Wesley J. Smith

Chair and Senior Fellow, Center on Human Exceptionalism

Wesley J. Smith is Chair and Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism.

Wesley is a contributor to The Corner at National Review and is the author of more than 14 books, in recent years focusing exclusively on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley’s most recent book is his updated and revised Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement which was named one of the Ten Outstanding Books of the Year and Best Health Book of the Year by Independent Publishers Association. He collaborated with Ralph Nader, co-authoring four books with the consumer advocate, notably No Contest: Corporate Lawyers and the Perversion of Justice in America.

Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and was honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia.

An attorney by training, Wesley left the full time practice of law in 1985 to pursue a career in writing and public advocacy and has since published thousands of articles, columns, and opinion pieces on issues pertaining to the moral importance of human life. Wesley addresses the entire spectrum of bioethical issues, particularly relating to conscience, patient protection, eugenics, suicide, transhumanism, medical ethics, and law and policy. Wesley’s writing has appeared nationally and internationally, including in Newsweek, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, the Weekly Standard, National Review, The Age(Australia), The Telegraph (United Kingdom), Western Journal of Medicine, and the American Journal of Bioethics.

Wesley has appeared on more than a thousand television and radio talk/interview programs, including such national shows as ABC Nightline, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, CNN Anderson Cooper 360, CNN World Report, CBS Evening News, EWTN, C-SPAN, Fox News Network, as well as nationally syndicated radio programs, including Coast to Coast, Dennis Miller, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Afternoons with Al Kresta, and EWTN. He has appeared internationally on Voice of America, CNN International, and programs originating in Great Britain (BBC), Australia (ABC), Canada (CBC), Ireland, Poland, New Zealand, Germany, China, and Mexico.

Wesley’s books include Forced Exit: Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide and the New Duty to Die, a broad-based criticism of the assisted suicide and euthanasia movement, which has become a classic in anti-euthanasia advocacy. Wesley’s Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World explores the morality, science, and business aspects of human cloning, stem cell research, and genetic engineering. A Rat is a Pig is a Dog is a Boy: The Human Cost of the Animal Rights Movement serves as Wesley’s searing critique of the ideology and tactics of the animal liberation movement and a rousing defense of the unique importance of the human person, captured by the phrase “human exceptionalism”. Wesley’s The War on Humans, serves as a companion, exposing the anti-human and misanthropic nature of radical environmentalism and a call to return to a human-friendly understanding of ecology. Additionally, Wesley’s Power Over Pain: How to Get the Pain Control You Need, co-authored with Eric M. Chevlen, MD, provides practical responses for those who are the target of Compassion and Choices and other pro-suicide and pro-euthanasia activists.

Wesley is often called upon by executive branch officials, lawmakers, and policy advocates to advise on issues within his fields of expertise. Wesley has testified as an expert witness in front of federal and state legislative committees, and has counseled government and business leaders internationally about matters pertaining to bioethics and other issues about which he advocates.

An international lecturer and public speaker, Wesley appears frequently at political, university, medical, legal, disability rights, bioethics, religious, industry, and community gatherings across the United States as well as at the United Nations and in Europe, Mexico, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and other nations.

Archives

Bioethicists: Doctors Should Push Patients to Reduce Their Carbon Footprint

Wesley J. Smith
November 2, 2026
Mainstream bioethics is left-wing politics by another name. Practitioners therefore often seek to expand the jurisdiction of the field to push their favored political agendas — for example, to issues of war and peace. In the latest example of this tendency, an influential journal just published a piece of advocacy for transforming general practitioners into instruments of fighting climate change. Specifically, the authors of the article urges doctors to nag their patients into reducing their carbon emissions. First, the authors acknowledge that the primary role of general practitioners currently is to focus on the medical issues of each individual patient, not to promote societal reform: The General Practitioner (GP) is expected to operate with a wide sphere of interest, …

When Bioethicists Attack Medical Conscience

Wesley J. Smith
October 30, 2026
Many big shots in the bioethics community continue to argue against “medical conscience,” insisting that doctors should be forced to perform all requested legal medical procedures — even if it involves the taking of human life — that can produce the result the patient wants. In the latest ani-conscience broadside, published in the professional journal Bioethics, two internationally known bioethicists, Julian Savulescu and Udo Schuklenk, take an almost absolutist position: Our argument is that patients have a right to receive health care when four necessary conditions are satisfied (citations omitted): The treatment is legal in that jurisdiction. Providing the treatment is consistent with constraints of distributive justice. The treatment is in the …

Would You Attend an Assisted Suicide?

