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

Commercial Surrogacy Turns Women into Machines, Babies into Products

Wesley J. Smith
August 13, 2026
An awful story has broken into the headlines illustrating the moral peril of commercial surrogacy. From the Texas Tribune story: West, a nurse, entered a surrogacy agreement in Alaska, where she lives, with the intended parents, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, through Worldwide Surrogacy Specialists, LLC, a Connecticut-based surrogacy agency. Typically under gestational agreements like the one that West signed with Gilkar and Ahmed, the intended parents, not the surrogate, have the parental rights to make choices relating to the fetus. The fetus West is carrying was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome at 20 weeks of pregnancy, and Gilkar and Ahmed allegedly asked her to undergo an abortion and they have said they will refuse to let the baby undergo treatment after he …

We Should Try to Prevent All Suicides

Wesley J. Smith
August 11, 2026
The Washington Post has a heartwarming story about a Nashville cop who dissuaded a suicidal man from jumping off a bridge: “It was emotional. This was an individual who had reached a level of frustration where he was having the worst day of his life,” Hotz said. “I just wanted to be able to develop trust with him and help him realize that tomorrow is another day and it will get better.” “It was a combination of life circumstances that happened that brought him to a level of ultimate frustration and desperation,” Hotz said. Even as they talked, Hotz said he remained afraid of what might happen next.… “He was standing on the bridge and did lean over several times,” he said. Eventually, the man chose to …

Robert J. Marks II on the Benefits and Potential Perils of Artificial Intelligence

Robert J. Marks II
August 10, 2026
We are in the age of artificial intelligence. But what does that mean for the human future? Some claim that AI is merely a very sophisticated tool that will lead to stunning societal improvements such as miraculous medical breakthroughs, greater economic efficiency, and an exponential increase in human knowledge. But others worry that an out-of-human-control AI could destroy liberty, create immeasurable societal destruction, and perhaps, even unleash a technological Armageddon that brings about the end of the human race. Which is it? Or are both potential possibilities? To sort it all out for us, on this special summer edition of Humanize, Wesley asked Discovery Institute’s Robert J. Marks II to return for his third appearance. An electrical engineer by education and …

The Lancet: Wildfires the Latest “Health Emergency”

Wesley J. Smith
August 10, 2026
In recent years, editors of medical, science, and bioethics journals have proclaimed almost every major societal problem to be a “health emergency” or crisis. Off the top of my head, I can think of several: guns, racism, immigration enforcement, global warming, abortion restrictions, and fear of future pandemics. Now, the editors of The Lancet want to stoke fear of summer wildfires as the pretext to claim yet another public health emergency. From, “Wildfires, a Health Emergency“: Europe is burning. Wildfires in France and Spain have engulfed hundreds of square miles of land, destroying homes and forcing the evacuation of 330,000 people as the threat now moves east to Greece, Italy, and central Europe. The fires have been so large and intense that they have …

Scientists Used AI to Create Viruses: Are We Guarding Against Dangers?

Wesley J. Smith
August 8, 2026
Media outlets are reporting that Stanford scientists used AI to create an artificial virus. From the Wall Street Journal story: Artificial-intelligence systems have been displaying some eye-opening new abilities in recent weeks: breaking out of their enclosures, hacking other companies, lying to people. And now, for the first time, an AI model has created a new virus. A whole family of them, in fact. In a study published in the journal Science, researchers at Stanford University and elsewhere said they successfully directed an AI model to create a collection of simple viruses that only infect bacteria and pose no threat to humans. These particular viruses may not be dangerous, but what about the next ones scientists manufacture? What about potential attempts to test their …

RFK Jr. Decertifies Kentucky Organ Procurement Organization

Wesley J. Smith
August 6, 2026
Say what you will about Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but he definitely cares about ensuring that organ transplant medicine remains ethical, and unlike many government functionaries, he and his department are actually doing something about it. Thus, on the back of Medicare decertifying a Florida organ procurement organization for cause in 2025, the government is now decertifying the Network for Hope that operates in Kentucky and a few other states. The government warned the network last year that its procurement procedures were ethically deficient. But the organ procurement organization never cleaned up its act despite knowing it was being scrutinized, including, apparently, for seeking to procure organs from people who had not died. The unethical cases …

