Push to Grant Animal Rights in Congress
Congress is considering a ban on “invasive research” on chimpanzees and a few other intelligent primates in a move that represents the first step toward a ban on all experiments using animals. According to Discovery Institute Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, this is just the tip of the iceberg as animal rights extremists look forward to the confirmation of law professor Read More ›
Darwin’s Theory and Social Darwinism: There Is A Connection
Scientists and political activists during the past century have drawn on Darwinian theory to promote one utopian crusade after another, including forced sterilization, scientific racism, euthanasia, and an ever-expanding government justified in the name of the “evolving Constitution.” The typical response of Darwinists to this record of coercive “Social Darwinism” is to deny that it has any genuine connection to Read More ›
Are infants with disabilities disposable?
This article, published by the Rhode Island Developmental Disabilities Council, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: “While personhood theory is not a unanimously held view among bioethicists, it is widely accepted, particularly among academics at the most elite institutions,” says Wesley J. Smith author of Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America. The rest of Read More ›
What It Means to Be Human
Discovery senior fellow Wesley J. Smith has returned to podcasting with What It Means to Be Human, a podcast about the many policies and proposals in bioethics, bioscience, and animal liberation that threaten the idea of human exceptionalism and undermine universal human rights: On this episode of What It Means to Be Human, Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow in Human Read More ›
Assisted Suicide and the Corruption of Palliative Care
For the past two decades, euthanasia/assisted-suicide ideologues have worked overtime to conflate palliative carethe medical alleviation of pain and other distressing symptoms of serious illnesswith intentionally ending the life of the patient. The movements first target was the hospice, a specialized form of care for the dying created forty years ago in the United Kingdom by the late, great medical Read More ›
Waging War on the Weak
Four months ago, a little girl in Samoa was born with serious disabilities. Doctors did not believe the baby could survive, so they urged the parents not to feed their daughter. But the parents loved their daughter and snuck food to Miracle. Beyond all medical expectations, Miracle survived. Ponder, if you will, what I just wrote: Miracle’s parents had to Read More ›
Vick Charges Speak To Our Humanity
The arrest of football great Michael Vick for allegedly participating in a dog fighting/gambling ring has shocked the country. The charges are horrendous: In a throwback to the brutality of the Roman arena in which wild animals were forced to fight and kill each other to the frenzy of the crowd, Vick and his co-conspirators, according to authorities, bred pit Read More ›
In Defense of Human Exceptionalism
Tearing humans off the pedestal of exceptionalism is all the rage today among academics, philosophers, and other assorted members of the intelligentsia. The war against unique human worth—of which many remain unaware—is being mounted on many fronts: “Personhood Theory” in bioethics claims that granting humans unique moral status based simply on being human is “speciesism,” and hence membership in the Read More ›
Podcasts
Brave New Bioethics Brave New Bioethics is a series of podcasts recorded by Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith exploring the many policies and proposals in bioethics, bioscience, and animal liberation that threaten the belief that human life has worth merely and simply because it is human. Episodes are listed below. Cloning Double Talk Hospice Association Refuses to Denounce Read More ›