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

Another Canadian Euthanasia Horror

Wesley J. Smith
September 22, 2026
Euthanasia has become a way of life in Canada (he wrote ironically). More than 100,000 people have been killed by doctors and nurse practitioners. At least one hospice lost funding for refusing to kill patients. Doctors with religious and moral objections were told by Ontario’s highest court to either kill qualified patients wanting to die, procure a doctor who will (“effective referral”), or get out of medicine. Euthanasia has been described in the media as a splendid source of organs. And there are horror stories aplenty. Here’s the latest. If the reporting is accurate, an elderly woman with stomach cancer was euthanized after being coaxed by medical personnel and while mentally incapable. From the Daily Mail story: Two days before her Christian …

Mayor Warren Wilson on Environmentalists Caring More About Birds Than the Lives of King Cove Residents

Warren Wilson
September 20, 2026
King Cove is a remote town in the Aleutian Islands, adjacent to the 300,000-acre Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. In 1980, the refuge was designated a wilderness area. That caused a severe problem for the people of King Cove. The nearest full-service hospital is in Anchorage, 900 miles away. The town does not have an all-weather airport. This means that people needing lifesaving care may not be able to access it during inclement weather. A town 20 miles away called Cold Bay does have an all-weather airport from which sick and injured people could be flown for medical help in bad weather — if they could only get there. So, the people of King Cove sought permission to cut a gravel road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge to Cold Bay. They even offered a land swap that …

Push On to Grant “Rights” to Arctic Sea Ice

Wesley J. Smith
September 19, 2026
We live in irrational times epitomized by the “rights of nature” (RoN) movement that seeks to grant human-type rights to various aspects of the natural world, including geological features. Alas, the movement is succeeding. Rivers have been granted rights, such as the right to flow (so much for flood control and hydroelectricity projects). Glaciers have been granted rights. A mountain in New Zealand has rights. The waves in a Spanish bay have rights. Copper mining was stopped in Panama because of the supposed right of the earth to keep its own ore. In the U.S., Canada, and the UK, various municipalities have granted rights to nature, lakes, water, and trees. There is a radical bill pending in the English Parliament to grant rights to nature. The most recent iteration of …

Italian Doctors Under Threat of Criminal Prosecution for Refusing Participation in Assisted Suicide

Wesley J. Smith
September 18, 2026
Assisted suicide/euthanasia legalization is spreading like a stain. But with most doctors refusing to participate, how do we ensure that people who want to die are indeed made dead? Answer: Blatant coercion. Usually, the attacks on “medical conscience” (as it is known) involves threatening refusing doctors’ professional licenses. The medical literature is rife with such advocacy by bioethics notables like Ezekiel Emanuel, Julian Savulescu, and Peter Singer, who argue that doctors either participate in requested legal medical procedures — even if morally opposed — or face processional discipline. If doctors don’t like it, these activists argue, they should get out of medicine. Some doctors have already faced the music over such refusals. In Australia a …

Real Hope for Ethical Way to Reduce Wait for Organs

Wesley J. Smith
September 17, 2026
The long wait for organs threatens the ethics of transplant medicine, with some bioethicists calling for the end of the dead donor rule — allowing “death by organ donation” — while a few have gone so far as to argue that cloned fetuses be gestated in artificial wombs for that purpose when the technology is perfected. But an ethical means of easing a very real problem is advancing exponentially — using genetically modified pig organs. Toward that end, early xenotransplantation experiments are already being conducted. A recent success saw a pig kidney last for 217 days in a man with kidney failure, which kept him alive until a human organ could be transplanted: A man has been given a genetically modified pig kidney which enabled him to stay off dialysis for nine …

Should Scientists Decide Policies About Wealth Inequality?

