Medical Journal Crosses a Whole New Line
Is blaming commercialism for global warming genuine science? Or just ideology?The Lancet needs to go back to being a medical journal rather than a propaganda outlet for progressive politics.
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Wesley J. Smith
Euthanasia’s Slippery Slope
Once a society embraces death as the answer to suffering, what counts as suffering never stops expanding.Note well that the concept of the “completed life” need not involve any physical illness, disabling condition, or psychiatric malady at all.
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Assisted Suicide and the Dangers of “Word Engineering”
When radical policies are proposed, the first step is to change the lexicon to make it seem less extreme, even mundane.If people don’t kill themselves because of concern about stigma, isn’t that good? I mean, shouldn’t we want fewer people to commit suicide?
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The Anti-Human “Rights of Nature” Movement
Environmentalism is growing increasingly antii-human. Just look at what Milwaukee County did.Environmentalism is growing increasingly anti-human. The “nature rights” movement epitomizes the misanthropy. If the suppose rights of Nature (with a capital N) were ever enforced legally–human thriving would be throttled by elevating the entire natural world to quasi-personhood status deserving — at minimum — equal consideration with humans. Moreover, nature rights laws generally allow anyone to sue to enforce nature’s supposed rights, which would mean that human enterprise would be subject to lawfare by the most extreme environmentalists. Milwaukee County has jumped on the bandwagon. From a formal “Resolution Supporting the Nature Rights Movement:” WHEREAS, major bodies of water within Milwaukee County, including the Menominee River, Milwaukee River, and Fox River as well as Lake Michigan, provide essential biodiversity and wildlife habitats; andWHEREAS, these Read More ›
Should Animals Be Able to Vote? Some Animal Rights Activists Think So
Here's a taste of just how absurd and extreme "animal rights" has become.As I always say, if you want to see what is going so badly wrong in society, read the professional and intellectual journals.
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Humans Are More Important Than Pigs
Mainstream bioethics has long sought to deconstruct human exceptionalism by claiming that species membership is irrelevant to moral worth.The lives of human beings are unquantifiably more important than those of pigs.
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The United Nations is Considering Granting “Ocean Rights”
Why is granting “rights” to oceans becoming a thing?Common-sense environmentalism is no longer in style. The Ocean and Nature rights movements are symptoms of a viral anti-humanism.
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The Crisis of Trust in the Mainstream Media
A vibrant and engaged media is essential to protecting American liberty. But what if it can't be trusted?This is cross-posted at Humanize. Visit this link to listen to the entire conversation between host Wesley J. Smith and journalist/commentator Alice Stewart. A vibrant and engaged media is essential to protecting American liberty—which is why the First Amendment provides such a strong protection for freedom of the press. If the media are to carry out their societal responsibilities, journalists must have the trust of news consumers. But these days, trust is in low supply. An October 2022 Gallup Poll found that only 34% of Americans trust the mass media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.” Why are the media experiencing this profound crisis of trust and what can be done about it? Wesley’s guest on this episode Read More ›
Affirmative Action and Health Care
It is high time that our medical journals stick to medicine.The hyper-woke New England Journal of Medicine claims that affirmative action is a necessary health measure.
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More Ideological Alarmism in Yet Another Top Journal
Ideology continues to harm the scientific endeavor.I can’t think of anything more harmful to people’s respect for “science” than hysterical scientists in (say) lab coats.
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“Science” Journals Are Getting Less Trustworthy
Unless scientific journals set aside nonscientific agendas, public trust in them will continue to skydiveSevering the discourse from true scientific objectivity could mean that legitimate research will be stifled.
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The Technocracy Continues to Grow
We live in a time where individual freedom is under material threat from an emerging technocracyWe live in a time where the most important policy and personal decisions are going to be made not by us but for us by “the experts.”
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We Need to Keep Medicine “Evidence-Based”
A new approach seems to be arriving — so-called science-based medicine. What is the difference?Trust must be earned, not imposed. Information gatekeepers can be wrong. The danger of censorship in the name of “science” is growing.
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What Oppenheimer Teaches Us About Today’s Cultural Moment
Let us hope we have the wisdom to take heed of the messages the movie communicates.No one gained from Oppenheimer’s fall. Not only was the scientist’s career destroyed and life ruined, but also the country was deprived of benefiting from his intelligence.
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CDC Neglects to Include Assisted Deaths in Official Suicide Report
Assisted dying is a form of suicide, regardless of the ways our culture has euphemized the termThe term suicide defines what is done, not why. In other words, assisted suicides are as much suicides as jumping off a bridge.
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Humanity is Not a Terminal Illness
Anti-humanism has been part of the environmentalist movement for decadesAnti-humanism has become a hallmark of environmentalism. It is also becoming official government policy.
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The Small Steps That Lead to Dystopia
Revisiting a 1993 article warning about the future of assisted suicideEditor’s Note: The following piece was originally published in Newsweek in June 1993. Today is my 76th birthday,” the letter began. “Unassisted and by my own free will, I have chosen to take my final passage.” Suicide. My friend Frances died in a cold, impersonal hotel room after taking an overdose of sleeping pills, with a plastic bag tied over her head suffocating the life out of her body. Frances was not a happy woman. She had family troubles. She suffered from chronic lymphatic leukemia and was facing the difficult prospect of a hip replacement. She also had a chronic nerve condition that caused her to feel a burning sensation on her skin. But Frances was lucid, aware and involved. Read More ›
Scientists Close to Creating Human Embryos from Stem Cells
The “anything goes” ethical peril in biotechnology is all too realOnce again, biotechnology is racing ahead of our capacity to intellectually digest what is happening.
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Patients Opting for Euthanasia in the Face of Painful Circumstances
Receiving assistance takes a long time. But to be made dead? Not so much.So much compassion! A disabled woman with quadriplegia named Rose Finlay in Canada has asked to be euthanized because she is destitute, and the disability benefits she applied for would not arrive in time for her to be properly housed and cared for. From the CBC story: A quadriplegic woman in Bowmanville, Ont., has applied for medical assistance in dying (MAID), saying it’s easier to access than the support services she needs to live her life comfortably. Receiving assistance takes a long time. But to be made dead? Not so much: The single mother of three boys previously supported her family with earnings from disability advocacy work through her company, Inclusive Solutions. That’s also how she could afford to hire her own support Read More ›
Medical Association is “Neutral” on Assisted Suicide
This is a matter of the gravest ethical concernHow in the world can a medical association be neutral on granting doctors a license to kill or assist the suicide of their patients? This is a matter of the gravest medical ethical concern, an action, remember, that was strictly proscribed 2,500 years ago in the Hippocratic Oath. Utter Cowardice But yield to the pressures of the activists is what the UK’s Royal College of Surgeons has done, in an act of utter cowardice based on a survey answered by only 19 percent of its members. From the Daily Mail story: The Royal College of Surgeons is no longer opposed to assisted dying and is now ‘neutral’, it has been announced. The organisation’s council members voted after discussing survey results, which showed an appetite for change, a Read More ›