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Harvest Terri Schiavo’s Organs? Where does the slippery slope end? This excerpt from a debate on Court TV between Florida bioethicist Bill Allen and Discovery Institute senior fellow (and author of “Culture of Death,”) Wesley J. Smith is telling—and chilling. Personhood Theory: Why Contemporary Mainstream Bioethics is Dangerous. Wesley Smith: “I participated in an on-line debate for Court TV yesterday Read More ›

This article, published by, the New Jersey Star Ledger, mentions Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith:

However, the other day I came upon some aspects of the research that frightened even me. Wesley J. Smith is the author of a book titled “A Consumer’s Guide to a Brave New World.” He’s a lawyer and sometime Ralph Nader collaborator who is skeptical about just where the biotech industry is leading us with its incessant call for infinitely more spending on the research.

This article, published by The Village Voice, references Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith:

In his book Forced Exit (Times Books), Wesley quotes neurologist William Burke: “A conscious person would feel it [dehydration] just as you and I would. . . . Their skin cracks, their tongue cracks, their lips crack. They may have nosebleeds because of the drying of the mucous membranes, and heaving and vomiting might ensue because of the drying out of the stomach lining.

This article, published by The Columbia Daily Tribune, mentions Discovery Institute Center for Science & Culture Senior Fellow Richard Sternberg and Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Stephen Meyer:

Science should be open-minded, objective and free of bias. Yet the career of Richard Sternberg, a prominent scientist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, is in jeopardy. This is because he, as editor of the scientific journal “Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington,” published an article on “intelligent design” by Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute. Intelligent design theorizes that the universe and living things are best explained as having an intelligent cause.

Bureaucracy has trumped morality in the Netherlands. How else can one explain a country where, when doctors admit publicly that they commit eugenic infanticide, the leaders’ response is not to prosecute them for murder, but instead to urge that guidelines be created under which future baby killings can openly take place? The “Groningen Protocol” — named after a pediatric hospital Read More ›

As Terri Schiavo approaches her 94th hour without food or water, tensions rise across the country on both sides of the issue. Below, Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, attorney, and ethicist, released a statement regarding the latest ruling by a judge in Florida to block Terri’s feeding tube to be reinserted, thus sustaining her life. Read More ›

If someone advocates an ideology that has contempt for the individual and has caused untold economic misery and the deaths of hundreds of millions at the hands of their governments, what would you think of that person?

The ideology I refer to is, of course, socialism and its numerous variations, including the utopian socialists, the Fabian socialists, the National Socialists, and, naturally, the communists. Socialism is simply an economic system where the government (or collective) owns and controls the means of production. Given that the two centuries of socialists’ experiments, whether by utopians, Marxists, or Fabians, always ended in economic failure and a loss of personal liberty, why are people around the globe still proudly proclaiming themselves socialists? Socialist parties are still popular in parts of Europe, Latin American, and in much of Africa. Socialist parties have been elected to power in both Spain and Portugal in recent months. Many college professors and students on U.S. campuses claim to be socialists.

The “national socialists” caused the death of tens of millions of people. The communists in Russia, China, Cambodia and elsewhere caused the collective deaths of more than 100 million people and impoverished billions of others. (I happened to be at the Kremlin in Moscow in August 1992, when the Russia demographers announced they had determined there were 63 million “excess deaths” in the Soviet Union during Josef Stalin’s reign — 1923-53.)

The Third World socialists have kept their countries unnecessarily mired in poverty for a half-century. The democratic socialists gained control in England in 1945 under Clement Attlee. As a result, the British economy was run into the ground. Hence the British people voted to reprivatize their economy under Margaret Thatcher beginning in 1979.

Other democratic socialist economies had the same types of failure, so by the 1980s privatization became the vogue as it was obviously necessary to re-ignite economic growth.

Yet, the socialists keep coming back. They deny or ignore previous failures and say the next time “we will do it right.” Socialism only fails and will continue to fail because its theory is as flawed as its practice.

This article, published by The Seattle PI, is about Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center:

Unnoted by the general media, the Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center conducted a highly informative two-day leadership forum late last month at the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond. It attracted transportation policy-makers and professionals from the United States, Canada and all levels of government and covered the full range of issues facing both the West Coast and our own neighborhood.

The conference proceedings, if read and heeded by local officials, would alter drastically the transportation priorities and projects being pursued here. So, for that matter, would the report presented earlier in February to Gov. Christine Gregoire and legislative leaders by the Cascadia Center’s Transportation Working Group.