Wesley J. Smith Articles


Berniecare's Medicaid for All

A terrible idea. Let's hope its time never comes.
3:00 AM, Nov 17, 2017
As the Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare withered on the vine, the self-described socialist senator from Vermont rushed to fill the political vacuum. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All Act of 2017 is a single-payer proposal that shamelessly attempts to harness the popularity of Medicare, the government insurance program for the elderly. But the system Sanders proposes would be more aptly described as Medicaid for all. It more closely resembles the expensive health insurance plan Read more

Death Panels: Sarah Palin Was Right

The 'death panels' may be the only part of Obamacare to die.
3:00 AM, Oct 13, 2017
Obamacare “repeal and replace” may have failed this year, but that doesn’t mean the Affordable Care Act can’t be significantly defanged. For example, there is still time to excise the Independent Payment Advisory Board from the law before it is up and running. IPAB’s stated purpose is to contain Medicare costs, a laudable goal. But the powers granted to the presidentially appointed and confirmed commissioners subvert democratic accountability and violate our constitutional system of separation Read more

The Young and the Vulnerable

Bioethicists' turn to the dark side.
2:20 AM, Aug 11, 2017
When I was a small boy, polio terrified me. Each year, it would strike thousands of children like me—and you never knew when or where it would hit next. In the 1952 epidemic, a very bad year, there were nearly 60,000 reported cases in the United States and more than 3,000 deaths. Summer was the worst time, and I recall my parents’ tension as “polio season” approached. Most vividly, I remember my horror at the prospect of being encased in an iron lung. I had seen the photographs: hospital wards Read more

Defining Doctors Down

They should be professionals, not order-takers.
3:00 AM, Mar 31, 2017
There was a day in the not-too-distant past when physicians were respected, even revered, as learned professionals . We understood that doctors followed a “higher calling." Indeed, physicians were expected to adhere to a code of conduct—epitomized by the Hippocratic Oath's venerable injunction, "do no harm." Times have changed. The old hierarchies eroded and professional standards evolved accordingly. Some of this has obviously been for the better. For example, where doctors once made life-an Read more

Bioethics in the Age of Trump

An unconventional approach to a contentious issue.
1:15 AM, Dec 16, 2016
Ever since his unexpected victory, the media have been obsessing over what a Donald Trump presidency will mean for a range of important issues, such as the Paris Agreement on climate change, border enforcement, the judiciary, and Obamacare repeal. But one set of crucial concerns—those that go under the general category of bioethics/biotechnology—has received woefully short shrift, both in the campaign and the national discourse. Indeed, with the exception of abortion, these issues went wholly un Read more

Conscripting Doctors

Do harm&-or else.
12:45 AM, Oct 07, 2016
Should anyone outside the military be forced to kill? Most people would say no. But with the ubiquitous availability of abortion—and the push to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia—doctors may soon find themselves required to take lives or risk being booted from the medical profession. Let's call this threat "medical martyrdom." Laws today generally protect doctors from being conscripted into the culture of death. But there is concerted effort to override the preferences of doctors who ob Read more

Pondering Harambe

Do we really care more about animals than about people?
1:00 AM, Jun 17, 2016
The killing of Harambe the gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo last month was an unfortunate necessity, a lethal act required to save the life of an imminently endangered child. But listening to the public outpouring of grief and outrage—stoked by the media—one would think that the shooting of the animal was a heinous crime. We saw the same kind of outrage when an American killed Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe last year. Unlike Harambe's, Cecil's death was anything but a necessity—he was lured out of a  Read more

The End-of-Life Bureaucracy

Medicare and advance directives.
12:00 AM, Dec 07, 2015
The federal technocracy, like the old B-horror-movie monster The Blob , grows by sucking all surrounding life into its amoeba-like digestive system. There are never enough bureaucratic controls or government programs to “incentivize” us—in the jargon—to behave in ways the technocrats think best. That is why we should look with a jaundiced eye at new legislation that would pay Medicare beneficiaries for preparing an advance medical directive. The Medicare Choices Empowerment and Protection Ac Read more

Medicare and Medical Futility

Who decides to discontinue treatment?
12:00 AM, Nov 16, 2015
The media are cooing over the news that Medicare will reimburse doctors $86 for half-hour consultations about the kind of treatment patients would—or would not—want should they become incapacitated. Such coverage was slated to be part of Obamacare, but was dropped after it became controversial when Sarah Palin warned against “death panels.” Now, six years later, Medicare’s coverage of these important conversations (and private insurers are sure to follow) has brought nary a peep of protest.  Read more

Our Utilitarian Medical Elite

Bioethics and Planned Parenthood.
12:00 AM, Sep 21, 2015
Jeffrey Drazen, the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine , recently penned a scathing editorial about Planned Parenthood’s harvesting of fetal tissues. No, Drazen and his two coauthors (one a volunteer for Planned Parenthood) didn’t criticize the abortionists for killing fetuses in a “less crunchy manner” to obtain intact organs. Rather, deploying the highly emotive language of ideological pro-abortion activism, the doctor-advocates attacked the messengers as “radical anti-choice” and  Read more