Wesley J. Smith
September 13, 2026
The other week, I discussed a Nature editorial advocating that scientists be required to “register” with the state. That policy, if enacted, would be a step toward establishing a technocratic rule-by-experts system by controlling what would be acceptable scientific discourse and who would be authorized to communicate about such matters. A new proposal, also in Nature, would push the West toward technocracy. The science journal just published a piece urging the U.N. to establish a panel of scientists — the International Panel on Inequality (IPI) — to determine policies involving income and wealth inequality. From “Why We Need an International Panel on Inequality:” The consequences are well established. A growing body of research links higher income …

“World Suicide Prevention Day” Hypocrisy

Wesley J. Smith
September 11, 2026
You may not have heard, but today is the annual World Suicide Prevention Day. Usually, such efforts are almost invisible. We don’t put nearly as much emphasis on suicide prevention as we once did. I am all for suicide prevention, of course. I just wish that those efforts included assisted suicide/euthanasia, which costs the lives of approximately 25,000 people annually around the world — with that toll increasing every year. But despite proliferating laws allowing doctors and nurse practitioners to assisted suicides — or, as in Canada, Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand, and other countries — actively kill suicidal people, prevention efforts are generally silent about this category of suicide. I checked on the World Health Organization link to Prevention Day for 2026. It …

Suicide Rates Among Girls Increase

Wesley J. Smith
September 10, 2026
JAMA Pediatrics has published a depressing study that shows that girls ages 10–14 have caught up with boys of that age when it comes to suicide rates: In 2017, the suicide rate of 10-to-14-year-old boys was twice that of girls (male-female ratio=1.98). By 2024, however, the suicide rate among boys was only 4% higher than that among girls in this age group (ratio=1.04). Gender disparities in suicide trends since 2018 appear to be responsible for the narrowing gap, as the suicide rate for boys decreased by 35% from 2018 to 2024 while the suicide rate for girls increased 13%. From 2007 to 2024, the suicide rate for 10-to 14-year-old girls more than quadrupled (from 0.51 to 2.28) while the suicide rate for boys nearly doubled (from 1.20 to 2.38). In 2024, the …

Alzheimer’s Patients in the Crosshairs of VSED — Suicide by Self-Starvation

Wesley J. Smith
September 10, 2026
My mother died of Alzheimer’s disease at the ripe old age of 99. With invaluable help from hospice, my wife and I cared for her in our home for the last five months of her life. Was it difficult? Very. Does that matter? No. Mom deserved the best care available regardless of her mental incapacity. My mother’s brother also died of Alzheimer’s. He received excellent care in the memory unit of a Baptist-affiliated assisted living facility for the last years of his life. Was it difficult? Very. Does that matter? No. My uncle deserved the best care available regardless of his mental incapacity. The compassionate support my mother and uncle received was once the expected moral standard. Unfortunately, that seems to be changing. Increasingly, dementia patients are …

Big Money to Be Made Assisting Suicides

Wesley J. Smith
September 6, 2026
The New York Times published an unbelievably puffy piece about a new assisted-suicide clinic starting in New York as legalization kicks in, describing it oh, so objectively as “a start-up for better deaths” — complete with Buddhist chanting. Good grief. But the saccharine story raises an important issue discussed too little in the debate over assisted suicide. Legalization creates acute financial conflicts of interest that have the potential to push suicidal people toward death. For socialized systems and government funded health care, killing instead of caring for expensive patients can save a lot of money over time, particularly when the terminal-illness limitation is lifted. Indeed, some advocates argue that saving money is a big part of the point. …

Nature Misdirects Blame for the Jason Arday Tragedy

Wesley J. Smith
September 4, 2026
The Jason Arday scandal was a tragedy because it resulted in the death, probably by suicide, of a disturbed man who lied and plagiarized his way to the highest levels of academic celebrity at Cambridge University. Everyone should mourn that outcome. But too many among the liberal intelligentsia seem intent on conjuring the wrong causes for the mess their own attitudes created. Rather than recognizing the potentially dire individual, institutional, and societal consequences that can result from elevating people beyond their actual capabilities, the editors of Nature instead castigate Cambridge for turning on Arday when his fabulism and egregious academic wrongdoing became undeniable: Arday’s fate is distressing, and especially so for Black scholars and those …

More Bioethical Advocacy to Compel Medical Help in Self-Starvation Suicides

Wesley J. Smith
September 1, 2026
Many Western countries and jurisdictions are legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide. That opens up a problem for the death pushers. Since states aren’t going to get into the wet work of the actual killing, medical professionals and caregivers are going to be conscripted to do the deadly deeds — even if that means violating their religious beliefs and moral consciences. Instead of resisting this rank authoritarianism, the medical and bioethics establishments are increasingly going along. This proposed coercion includes requiring doctors’ participation in suicides when patients starve and dehydrate themselves to death — known as VSED for “voluntary stop eating and drinking.” As I wrote a few weeks ago here, the British Medical Association just so opined. And …

