Category: Bioethics

By Wesley J. Smith Julian Savulescu represents all that I find so objectionable about the mainstream bioethics movement. Rejecting the sanctity/equality of human life, utilitarian in outlook, embracing a eugenics point-of-view, the Oxford professor–what does that tell you?–would lead society in a way opposed by most of the very people bioethics claims to serve. Savulescu …

By Michael Cook   Bioethicists have chosen a lonely and disheartening profession. Locked away in an office, they pound out publications which only a few hundred of people – at best! – will ever read. But occasionally one of their articles escapes from the laboratory and spreads across the globe. The ensuing publicity may not add lustre …

By Cassy Fiano-Chesser  A bioethicist has argued for using women in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) as surrogates, calling it “whole body gestational donation.” Anna Smajdor, of the University of Olso, wrote in the journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics that women who are brain dead shouldn’t have their wombs going to waste, when people who want children can use them. …

A common moral framework for medicine is in danger of disappearing. By Michael Cook A survey of oaths taken by medical students in the United States and Canada in 2014 and 2015 suggests that doctors are beginning their career with vague, confusing, and inconsistent notions of medical ethics. In an article in The New Bioethics, three …

By Wesley J. Smith This is the world of bioethics, the “experts” whom we are supposed to trust to guide public policy on a range of issues, from medical policy to environmental law. We should not listen to a word the mainstreamers have to say — as this article telling us not to have children …

By Wesley J. Smith Will artificial wombs replace natural gestation? Until very recently, that notion was a far-fetched conjuring out of futuristic novels such as “Brave New World.” But research that could make this dystopian prospect a reality is fast advancing. Scientists have already gestated premature lambs in artificial wombs and brought mouse fetuses halfway through …

By Wesley J. Smith This is the world of bioethics, the “experts” whom we are supposed to trust to guide public policy on a range of issues, from medical policy to environmental law. We should not listen to a word the mainstreamers have to say — as this article telling us not to have children …

By Wesley J. Smith Julian Savulescu represents all that I find so objectionable about the mainstream bioethics movement. Rejecting the sanctity/equality of human life, utilitarian in outlook, embracing a eugenics point-of-view, the Oxford professor–what does that tell you?–would lead society in a way opposed by most of the very people bioethics claims to serve. Savulescu …

By Wesley J. Smith  The core problem with contemporary bioethics is that the movement denies human exceptionalism. In this view, being human is morally irrelevant. What matters are capacities, such as the ability to value one’s life, which make one a “person.” Under personhood theory, there is such a thing as a human non-person and …

By Wesley J. Smith These days, anti-humanism is as thick as molasses among the intelligentsia. That includes an ongoing conversation in bioethics whether — all things considered — human extinction would be a fine thing because of the suffering that never coming into existence would avoid. Example: A few months ago, Oxford professor Roger Crisp opined that …

By Wesley J. Smith Julian Savulescu represents all that I find so objectionable about the mainstream bioethics movement. Rejecting the sanctity/equality of human life, utilitarian in outlook, embracing a eugenics point-of-view, the Oxford professor–what does that tell you?–would lead society in a way opposed by most of the very people bioethics claims to serve. Savulescu …

By Wesley J. Smith  These days, anti-humanism is as thick as molasses among the intelligentsia. That includes an ongoing conversation in bioethics whether — all things considered — human extinction would be a fine thing because of the suffering that never coming into existence would avoid. Example: A few months ago, Oxford professor Roger Crisp …