Wesley J. Smith

Fresh off publishing an unsubstantial attack on the Cass Review that recommended against puberty blockers for gender dysphoric youth, the New England Journal of Medicine offers an advocacy piece demanding that prisoners claiming to be transgender be given free “transition surgeries.” From “Gender-Affirming Surgical Care in Carceral Settings“: Several U.S. courts have held that access to gender-affirming care during incarceration is a trans person’s right. This conclusion is reflected in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) clinical guidance, which governs clinical care provision within federal carceral facilities, which house an estimated 1200 trans people. The BOP, whose guidance often sets the standard for health care delivery in state and local carceral facilities, recommends provision of gender-affirming care during incarceration, including Read More ›

What a debacle. More than 15,000 people died in Canada in one year because they couldn’t access care in the country’s collapsing socialized health-care system. From the Toronto Sun story: Close to 15,500 people died waiting for health care in Canada between April 1, 2023 until March 31, 2024, according to data compiled by SecondStreet.org via Freedom to Information Act requests across the country. However, SecondStreet.org says the exact number of 15,474 is incomplete as Quebec, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador don’t track the problem and Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia only provided data on patients who died while waiting for surgeries — not diagnostic scans. SecondStreet.org says if it extrapolates the unknown data, then an estimated 28,077 patients died last year Read More ›

It is always good to see someone wrestling with truth. A progressive columnist in The Guardian writes about how she is coming to understand that human life has intrinsic dignity, but she doesn’t quite understand why. Still, something very important is stirring within her. From, “I Am a Rational Liberal, Yet a Question about the Sanctity of Life Floored Me,” by Sonia Sodha: Liberalism has much to offer, but there are risks in embracing it as an overarching political philosophy without a degree of humility about its shortcomings: its hollow silence over how to navigate knotty ethical issues where society needs some kind of shared understanding. This queasiness about morality means liberals sometimes look the other way when others smuggle Read More ›

Here’s the good news. A massive deposit of lithium has been discovered on the border of Oregon and Nevada. From the OilPrice.com story: A massive new lithium discovery on the border between Oregan [sic] and Nevada could supercharge the country’s white-gold rush. It is estimated that the newly discovered reserves under the ancient McDermitt Caldera holds a whopping 40 million metric tons of lithium. The scale of this deposit is extraordinary, “dwarfing other reserves worldwide.” Just last year, lithium producers were thrilled to find a reserve of 4 million metric tons of lithium in the Smackover Formation, a geologic formation that spans the width of Arkansas. Next to the McDermitt Caldera, that now seems a paltry sum. This deposit could Read More ›

The latest New England Journal of Medicine contains two advocacy articles that essentially argue that the country should provide health care for illegal immigrants, no questions asked. The first, discusses the 1.1 million elderly people with no legal right to be here, who as a result, do not qualify for Medicare or federal Medicaid funding, which the authors call “dual ineligibility.” The article argues that these illegal residents should be covered by Medicare if they paid taxes, but realizing that is a political nonstarter, urge a combination of strategies. These range from states authorizing payments under Medicaid, to funding community health centers, to illegal elders being covered by their legal adult children’s health insurance. But what the authors really want Read More ›

The assistant secretary general of the U.S., Kanni Wignaraja, wants “nature” to go to court so that tribunals can set environmental policy for the world. From her “Nature Goes to Court,” published by the U.N. Development Programme (of which she is a regional director): Nature is taking the stand as courtrooms worldwide become battlegrounds for Earth’s rights. The rise in climate litigation shows how the environment can take centre stage as a plaintiff, demanding justice and accountability, benefiting us all. . . . Good grief. “Nature” would not be “going to court” or doing anything as viruses, geological features, flora and fauna would be utterly oblivious of the proceedings. What Wignaraja really means is that people who think like her Read More ›

With so many people on the organ transplant waiting list, the ethics of organ donation have begun to buckle. These proposals are not only unethical, in my opinion; in some cases they also treat donors as objects rather than subjects. Each and any of them could undermine the public’s already thin trust in the organ transplant system, which would be a catastrophe. But an ethical way forward has also been researched assiduously, and it is beginning to bear fruit: xenotransplantation, that is, the use of pigs’ organs, genetically altered to be more compatible with humans. Early experiments offer cause for optimism. Recently, a woman who was dying of kidney failure received a pig kidney, and she seems to be doing well. Read More ›

We hear a lot from environmentalists, animal rights activists, and just plain caring people about the supposed evils of industrial farming. Neo-Luddites throw tantrums about GMOs, for example. And many commenters — including in these pages — lament the conditions in which meat animals and egg-laying hens are raised. Those are certainly legitimate concerns worthy of investigation and debate. But we also need to focus on the tremendous good humans receive from having bountiful, affordable, and nutritious food supplies, which would seem to require at least some industrial methods to achieve. Indeed, until now, these and other benefits humans receive from industrial agriculture and so-called factory farms seem to be one of those hot potato topics that we are not allowed to Read More ›

In the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Canada, people who want euthanasia can become organ donors. (A recent report in Spain showed that 13 percent of those euthanized donated organs.) Let’s call it “kill and harvest,” a policy heartily approved by our ever more crassly utilitarian medical establishment. Indeed, a recent study in JAMA Surgery applauds procuring the kidneys of the euthanized because, after five years, the organs of those killed by doctors and then transplanted have worked well — even better than kidneys donated by people after brain death. From the conclusion of the study, which discusses donation after circulatory death from euthanasia (DCD-V): This study found that DCD-V kidney transplantation yielded a lower incidence of DGF [delayed graft function] compared with DCD-III kidney transplantation Read More ›