Wesley J. Smith

Readers may recall the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans cases in the U.K., in which National Health Service hospitals took the parents of terminally ill children to court after they refused to acquiesce in doctors’ recommendations that life support be ended.

In both cases, the court ruled in the hospital’s favor in determining both that life support could be ended and preventing the parents from transferring care of their children to medical facilities willing to provide last-ditch treatments that the families wanted.

Now, a Trust hospital hasn’t even bothered going to court. Instead, doctors have unilaterally withdrawn kidney dialysis over family objections from Robert Barnor, who was profoundly disabled by a stroke, stating that letting the man die is merely a “clinical” decision. From the Telegraph story:

The 68-year-old suffered extensive brain damage and can now only open his eyes and move his head. He requires twice-weekly dialysis treatment for kidney disease, without which he would be expected to die within days.

On Wednesday, the hospital told his family it had made a “clinical decision” to end Mr Barnor’s dialysis and provide palliative care until he dies.

I saw Dan’s comment on the repose of Jesse Jackson. I think he left a mixed legacy (don’t we all?), but I will always be grateful to him for lending his full-throated support to the Schindler family in opposition to the dehydration of Terri Schiavo — proving that those who worked so hard to save her life were not just religious conservatives (Ralph Nader also opposed the dehydration publicly). Jackson even traveled to Florida to literally stand shoulder to shoulder with Terri’s family. Terri’s brother Bobby Schindler issued the following statement of appreciation and mourning in the wake of Jackson’s death: My family is saddened to learn of the passing of Rev. Jesse Jackson. During the final days of my Read More ›

The ideological fever that pushed the transgender agenda to the forefront of Western cultural and political life has not broken. True, a jury awarded $2 million in damages for medical malpractice to a “detransitioner” woman who had a double mastectomy when she was only 16. And true, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the AMA now oppose transitioning surgeries for minors — meaning that such interventions can no longer be considered the “standard of care” for children experiencing gender confusion. That’s all to the good.

But: The Attorney General of California has sued a hospital that announced it would no longer perform “gender affirming care” on minors. Across the pond, the European Parliament just voted to declare men who identify as women to be women for purposes of discrimination laws — which, while non-binding in law, is expected to influence policies going forward. That’s all to the bad.

And now, a resolution has been introduced in Congress by Representative Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) — along with scores of cosponsors — to establish a “Transgender Bill of Rights” that would undo all the recent gains that society has made to restore rationality to this most divisive controversy. Among other provisions, it would require that women’s private spaces be open to men who feel they are women, sweep aside religious objections to providing transgender medical interventions, and force women’s and girls’ sports to accept males as competitors.

From H. Resolution 1058, which already has many Democrat House sponsors and is supported by Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey:

Most of the media are in the tank (remember Brittany Maynard?) for the assisted suicide/euthanasia agenda and, as a consequence, are primarily interested in reporting on stories of “good deaths.” That criticism does not apply to The Atlantic, which recently published a scathing exposé of the cruelties inherent in Canada’s euthanasia regime. Now, staff writer Elizabeth Bruenig has published an important piece detailing how a mentally ill 31-year-old woman named Eileen Mihich was able to access poison drugs by writing herself a fraudulent prescription for death, which was filled unquestioningly by a willing pharmacy.

Eileen apparently had no discernible diseases but complained about severe abdominal pain. From, “It Was Too Easy for Her to Kill Herself“:

Mihich had told her family that she was debilitated by a mysterious abdominal pain and was interested in a medically assisted death. But her suicide still shocked her two closest relatives: her cousin Sarah (who asked to be referred to by her first name, to protect her privacy) and aunt Veronica Torina…Nearly a year on, they are still trying to solve the mystery of her death.…

At the medical examiner’s office weeks later, they received her phone, her wallet, and pharmacy receipts for prescription drugs commonly used to end the lives of patients with untreatable illnesses.

They also learned that Mihich’s body bore no signs of illness. Mihich had been suffering, but she had not been on the verge of death.