Dangerous Apathy

Barbarism in our time.
12:00 AM, Aug 10, 2015
The country has been roiled in recent weeks by videos showing two Planned Parenthood executives chirpily telling pro-life undercover investigators that fetal organs could be had for a price. The executives—both themselves abortionists—explained that their techniques could be adapted to “crush” fetuses in a “less crunchy” manner so as to better insure harvests suitable for research. There have, of course, been previous scandals involving the selling of aborted fetal body parts, complete with p Read more

Follow the Money

Oregon makes assisted suicide a public priority.
12:00 AM, Jun 29, 2015
The United States is slowly becoming pro-suicide. No, not all suicides. No one favors troubled teens or healthy adults killing themselves. But our society can no longer be described as unequivocally antisuicide. Look at the celebration of the late Brittany Maynard, who received the full celebrity treatment​—​including being named by CNN as one of the most extraordinary people of 2014—​ because she committed suicide after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Indeed, the emotionalism ge Read more

Euthanasia Comes to Canada

Are we next?
12:00 AM, Feb 23, 2015
This month, the Canadian Supreme Court trampled democratic deliberation by unanimously conjuring a constitutional right to “termination of life” for anyone who has an “irremediable medical condition” and wants to die. Note the scope of the judicial fiat is not limited to the terminally ill: The ruling grants competent adults a right to die if they have an “illness, disease, or disability that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual,” including “psychological” pain. Eve Read more

The Schiavo Case Revisited

Why you may be hearing about it in 2016.
12:00 AM, Jan 05, 2015
Now that Republican Jeb Bush has made all the noises of a man running for president, expect the former governor of Florida to be attacked for trying to save the life of Terri Schiavo. The first such criticisms have already been launched in the left-wing media. ThinkProgress quoted Terri’s widower Michael—who had two children with his now-wife while still married to Terri—warning: “If you want a government that’s gonna intrude on your life, enforce their personal views on you, then I guess J Read more

Kevorkian’s Vision

He’s looking alarmingly prophetic.
12:00 AM, Dec 15, 2014
Assisted suicide exploded into the news again two months ago after Brittany Maynard, dying of brain cancer, announced she would take a lethal prescription as permitted under Oregon law. Maynard became an international celebrity, lauded as “courageous” in a cover story in People and featured in the world’s top media outlets. The last time the media swarmed so feverishly in favor of assisted suicide was when they touted Jack Kevorkian’s defiant assisted suicide campaign in the 1990s. As they  Read more

Cruel and Unusual

Death with Dignity Executions meet euthanasia.
12:00 AM, Oct 27, 2014
Belgium is on the verge of executing its first murderer by lethal injection. Well, not exactly “executing.” The state isn’t going to kill convicted murderer/rapist Frank Van Den Bleeken for his crimes. Rather, it is helping him be euthanized. By a doctor. At a hospital. To which he was transferred after a court ruled that Den Bleeken’s request to end the suffering caused by his imprisonment (he has served 30 years of a life sentence) and continuing violent sexual urges fits snugly within that co Read more

The Ethics of Food and Drink

Starvation is not mercy.
12:00 AM, Jul 28, 2014
Should the law compel nursing homes to starve certain Alzheimer’s patients to death? This is not an alarmist fantasy, but a real question, soon to be forced by advocates of ever-wider application of assisted euthanasia. The intellectual groundwork is already being laid for legislation or court orders requiring nursing homes, hospitals, and other facilities to withhold spoon feeding from dementia patients who, though they take food and drink willingly, once requested the withholding of life-prolo Read more

The Paper of the Apes

The New York Times ’s animal-rights crusade.
12:00 AM, May 26, 2014
That the New York Times is a subversive cultural force can readily be seen in its unremitting assault on human exceptionalism, the philosophical backbone of Western civilization. In the old view, every human being has intrinsic dignity and equal moral worth. The United Nations’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and pea Read more

The Suicide Juggernaut

Euthanasia activists are on a roll.
12:00 AM, Dec 30, 2013
Advocates of assisted suicide tell two—no, three—lies that act as the honey to help the hemlock go down. The first is that assisted suicide/euthanasia is a strictly medical act. Second, they falsely assure us that medicalized killing is only for the terminally ill. Finally, they promise that strict guidelines will be rigorously enforced to protect against abuse. Recent legislative proposals and developments in the field demonstrate the mendacity of these assurances. For example, a new bill ta Read more

Habeas Chimpanzee

The nonhuman rights campaign.
12:00 AM, Dec 16, 2013
"Tommy” and other chimpanzees are the subjects of several lawsuits in New York seeking writs of habeas corpus and “immediate release from illegal detention.” These lawsuits, the doing of the Nonhuman Rights Project, are not a surprise. As already noted in these pages (“Animal Desires,” April 9, 2012), NRP volunteer lawyers have spent years researching the common law of states, looking for legal precedents that can be twisted to support declaring intelligent animals such as chimps and dolphins to Read more

Bureaucracy Lives!