Wesley J. Smith Defends Medical Conscience on Family First New Zealand

Editor and Wesley J. Smith
September 1, 2026
Wesley J. Smith joined host Simon O’Connor on Family Matters, a show from Family First New Zealand, to discuss current efforts to force medical professionals with religious and conscientious objections to participate in assisted suicide and euthanasia. Smith specifically highlights the danger that these threats pose, as they would drive talented people away from the medical field. Smith and O’Connor also discuss the trend of medicine becoming something like a “vending machine” as it’s been made into a consumer service. “Patient autonomy, of course, is a part of medicine,” Smith explains. “But doctors are not automatons and they should not be forced to do things that run contrary to their beliefs and their ethics.” Read …

Nature: Scientists Should Have to Register with Governments to Prevent “Misinformation”

Wesley J. Smith
August 29, 2026
Nature — the most prestigious science journal in the world — has editorialized in favor of requiring scientists to register with governments as a condition of participation in the sector. Here’s the context. South Africa has legislation pending that would require scientists to register with a government body or face significant legal consequences. Nature applauds the authoritarian idea. From the editorial (my emphasis): What do engineers, environmental-health officers and health-care workers have in common? These occupations can, in some instances, be practised only by people who have registered with a relevant professional body. This typically requires candidates to pass qualifying exams and adhere to a code of practice that includes sanctions for …

“Death by Organ Donation” Pushed in Prestigious Medical Journals

Wesley J. Smith
August 28, 2026
The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus famously wrote that bioethicists “professionally guide the unthinkable on its passage through the debatable on its way to becoming the justifiable until it is finally established as the unexceptional.” He was right. Radical bioethical policies don’t just appear like magic out of the ether. Controversial—even pernicious—ideas are often debated in bioethics and medical journals where few among the public ever see them. Then, if a general consensus is reached within the field, policies once considered “unthinkable” are “suddenly” elevated into the justifiable and become unexceptional public policy. Here are just two examples. Legalizing assisted suicide was once way beyond the pale. Then, bioethicists …

“Bioethics Community” Publishes Open Letter of Support for Anthony Fauci

Wesley J. Smith
August 28, 2026
I once respected Anthony Fauci. But, during the Covid pandemic, I believe his power and the astonishing international celebrity generated by a fawning media went to his head. Worse, his hubris brought great disrepute on public health institutions and harmed the nation and its people. But mainstream bioethicists — mostly political progressives who deploy their supposed authority as experts to push mostly left-wing health and political causes — see Fauci as one of their own. With the doctor now in some hot legal water, and his reputation visibly tarnished by recent disclosures from his diary and text messages, prominent bioethicists have published an open letter telling us to leave Fauci alone. From the “Open Letter of Support for Anthony Fauci from the Bioethics …

New York Times Ethicist Column Blesses Adultery Because Husband Has Alzheimer’s

Wesley J. Smith
August 26, 2026
The Ethicist column in the New York Times — a high-brow Dear Abby — has blessed adultery if one’s spouse is permanently incapacitated. The questioner is a woman who married an older man. Her husband is now incapacitated by advancing Alzheimer’s. She is raising their child alone and has to earn a living. She still wants intimacy and asks whether it is okay for her to date. The Ethicist’s unethical response: It’s obvious that you’ve had a lot to carry for a long time, not least caring for your husband as his Alzheimer’s has progressed. And you do owe him continued stewardship as his spouse. But given that his condition has evidently left him unable to sustain a reciprocal emotional and marital relationship, these obligations don’t mean …

Should Suicide by Self-Starvation Be Grounds for Hospice Care?

Wesley J. Smith
August 21, 2026
The other day, in response to the British Medical Association requiring doctors to participate in VSED (voluntary stop eating and drinking) suicides, I wrote that “suicide nihilism is exerting an ever-increasing gravitational force.” With this post, I double down on that depressing conclusion. Hospice was designed to care for people who are diagnosed with terminal illnesses until their natural deaths. But a study just published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management — the publication of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine — argues that people intending to commit suicide via VSED should qualify for hospice care even if they are not otherwise dying! What? Why? Because someone dying within six months qualifies for hospice. VSED takes less …