NYT Column Decries Calling the Civil War the “Civil War”

Wesley J. Smith
August 3, 2026
Anthony Conwright argues in the New York Times that the Civil War should not be called by that name because it never was so called during its fighting. Conwright is angry that back on the anniversary of Appomattox, President Trump marked the event by quoting Ulysses S Grant’s magnanimous statement that the “rebels are our countrymen again.” Never mind that Grant was carrying out Lincoln’s explicit policy of magnanimity toward the rebels as a means of reuniting the country (“with malice toward none, with charity for all” and all that). Even more ridiculously, Conwright argues that calling the conflagration the “Civil War” somehow diminishes the evil of slavery abolished after the North’s victory. From “It Wasn’t a …

New Bill Proposes to Establish a “Commission on Human Dignity”

Wesley J. Smith
July 29, 2026
And what, exactly, is “human dignity?” Do we all possess it as a matter of objective truth, simply and merely because we are human, or must we earn our status by possessing particular capacities? Do AI and biotechnological advances threaten human dignity and diminish our moral standing? If so, what should public policy do about it? These are among the important — nay, crucial — questions with which we must grapple as we rush, so far with few regulatory brakes, toward a brave new world. Now, an ideologically odd pair of United States senators — the conservative Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and the progressive Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) want to do something about that. They are co-sponsoring the Human Dignity and Emerging Technologies Act, which would establish an advisory …

Michigan Courts: Chimpanzees Not “Persons,” but One Justice Dissents

Wesley J. Smith
July 27, 2026
Over the past decade or so, the Nonhuman Rights Project has sought to obtain legal personhood for chimpanzees and elephants. The method to their madness is to seek writs of habeas corpus to release the animals from various means of confinement. The group has failed so far. But it keeps gaining ground that should never have been lost. One high court judge in New York would have granted personhood and rights to chimps, and later, two judges in that court would have done so for elephants. Meanwhile, this fall the Hawaiian Supreme Court will review yet another elephant writ of habeas corpus case brought by the organization. Frankly, I fear the worst. Michigan has seen similar habeas litigation involving chimps where the NhRP lost in the trial and appeals courts. The case involved seven …

Mainstream Bioethics Does Not Represent Mainstream Beliefs

Wesley J. Smith
July 24, 2026
The bioethicist Quill R Kukla, a philosophy professor at (the Jesuit) Georgetown University, also serves as the editor in chief of one of the most influential bioethics publications, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal. To say the least, Kukla is well ensconced within the bioethical establishment. I bring this up because Kukla was just interviewed about a newly published book the bioethicist authored, Sex Beyond “Yes”: Pleasure and Agency for Everyone. The interview was conducted without challenge by the president and CEO of the Hastings Center — the world’s most prominent bioethics think tank — for its “Bioethics Chat” feature. This is mainstream bioethics with exclamation points, and its content illustrates why I believe the predominant views in …

Nuns Sue New York Over Forced Complicity in Assisted Suicide

Wesley J. Smith
July 23, 2026
New York just legalized assisted suicide. Adding insult to injury, the law requires morally or religiously objecting doctors to be complicit in assisted suicides by cooperating with some of its provisions. Specifically, the Medical Aid in Dying Act requires that the “attending physician” of patients requesting assisted suicide perform specified functions before patients can be prescribed lethal substances, with no apparent opt-out in the law that I could discern for physicians who are morally or religiously opposed to such a request. These mandatory actions include examining the patient to determine whether the illness is terminal, referring the patient to a consulting doctor to approve the assisted suicide, and discussing the “potential risks associated with taking …

Journal Article Urges MDs to Impede Immigration Law Enforcement “Oppression”

Wesley J. Smith
July 18, 2026
A pro-illegal immigrant advocacy article in the New England Journal of Medicine urges doctors to protect undocumented patients by impeding law enforcement in the context of the physician/patient relationship. First, the authors complain that enforcing immigration law has engendered an environment of fear: The current climate echoes that surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic, when fears of surveillance, deportation, and the effects of new public-charge policies drove immigrant communities to avoid necessary care, which led to increased morbidity and mortality. As erosion of trust in institutions again drives patients away from clinics, confronting their needless suffering also exacts a toll on physicians, who may experience moral distress, feeling complicit in a system that’s …

