Category: Rationing

By Wesley J. Smith Health-care costs are soaring, in part because the medical field is increasingly being put into harness to facilitate lifestyle and self-fulfillment desires. So the pressure is on to ration health care. If we are not careful, rationing could be wielded in an invidious manner against the very sick, elderly, disabled, and those seen …

By Michael Cook  “Dying patients living longer than expected lose NHS funds” was the BBC headline. The NHS is the UK’s government health service, which is publicly funded and free. But it appears that there are limits to its largesse. When doctors determine that a person has only a short time to live, the NHS …

Who has the final say about medical treatment in extreme cases, bioethicists or the mother? By Wesley J. Smith A few years ago, doctors in the United Kingdom decided to remove a dying baby named Charlie Gard from life support. Charlie had a genetic disease and because doctors believed his case to be hopeless, based …

By Dave Andrusko Earlier today, we reposted a terrific story written by pro-life bioethicist Wesley J. Smith. The immediate context was the attempt by Cook Children’s Medical Center in Ft. Worth, Texas to win the right to take little Tinslee Lewis off of life support and (this is really scary) “prevent her mother from pursuing …

By Wesley J. Smith Imagine you are the parent of a little baby. She is desperately ill with severe breathing difficulties, a heart valve defect, and diagnosed as suffering from severe chronic pulmonary hypertension. She is placed in a pediatric intensive care unit where, many months later, she continues to live—but also periodically experiences what …

By Wesley J. Smith The utilitarian bioethicist Peter Singer does not believe that human life has intrinsic value based simply on being human. Rather, he endorses a “quality of life” ethic in which some of us have greater value than others. Such discriminatory thinking leads to immoral viewpoints. Thus, Singer is best known for his …

By Maria V. Gallagher, Legislative Director, Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation Reporting at PennLive.com David Wenner writes that a “point system” proposed by the Pennsylvania Department of Health could leave an especially vulnerable population, people with disabilities, without the health care they need,  when it comes to life-saving treatment for COVID-19.  “Disability Rights Pennsylvania has filed a federal civil …