The noted bioethicist Art Caplan — with whom I usually disagree, but not always — has really jumped the shark with a column in which he accuses the administration of pushing racism in its publicity promotion of whole milk as part of a healthy diet. From “Is the Recent Effort to Glorify While Milk Tainted by Racism?” published in Bioethics Today: As a student of and writer on the history of science and public health under fascist regimes, I am suspicious. Milk drinking is political. Drinking whole white milk has played a big role in racist and far-right thinking. That’s the first I have ever heard of such argumentation. Caplan gives examples: Fascists have used the beverage as a rallying Read More ›

California Governor Gavin Newsom is clearly running for president and — surprise, surprise — has a new memoir coming out. In an interview about the book, he recounted attending his mother’s hastened death. From the Washington Post story:

It was the spring of 2002 when Gavin Newsom’s mother, Tessa, dying of cancer, stunned him with a voicemail. If he wanted to see her again, she told him, it would need to be before the following Thursday, when she planned to end her life.

Newsom, then a 34-year-old San Francisco supervisor, did not try to dissuade her, he recounted in an interview with The Washington Post. The fast-rising politician was racked with guilt from being distant and busy as she dealt with the unbearable pain of the breast cancer spreading through her body.

Newsom’s account of his mother’s death at the age of 55 by assisted suicide, and his feelings of grief and remorse toward a woman with whom he had a loving but complex relationship, is one of the most revealing and emotional passages in the California governor’s book, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery,” which will be published Feb. 24.

Some call it assisted suicide, but it appears to have actually been homicide because she was lethally injected by a doctor:

Euthanasia conjoined with organ harvesting just took a particularly disturbing turn in Spain, where a woman was euthanized and then had part of her face transplanted. From the Catalan News story: Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona has performed the world’s first face transplant with a donor who passed away from euthanasia. Around 100 medical professionals took part in the partial face transplant, a highly complex operation using neurovascular microsurgery techniques that lasted about 24 hours. In presenting the milestone procedure, the healthcare director, Maria José Abadías, highlighted the “extraordinary generosity of the donor,” the “collective effort” behind the operation and the “pride” of all workers who took part in it. Don’t get me wrong. There is no inherent moral Read More ›

Whenever I write in support of animal research, some accuse me of cruelty and indifference to the suffering of animals. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am eager for the number animals used in experiments to be reduced as much as possible — but only to an extent consistent with assuring scientific progress — because I care more about reducing human suffering. If we want a science sector that can produce medicines and techniques to treat disease and ameliorate pain (which also often benefits animals), like it or not, that requires the “grim good” of animal research. Another example of this sector’s importance just hit the news. A Spanish scientist has discovered a way to significantly reduce pancreatic Read More ›

The first gender “detransitioner” medical-malpractice case to go to trial resulted in a $2 million dollar verdict against the medical professionals who approved a double mastectomy for the plaintiff, Fox Varian, in 2019 when she was only 16. From the Epoch Times story: A jury on Jan. 30 found a psychologist and surgeon liable for malpractice after they supported and performed breast removal surgery on a 16-year-old girl who at the time identified as transgender. Fox Varian, now 22 and no longer identifying as transgender, was awarded $2 million in damages, with $1.6 million for past and future pain and suffering, and another $400,000 for future medical expenses. The jury found that in many respects the surgeon and psychologist had Read More ›

The French Senate has said “Non” to legalizing assisted suicide. From the Le Monde story: The Sénat, the French Parliament’s upper house, on Wednesday, January 28, rejected a government-backed draft law on assisted dying that had been billed as one of the country’s most important societal changes in more than a decade. The law easily passed the lower Assemblée Nationale last year but was so watered down by right-wing and centrist lawmakers, in often angry and chaotic debate in the upper chamber, that supporters of the initiative said it no longer made sense. So, what did the “watering down” actually change that assisted suicide advocates rejected? The Le Monde story didn’t say. But the Christian Daily International story did: The Senate Read More ›