How many experts does it take to advise a dying patient?
12:00 AM, Aug 26, 2013
Back when the mess that is Obamacare was working its way through the legislative sausage factory, warnings about “death panels” almost derailed the entire enterprise. There were two, somewhat related, areas of concern: (1) that Obamacare’s many cost/benefit bureaucratic boards would lead to explicit health care rationing; and (2) that doctors paid to “counsel” elderly and dying patients about end-of-life treatment would actually pressure them to refuse expensive treatments. Owing to the lack of  Read more

The Arrival of Human Cloning

It’s here. Don’t get used to it.
12:00 AM, May 27, 2013
Human cloning is finally here, and it is going to spark a political conflagration. First, some background. The cloning era began when Dolly the sheep was manufactured in 1996. Dolly was cloned via somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). This is accomplished by removing the nucleus from a skin or other cell (in Dolly’s case, a mammary gland cell, hence her naming after Dolly Parton). That nucleus is then inserted into an egg whose nucleus has been removed. The engineered egg is stimulated, and i Read more

Eggs for Sale?

Brace yourself for the human embryo market.
12:00 AM, May 20, 2013
If you want to know what’s going to go wrong in the culture, read the professional journals. A case in point: An article in the April 10 New England Journal of Medicine called for the creation of a commodities market for “made-to-order” human embryos. The authors, I. Glenn Cohen and Eli Y. Adashi—university professors, of course—treat embryos as the equivalent of a prize cattle herd. They note that sperm and eggs are already bought and sold for in vitro fertilization (IVF) and, further, tha Read more

Health Costs Will Never Be Contained

When antidiscrimination law meets infertility treatment mandates.
12:00 AM, Apr 15, 2013
Should health insurers be legally required to offer infertility treatment for gay couples? Yes, according to a bill (AB 460) filed in the California legislature by assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). In fact, refusing to do so should be a crime. Current California law requires group health plans to offer coverage for infertility treatments with the exception of in vitro fertilization (IVF). If such coverage is purchased, benefits must be paid whenever “a demonstrated condition recogniz Read more

Defining Torture Down

Every policy the left dislikes becomes a crime against humanity.
12:00 AM, Apr 01, 2013
Now they are defining “torture” down. “They” in this instance are the international community in general and the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, the Argentine human rights activist Juan E. Méndez, in particular. Méndez—whose full title is “special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”—just released a report to the General Assembly on torture “in health care settings.” It is a startling read. He brands with that extreme term not only Read more

Not a Real Olive Branch

Obama’s phony compromise on contraception.
12:00 AM, Feb 18, 2013
The Obama administration pulled another fast one last week, announcing its much-anticipated “compromise” on the free-birth-control rule as it affects religious employers opposed to contraception. There was hope in some quarters that the administration would back off its narrow religious exemption. Alas, a careful reading of the proposed rule shows that instead of offering a true modus vivendi, the administration launched a stealth power grab. Not only does the “compromise” maintain the previous  Read more

What About Religious Freedom?

The other consequences of Obamacare.
12:00 AM, Oct 29, 2012
Obamacare won’t just ruin health care. It is also a cultural bulldozer. Before the law is even fully in effect, Health and Human Services bureaucrats have begun wielding their sweeping new powers to assault freedom of religion in the name of their preferred social order. The promulgation of the free birth control rule indicates the regulatory road ahead. The government now requires every covered employer to provide health insurance that offers birth control and sterilization surgeries free of Read more

Power Grab

Our technocratic future.
12:00 AM, Oct 01, 2012
To paraphrase Freud: Liberals, what do they really want? Not the communism or socialism of the right’s fever dreams. They know that didn’t work. Today’s liberal agenda is more akin to the corporatist vision of the 1920s and ’30s​—​an economy in which the state directs the activities of the private sector to achieve ideologically desired ends. But even that description doesn’t quite get to the nub of it. Liberals today seek to create a stable, and what they perceive to be a socially just, society Read more

A Religious Freedom Election

A court case in Colorado shows what’s at stake this fall.
12:00 AM, Aug 13, 2012
A recent federal trial court ruling has warmed the hearts of social conservatives and civil libertarians alike. A judge in Colorado on July 27 protected a Catholic-owned small business against the “free birth control rule”—which requires companies subject to the Affordable Care Act to offer their employees free contraception, sterilization, and other “preventive” services. The free birth control rule does not yet apply to religious institutions. Houses of worship with faith objections are exe Read more

Get Happy!

Something new to worry about.
12:00 AM, May 07, 2012
Is there no end to the technocratic impulse? Just when you thought that our government overlords couldn’t find any new way to intrude into our lives, they hatch a plan to multiply bureaucrats. Now cooking on the Obama stove: criteria to measure our “happiness.” Happiness? What business is that of the government’s? None. But when has that stopped the Obama administration? The Washington Post reported that Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services is funding a gaggle of “experts” to “de Read more
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