s Oklahoma, she’s pure Queens. But across this yawning political and cultural divide, the two have Read More ›

The case of James H. Armstrong, M.D. v. The State of Montana should have been merely a skirmish in the never-ending national struggle over abortion. Instead, relying on the reasoning of certain “experts” in the moral choices surrounding health care, the Montana Supreme Court issued in October 1999 a sweeping decision that could make huge changes in the way Montanans live—and Read More ›

The Death of Medicine in Nazi Germany: Dermatology and Dermatopathology Under the Swastika. By Wolfgang Weyers, M.D. Madison Books. 472 pp. $18.95. The Nazi War on Cancer. By Robert N. Proctor. Princeton University Press. 365 pp. $29.95. Reviewed by Wesley J. Smith For lovers of history and those interested in preserving cultural morality and virtue, the Nazi era is a mine that never runs Read More ›

The Definition of Death, Contemporary Controversies, edited by Stuart J. Youngner, Robert, M. Arnold, and Renie Schapiro. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 346 pp., $ 54 In just thirty years, bioethics has grown from a group of ruminating philosophers and theologians into one of the country’s most fiercely secularized and influential intellectual forces. Bioethicists sit on presidential advisory commissions, teach in Read More ›