bioethics

Eco-Misanthropes Want Better Living Through Mass Death

This article, published by Scripps Howard News Service, mentions Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Jay Richards: The curator emeritus for botany at Chicago’s Field Museum of Science last Nov. 9 wrote then-Discovery Institute scholar Jay Richards regarding his book, “The Privileged Planet.” The rest of the article can be found here.

Jarring Sects

Editor’s Note: The following article appears in the June/July Edition of First Things. Is science really at war with religion? Pamela Winnick’s answer is a firm and worried yes. And in A Jealous God she demonstrates that this war threatens not only religion but science as well—with the threat coming from the very people who perceive themselves to be science’s Read More ›

Testimony of Wesley J. Smith, JD, Before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, & Property Rights,

Lawyer, author, and bioethicist Wesley J. Smith testified May 25th to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights hearing on “The Consequences of Legalized Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia”. In his testimony, Smith told the Senators “that there is a proper public policy role for the federal government against assisted suicide, such Read More ›

Killing Babies, Compassionately

At last a high government official in Europe got up the nerve to chastise the Dutch government for preparing to legalize infant euthanasia. Italy’s Parliamentary Affairs minister, Carlo Giovanardi, said during a radio debate: “Nazi legislation and Hitler’s ideas are reemerging in Europe via Dutch euthanasia laws and the debate on how to kill ill children.” Unsurprisingly, the Dutch, ever Read More ›

The Wide Risk Of the Culture Of Death

This article, published by the New York Sun, mentions Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley Smith: A senior fellow at the Discovery Institute who is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture, Wesley Smith, has been warning about this trend toward including killing as part of a medical act. The rest of the article can be found here.

Harm Done

In 2000, The New England Journal of Medicine reported that patients being euthanized in the Netherlands sometimes experienced significant side effects (apart from death, that is), such as nausea, convulsions, or coma. This belied the assertion oft made by euthanasia proponents that being killed by a doctor necessarily provides the euphemistic “gentle landing” of euthanasia lore. #ad#Responding to the Netherlands report, the NEJM published Read More ›

Shifting Definition of Cloning

Petitions have only begun to be gathered to qualify the Missouri Stem Cell and Cures Initiative for November’s ballot, and already the controversy is white hot. Proponents contend that their proposal would merely permit embryonic stem cell research using a technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, while also banning human cloning. But opponents insist that the process is human Read More ›

Danger Zone

In the court (and courts) of life and death, a little 11-year-old Massachusetts girl named Haleigh Poutre could be the next Terri Schiavo. For those who have not heard the tragic story, Haleigh was beaten nearly to death last September, allegedly by her adoptive mother and stepfather. The beating left her unconscious and barely clinging to life. Within a week or so Read More ›

Servatius Redux

Original Article When Adolf Eichmann was on trial in Jerusalem, his attorney, Robert Servatius, insisted that Eichmann had not really borne responsibility for “killings by gas, and similar medical matters.” Judge Halevi thought that this reference to killings by gas as a “medical matter” must have been a slip of the tongue. No, replied Servatius: “It was indeed a medical Read More ›