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Book Cover Image Courtesy Wesley J. Smith.

Frightening Abuses of Science with Wesley J. Smith

Wesley J. Smith
October 31, 2025
2
Series
ID the Future
Guest
Wesley J. Smith
Duration
00:37:12
Download
Audio File (24.4 mb)

Experiments on the living unborn. Organ harvesting. Reckless biotech. Radical environmentalism. These are not horror stories playing at your local movie theater. They’re playing out in labs, hospitals, and institutes across America. On this classic episode of ID The Future from the vault, host Andrew McDiarmid speaks with bioethicist Wesley J. Smith about frightening abuses of science being done in the name of progress.

In this unnerving exchange, Smith discusses examples of biotechnology that are advancing faster than our ethical considerations, including synthetic human embryos, genetic engineering, and fetal farming. He unpacks recent attempts by environmental activists to give rights to non-living things like rivers and oceans. He explains the difference between animal rights and animal welfare, while exposing the animal rights campaign as an anti-human movement that inhibits human flourishing. Smith also discusses the latest fronts in the gender ideology crusade, and how the rush to affirm gender dysphoria in children is causing tremendous harm to our society. And before the nightmare ends, Smith explains the pernicious push from evidence-based medicine to “science-based medicine,” a strategy that encourages censorship and totalitarian governance of the scientific enterprise.

How do we stop these horror stories? More awareness and real, enforceable regulations are a good start. But the heart of these issues is our value of human life. “Human exceptionalism is about the unique dignity of human life,” says Smith, “but it’s also about our moral responsibilities to each other, particularly the vulnerable and the ill.”

DIG DEEPER

  • Learn more about frightening abuses of science on the Humanize podcast, hosted by Wesley J. Smith.
  • Watch the video of this episode below:

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 National Review and is the author of 14 books, in recent years focusing on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and has been honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia. Wesley’s most recent book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement.