Author: Wesley Smith

By Wesley J. Smith Pope John Paul II once famously described Western society as a “culture of death.” But what does that term mean? It refers to a civilization that endorses lethal omissions and even outright killing by doctors to alleviate suffering or resolve life crises. “Culture of death” is most often applied in the …

By Wesley J. Smith As I have warned here before, euthanasia activists are pushing for laws that permit people to write advance directives ordering themselves starved to death if they become mentally incapacitated. That effort is apparently gaining steam.  The assisted suicide supporting organization Final Exit Network published a poll that supposedly found only 15 percent of …

By Wesley J. Smith Bioethicists are looking for ways to eliminate people diagnosed with dementia when they become incapacitated. Belgium and the Netherlands permit advance orders to be euthanized. Another proposal gaining traction in bioethics would force caregivers to starve patients to death. And here’s a new idea: Writing in the Hastings Center Report — the world’s most prominent bioethics journal …

By Wesley J. Smith As I have been documenting over the past 28 years (!), euthanasia in the Netherlands has metastasized from killing the terminally ill, to the chronically ill, to people with disabilities, to the elderly, to people with dementia, to the mentally ill, to children of any age, and babies born with serious disabilities. Yes, …

By Wesley J. Smith It used to be that psychiatrists and psychologists strived to prevent mentally ill people from committing suicide. Now, a blog post by Canadian psychiatrist Ralph Lewis published in Psychology Today — of all places — understands that allowing the mentally ill to be euthanized could have a deleterious impact on suicide-prevention efforts. But what …