Wesley J. Smith
October 28, 2026
The highbrow Dear Abby of the New York Times — a.k.a. The Ethicist (who is a philosophy professor at NYU) — published an inquiry from a reader whose “difficult aunt” is pondering assisted suicide. The Ethicist’s response was rather namby-pamby. From his answer: It would be kind to give her a call, explaining that her messages left you concerned and uncertain about her situation. (A decision to seek MAID is a far cry from obtaining it; eligibility is subject to a formal medical assessment.) You can ask whether she has spoken to her doctors about MAID and what they’ve told her. Just be careful about offering more than you can give. You don’t have to make yourself available for an extended or continuing conversation. The “difficult aunt” …

“Nature Rights” Hits the Big Time

Wesley J. Smith
October 27, 2026
Should “nature” be accorded enforceable human-type rights? Not too long ago, the very notion would have been laughed out of town. But no one is chuckling now. Over the last decade, support for granting legal rights to nature has steadily seeped from the radical fringe into the establishment mainstream. So what are we talking about? The usual definition states that nature—which, when you think about it, is everything that exists—has “the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles” in evolution. That comes close to a right to life for all of flora and fauna, doesn’t it? Such proposals are already being adopted at both national and local levels. Hence, Peruvian bees have been granted rights. A Canadian town recently …

Austin Ruse on Cultivating a 500-Year Vision for Your Family

Wesley J. Smith
October 26, 2026
We are often told that the family is the basic unit of society. But these days, the family is in trouble as an institution. Fewer people are getting married. Divorce rates are high. We face a birth dearth that is impacting our demography. We even see advocacy for estrangement between children and parents, brothers and sisters over political differences. It is not an overstatement to say we face a domestic crisis. Into this societal malaise comes Austin Ruse with a new book — Not Just for Kings: Cultivating a 500-Year Vision for Your Family — that not only advocates for family formation and sustainability but also offers suggestions to ensure that your family’s legacy continues for many generations. Austin Ruse is an activist, commentator, and author. He spent many years …

Nature Article Denies AI Consciousness

Wesley J. Smith
October 24, 2026
I am so used to ideologically extreme and transgressive articles published in science and other professional journals, that when one publishes commonsense commentary, I think it should be applauded. As most readers know, there is a great advocacy push underway to have AI declared to be — or soon to be — conscious and hence, entitled to “rights” as “persons.” (I have responded to this advocacy on several occasions.) Now, an article in Nature — written by three academics — strongly rebuts that blatant anthropomorphism. From “Three Reasons Why AI Is Not Conscious and Perhaps Never Will Be”: Between us, we’ve spent decades studying consciousness from diverse scientific perspectives: experimental neuroscience, theoretical neurobiology …

Medical Journal Promotes Ideological Redefinition of “Infertility”

Wesley J. Smith
October 18, 2026
It’s hard to get beyond the World Health Organization’s woke, but an article in the New England Journal of Medicine manages that task. The question involves the definition of “infertility.” To the NEJM authors’ consternation, the WHO has embraced an objective, scientifically based approach to diagnosing the condition. From “Who Counts as Infertile: A Missed Opportunity” (citations omitted): In 2017, the WHO collaborated with international reproductive-medicine groups on an edition of a glossary related to infertility and fertility care. That document defined infertility as “a disease characterized by the failure to establish a clinical pregnancy after 12 months of regular, unprotected sexual intercourse or due to an impairment of a …

Belgium Expands Killable Caste While Euthanasia Cases Increase

Wesley J. Smith
October 13, 2026
I still marvel at people who think — even after decades of experience with these laws — that legalizing assisted suicide or euthanasia will remain limited to the few for whom nothing else can be done medically to prevent suffering. Not only is it not true, but it is never intended by euthanasia enthusiasts to be so constrained. Indeed, wherever killing as an answer to suffering is legalized, the numbers so dispatched continually rise, the guidelines expand, and euthanasia or suicide as a means of death becomes societally normalized. In Belgium, that pattern continues. The Belgian Federal Commission for the Control and Evaluation of Euthanasia just issued a press release about its published euthanasia statistics for 2024-2025. A few observations: As I perused the statistics, I …

