Wesley J. Smith

Animal Rights Activists Have ‘No Choice’ but Violence, Spokesman Says

This article, published by CNS News, quotes Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith: “Violence stems from the ideology of the animal liberation or animal rights movement,” said Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. The rest of the article can be found here.

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 ›

Death on Demand

Should laws against assisted suicide be rescinded as “paternalistic?” Should assisted suicide be transformed from what is now a crime (in most places) into a sacred “right to die”? Should assisted suicide be redefined from a form of homicide into a legitimate “medical treatment” readily available to all persistently suffering people, including to the mentally ill? According to Brown University 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 ›

Cloning Doubletalk

Senators Dianne Feinstein and Orin Hatch have just introduced Senate Bill 812, which explicitly legalizes human cloning and—since a shortage of human eggs is currently impeding human cloning research (one egg is needed for each attempt at cloning)—the bill also authorizes researchers to pay women to undergo egg procurement. And if the purpose of the legislation wasn’t bad enough, there’s Read More ›

Brave New Bioethics Podcast #1

Title: Are We Defining A Brave New Future Where All Human Life Is Not Protected? Click here to listen. Are we headed for a brave new world where unconscious people are treated as if they were simply biological machines? Wesley warns that we maybe headed down that path, even though today most people believe “that treating people as mere things Read More ›

Testimony of Wesley J. Smith, JD, Before the California Senate Judiciary Committee

Testimony of Wesley J. Smith in Opposition to Legislation of Physician-Assisted Suicide in California (AB 651)Before the Senate Judiciary Committee “Informational Hearing,” June 20, 2006 Good afternoon. My name is Wesley J. Smith. I am an author and consumer advocate. I am a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, an attorney and consultant for the International Task Force on Euthanasia Read More ›

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 ›