Humanize From Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism
Topic

bioethics

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Doctor holding a globe in hands, representing global healthcare, medicine, and medical care services, emphasizing world health preservation.

Only Bioethicists Can Prevent Global Warming

The bioethics movement has always had power ambitions beyond wrestling with health policy and medical ethics. Indeed, for years, the mainstreamers have been seeking to interpose themselves into the global-warming controversy.

The Hastings Center — the beating heart of the bioethics establishment — has been leading the charge to so expand the sector’s influence. The center just published a call to arms to fight global warming by a medical ethics professor emeritus, advocating that bioethicists be at the center of the climate-change fray.

After praising the inflation-causing spending of the mendaciously named Inflation Reduction Act as now set in stone — time will tell — the author rallies the bioethicists troops to the great cause. From “Now What? Bioethics and Mitigating Climate Disasters“:

We might well ask: Now what? Is there a way to make a difference over the next four years? And, especially, does bioethics have a role in this effort?

I argue that there is important work ahead and bioethics should be squarely in the middle of it. The work is less in federal policy and more in public persuasion. The role for bioethics is to bring global warming and its catastrophic health consequences into focus as an existential crisis neither party can ignore.

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Wesley J. Smith Appears on American Thought Leaders to Discuss the Assisted Suicide Movement

Wesley J. Smith was on EpochTV’s American Thought Leaders this week in an episode dedicated to exploring the history and dangers of the assisted suicide movement. From EpochTV: “When a country or a state legalizes assisted suicide or euthanasia, it can no longer call itself anti-suicide, because it specifically approves some suicides. … It’s a very dangerous movement that is normalizing this kind of approach to dying as opposed to natural death.” In this episode, I sit down with Wesley J. Smith, a lawyer, public speaker, award-winning author, and chair of the Discovery Institute Center on Human Exceptionalism. “We’re seeing in Canada also the beginning of a situation where patients who have a tough time getting an oncologist because of Read More ›

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Scientist holding a lab mouse, evaluating her condition prior to running some tests and inoculation the animal with a virus

We Can’t Let “Experts” Decide the Morality of Making “Humanized Animals”

Bioethics is a utilitarianish social-political movement whose primary advocates are usually philosophers, lawyers, and/or doctors. Mainstream bioethicists (unless they have a modifier in front of the identifier, such as “Catholic”) generally push against human exceptionalism — a concept many view as “speciesism” — and promote Tower of Babel–like experiments that push us toward an almost-anything-goes research ethic. Bioethical issues are generally debated beyond the public’s perception, in professional journals, before they are introduced in public policy. The Journal of Medical Ethics, published out of Oxford, is one of the movement’s most influential publications. A major new article therein discusses the ethical implications of scientists’ implanting human-brain “organoids” — functional brain tissue created with stem cells — into animals, which could enhance Read More ›

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A closeup of a scientist using AI to simulate climate change effects on a digital globe

Blessed Are the Peacemakers, for They Shall Be Called Bioethicists

Reinforcing my earlier point, the Hastings Center has now published an utterly naive article advocating that war itself be transformed into a bioethics issue. True to form in the field, the authors propose six bioethical "principles" to apply to considering whether potential combatants should resort to war or make "wiser choices." Read More ›
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Happy child with down syndrome enjoying swing on playground

Neanderthals Cared for Down Syndrome Children. Too Often, We Abort Them

Scientists have discovered the remains of a Neanderthal child with Down syndrome. Today, it may now be that more babies with Down syndrome are killed in the womb than are born. Read More ›
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Team of doctors preparing for surgery, patient POV

No, Doctors Shouldn’t Make Treatment Decisions for Incompetent Patients

Cardiologist and New York Times columnist Sandeep Jauhar has published a piece advocating that doctors and bioethicists be empowered to force treatment on some patients. He writes in the context of wanting to compel hospitalization on a schizophrenic patient with serious heart problems. From "Doctors Need a Better Way to Treat Patients Without Their Consent:" Read More ›
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Laboratory with Team of Microbiology Scientists Have Meeting

Bioethicists Want to Rule the World!

Bioethics has always been about granting "experts" in the field tremendous influence over public policy. And now, one of the most prominent practitioners in the field — the president and CEO of the Hastings Center Report, a prestigious bioethics journal — has urged that bioethicists expand their "expert" advocacy to issues of "global" importance. Read More ›
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Organ transplantation medical professional in a rush

A Market in Human Kidneys Is a Bad Idea

It is sometimes said that desperate circumstances require desperate measures. But desperation can also lead to the exploitation of the vulnerable. Such would be the case if we created a market in live-donation human kidneys. Read More ›
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Close-up of scrub nurse taking medical instruments

What Comes after Transgender? Doctor Amputates Man’s Healthy Fingers

I have long predicted that normalizing transgender surgeries would be followed eventually by doctors intentionally disabling patients with Body Identity Integrity Disorder (BIID). Well, here it comes. A doctor in Quebec "treated" a BIID patient by amputating two of his healthy fingers. Read More ›
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Man in prison

Mass. Democrats Propose Turning Prisoners into Organ Farms

This proposal suffers from the same fatal ethical flaw. Prisoners are hardly in an equal bargaining position. Nor should they be induced to turn themselves into a natural resource ripe for the harvest. Read More ›