February 2011

Belief in Human Exceptionalism Only Real Protection of Human Subjects in Research

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC It is well known that Nazi “doctors” engaged in horrendous medical experiments with concentration camp inmates. They thought it was fine and right to do so because they believed they were working on so-called untermenchen, that is, humans of lesser value. There is no such [...]

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Many “Locked In” People Happy

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC One of the terrible things about euthanasia and food and fluids cases, is the readiness by which many are willing to make despairing totally disabled people dead, that is, people who are fully conscious but completely paralyzed. Indeed, recently Belgian doctors euthanized such a woman, [...]

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Baby Joseph Futile Care Case Has Emotional Non Futile Care Wrinkle

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC I am going to, perhaps, take a different approach to this dispute than some of my very good friends. A baby in Canada, known as Baby Joseph, has an incurable neurological disease that will result in his eventual death. The hospital wants to unilaterally remove [...]

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NHS Meltdown: As the Service Founders on the Financial Rocks, a Call to Legalize Assisted Suicide

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC No “medical treatment” could be less expensive than assisted suicide. The drugs cost about $100. But treating patients properly so that they don’t want assisted suicide can take $100,000 or more. And that is why it is always alarming when people grappling with medical resource [...]

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Former NFL Player’s Suicide and Brain Donation Illustrates Why Euthanasia Should Never be Coupled with Organ Donation

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC A former football player named Dave Duerson committed suicide and asked that his brain be donated to research an affliction that may be caused by receiving too many blows to the head. From the story: For 11 years, Dave Duerson made his living as a [...]

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Paul Ramsey Award Dinner

Dear Friend, The Board of Directors of The Center for Bioethics and Culture cordially invites you to The Eighth Annual Paul Ramsey Award Dinner, to be held at 6:30 PM, Friday, March 25, 2011, at the Lakeside Olympic Club in San Francisco. The evening will include addresses by William Hurlbut, M.D. Wesley J. Smith, J.D. [...]

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Identifying Children “Criminals”

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC This is very scary. Scientists claim that brain scans can identify potential future criminals. From the story: More researchers believe that violent tendencies have a biological basis and that tests and brain imaging can pick them up in children. They argue that, by predicting which [...]

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Conscience Clauses: Obama Strips Medical Workers of Bush Protections

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC Surprise, surprise — they did it on a Friday when potentially unpopular news is released to get lost in the weekend. It took longer than I thought it would — two years — but just as I predicted in my 2010 prognostications, the Obama Administration [...]

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William Hurlbut on Why Embryos Matter Morally

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC Stanford University’s William Hurlbut and I are great friends. Bill is best known for his service on the President’s Council on Bioethics, and his proposal to circumvent the ethics/science discord over human cloning and ESCR with “altered nuclear transfer,” which I don’t wish to discuss [...]

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Child With Missing Cerebellum Shows Power of Human Spirit

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC A child born without a cerebellum is learning to walk. From the story: A three-year-old boy has baffled doctors after he has started learning to walk, despite missing a key part of his brain. Chase Britton was born prematurely and an MRI scan at the [...]

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