France Legalizes Euthanasia

Wesley J. Smith
July 16, 2026
The West continues its love affair with the culture of death as the French National Assembly just voted to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, overriding the Senate’s rejection. I haven’t read the bill, but here are a few notes I discerned from various media reports: The bill does not require terminal illness. Rather, it requires a “serious and incurable illness” that “threatens life in an advanced or terminal stage” — meaning death could be years away. The patient must also experience “constant physical or psychological suffering” related to the disease that is “resistant to treatment or unbearable” (as defined by the patient). Psychological suffering alone does not make one eligible for hastened death. There is …

Bipartisan Call for Federal Oversight over Hospice Assisted Suicides

Wesley J. Smith
July 15, 2026
Assisted suicide legalization is bad medicine and even worse public policy. It abandons the sick, destroys human equality by creating a killable caste of people, and cheapens the intrinsic dignity of human life. Moreover, the supposed “strict safeguards” are neither strict — for example, relying on doctor self-reporting — nor particularly protective. Besides, as soon as the law goes into place, the safeguards are quickly redefined as “obstacles” to a good death and the process of loosening the law commences. These and other myriad problems have gotten the attention of Senators James Lankford (R., Okla.) and Tim Kaine (D., Va.), who along with two representatives sent a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asking for oversight over the practice in …

“Death by Organ Donation” Pushed in the New England Journal of Medicine

Wesley J. Smith
July 10, 2026
The legalization of assisted suicide/euthanasia corrupts medical ethics and not just because killing patients or assisting their suicides is a direct violation of the Hippocratic oath. No: Transforming sick and disabled people into a killable caste also objectifies them as potential natural resources to be mined or harvested. Hastened death and organ-harvesting have already been conjoined in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium. (In the latter two countries, some cases have involved mentally ill patients.) The practice has been supported in prominent medical journals. It is not alarmism to note that the idea is gaining ever wider acceptance among the medical and bioethics intelligentsia. But killing and then harvesting doesn’t go far enough for …

Bioethicists: Prepare People for Public Health Coercion

Wesley J. Smith
July 6, 2026
One would have thought that bioethicists and technocrats would learn from the COVID debacle that coerced public health policies can easily become exploding cigars when misapplied, and indeed, ultimately harm the very community cohesion these autocrats claim to champion. But no. A new article in the prestigious Journal of Medical Ethics urges that we prepare now for more mandates to prevent epidemics due to AMRs (for antimicrobial resistance, such as bacteria evolving, rendering antibiotics less effective) and to fight climate change. The authors identify various means of persuading the public to comply with favored public health policies. The first is simple suasion, or “normative compliance.” From “Making the Public Protect Public Health: The Ethics of Promoting …

New York Times Story Features “Tree Rights”

Wesley J. Smith
July 3, 2026
I recently wrote critically about a Quebec town that granted “rights to trees.” These include the rights “to life, to natural growth, to integrity, and to regeneration.” The new law has gotten a lot of media attention. Now, the New York Times has entered the fray, publishing a relatively objective story about the resolution and the nature rights movement’s history, with only one critic quoted — yours truly, from my NRO article (I was not interviewed). There is more to say about this than I included in my original post. So, let’s dig a little into the Times’ story: The small town of Terrasse-Vaudreuil, Quebec, was carved out of the forest about 75 years ago. But until recently, the trees had no rights. The reporter and the …

Will the Public Health Establishment Try to Censor Policy Debates?

Wesley J. Smith
July 1, 2026
The Lancet‘s editors have established a “commission” to recommend means by which the powers that be can stifle open debate — er, I mean, counter misinformation and disinformation — about public health and scientific policies. From, “The Lancet Commission on Rethinking Misinformation, Health, and Human Security” announcement (citations omitted): The UN and World Economic Forum have identified misinformation and disinformation as top global risks — ranking them as higher short-term threats than extreme weather, state-based armed conflict, and cyber insecurity. Time to look in a mirror! Public health officials, not their critics, shattered the public’s trust. Remember when we were told by public health institutions and international …