Villainous Transhumanism

by Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

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I hear that the villain in Dan Brown’s new novel, Inferno, is a Malthusian transhumanist. Brown isn’t the first to use fiction to explore the potential downside of the transhumanist movement. The Frankenstein series by my pal Dean Koontz, for example, is all about transhumanism — as indeed, when you think about it, was Mary [...]

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NHS “Quality of Life” Kills Disabled Patients

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by Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

I keep saying that if you want to see what the USA will look like in ten years under Obamacare, just look at the mess that calls itself the National Health Service in the UK. It isn’t that the NHS is socialized medicine per se — although that is part of it. More importantly in [...]

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Human Cloning Obfuscation 5: Monkey Cloned Pregnancy

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Thanks to Brendan P. Foht, over at The Corner, for showing that it was misleading to claim that SCNT human cloning could not lead to a human pregnancy because there have been no successful cloned monkey pregnancies. But there have been cloned monkey pregnancies, with one embryo developing to the fetal stage with a heartbeat! [...]

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Declare “Assisted Suicide Free Zones” in Vermont!

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Vermont has legalized assisted suicide, and hospitals in the state are delaying implementation on premises. From the AP story: Vermont’s new aid-in-dying law, which allows doctors to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill patients who request it, is set to take effect as soon as Gov. Peter Shumlin signs it on Monday. But most Vermont [...]

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What the CBC Means to Me

Dear Friend of the CBC, As you may know, I serve as chair of the board of directors of The CBC. During the day I practice general surgery in Manhattan . . . Kansas. We call ourselves the Little Apple. We even have a ball drop on New Year’s Eve. I have had the honor [...]

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The Coming Human Cloning Controversies

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I learned about the first successful human cloning last Monday, but couldn’t write about it until Wednesday because of a news embargo. The peer reviewed paper in Cell was rushed to print because is a huge deal. But, much to my surprise, it only made mild news. There were two reasons for that I think. [...]

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Human Cloning Obfuscation 4

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The Los Angeles Times has waded in to the junk biology game, assuring us that no embryos are threatened in human cloning — WHEN THE WHOLE POINT OF HUMAN CLONING IS TO CREATE AN EMBRYO! From the editorial, “The Specter of Human Cloning:” The team at OHSU, which disclosed its work in a paper published [...]

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Human Cloning Obfuscation 3

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I now see that the old dishonest game is well afoot: Biotech types and media pretending that human cloning isn’t really human cloning unless a baby is born. The cloning breakthrough is instead being spun as skin cells into stem cells! As if it were induced pluripotent stem cells, which really do turn skin into [...]

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Cloning Obfuscation 2

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The junk biology is flying in the media’s descriptions of the now accomplished human cloning. This next example comes from the Wall Street Journal’s Gautam Naik. From the ridiculously titled, “Experiment Brings Human Cloning One Step Closer:” Scientists have used cloning technology to transform human skin cells into embryonic stem cells, an experiment that may [...]

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Let the Cloning Obfuscation Begin

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Now that human cloning is upon us, look for many scientists and their camp followers (or ignorant reporters) to mislead about what the technology entails. Human SCNT creates human embryos through asexual means. It does not create stem cells. To obtain cloned stem cells, the embryos have to be nurtured and maintained in a dish [...]

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