Canada Backs Off Euthanasia for Mental Illness, Targets Dementia Patients

Wesley J. Smith
October 10, 2026
Some are celebrating Canada’s government “indefinitely suspending” legalizing euthanasia for mental illness as a great victory for life. Not me. Let me explain. Of course, I am gratified that mental illness will not become grounds for being killed in 2027 as was scheduled. But note: In announcing the suspension, the government mooted legislation likely to pass that would have permanently outlawed killing for mental illness. Moreover, “indefinite” can mean years — or a month. So, it’s not a matter of principle. But here’s the kicker. The government is now promoting euthanasia for people with dementia. From the Global News story: Fraser also said the government will “grant access to medical assistance in dying to people who have …

The Drive to Destroy Catholic Health Care in Canada (and Here)

Wesley J. Smith
October 8, 2026
Religious freedom is under assault throughout the West around what I call “do harm” medicine. With doctors now expected to abort babies, kill or mutilate sick patients, or administer harmful substances to gender dysphoric children, and otherwise toe a utilitarian, secular line in performing professional responsibilities, Hippocratic and pro-life medical professionals and institutions are imperiled. A column in Canada’s Globe and Mail epitomizes the mindset. When a hospital run by nuns in Nova Scotia threw in the towel, the hospital was secularized. André Picard, the paper’s health columnist celebrated the closure and called for more. From, “It’s Well Past Time for Catholic Hospitals to be Secularized”: One hundred and twenty-nine of …

Sam Brownback on Current Challenges to Religious Freedom

Sam Brownback
October 5, 2026
Religious freedom — the ability to live and act according to one’s faith — is one of our most fundamental human rights. But as Western society has secularized, religious freedom seems to have been eclipsed by other concerns. Indeed, freedom of religion is too often devalued in the public square, and in some places in the world, is under direct — and even violent — assault. No one has put more thought into this urgent concern and what to do about it than Sam Brownback, returning for his sixth interview on Humanize. Sam Brownback served as Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom from February 2018 to January 2021. He served as Governor of Kansas from 2011 to 2018. Prior to that he represented his home state in the United States Senate and the House of …

Nature Article Endorses “Nature Rights”

Wesley J. Smith
October 5, 2026
The world’s two most influential professional science journals probably are Science and Nature. But they no longer limit their jurisdiction to science. Both are now highly ideological to the extent that each has now lent its august pages to boosting the “nature rights” movement. Science pushed “nature rights” back in 2019. Now Nature has jumped on the bandwagon, publishing an advocacy piece to coincide with Panama’s pushing a “Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature” in the United Nations General Assembly. The article’s title starts out making a hubristic assumption: “Nature has Rights: It’s Time the World Recognized Them.” Really? Since when? Based on what? Says who? “Nature rights” …

AI “Claude” Can Never Be a Person

Wesley J. Smith
October 3, 2026
Anthropic is anthropomorphizing its AI program known as “Claude,” with the apparent intention of convincing us that powerful computer programs are — or can become — conscious “persons” with “feelings.” And, they think, Claude should one day be treated as such, to the point they have held meetings with religious leaders to discuss the moral concepts that might apply. From the New York Times story: Mr. Olah leads the Anthropic team responsible for understanding why A.I. systems like Claude act the way they do. All day, he had worked to convince his guests that A.I. models could display human behavior and even expressions that resemble feelings like anger and love. Yet as the dinner courses came, the rabbi noticed that Mr. Olah and his colleagues were suggesting …

Coming to the U.N.: “Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature”

Wesley J. Smith
October 1, 2026
Panama has proposed that the U.N. General Assembly negotiate and adopt a “Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature.” From the press release: In a historic development, the Government of Panama and For Nature have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly advance the adoption of a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature before the United Nations General Assembly, marking a significant milestone in the growing global movement to recognize ecosystems and species as rights-bearing entities. The initiative is being funded in full by the Alfred Kobacker and Elizabeth Trimbach Fund (AKET Fund) in partnership with the National Geographic Society, reflecting a commitment to accelerate this emerging global framework at a moment when it is most urgently …

Canadian Prisons to Distribute Paper Straws for “Safe” Drug Snorting

Wesley J. Smith
September 29, 2026
“Harm reduction” programs often cause terrible harm. But sometimes they also are beyond absurd. Like this example: Canadian prisons are going to distribute paper straws to inmates for use while snorting drugs. From the National Post story: The Correctional Service of Canada has confirmed that paper straws will soon be distributed in federal prisons to facilitate safe snorting of drugs. This week a social media post included photos of a memo distributed to Corrections staff stating that paper straws were being newly “introduced” for “safer snorting” and “intended for inhaling substances in powdered form or inhaling vapor from heated substances.” Don’t take drugs while imprisoned, but if you do, use a paper straw! Good …