February 2014

An Exclusive Interview with a Surrogate Mother

The following is an interview I did with a surrogate after she saw our film Breeders: A Subclass of Women? LAHL: You were a surrogate for your sister and you’ve written a book, Silently I Cried, about your experience (which didn’t go well at all). You’ve watched my new film Breeders. Which surrogate did you […]

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Electric Stimulation Treats Severe Brain Damage

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It appears there may be a way to improve the condition of patients in a persistent unconscious and minimally conscious states. From the New Scientist story: People who have been in a minimally conscious state for weeks or years have been temporarily roused using mild electrical stimulation. Soon after it was applied to their brains, […]

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Here Comes the “Death Test!”

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Scientists think they may have devised a test that will tell us the chances we will die in five years–even if healthy. From the Telegraph story: A ‘Death Test’ which predicts the chance of a healthy person dying from any medical condition in the next five years has been developed by scientists. Researchers said they […]

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Test Advances Destroy Down Babies Agenda

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Currently about 90% of Down fetuses are aborted. Now, a new test makes the search part of the overarching search and destroy mission less invasive and more accurate. From NPR story: A new blood test offers pregnant women a safe and much more accurate way to screen for Down syndrome. A study that evaluated the […]

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“A Place for Mom” Blog Pushes Assisted Suicide

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We have all heard the advertisements of A Place for Mom, in which former news star Joan Lunden pitches the business that helps families find assisted living facilities and other senior services. Well, imagine my dismay to see the organization’s blog gushing over the assisted suicide advocacy group Hemlock Society Compassion and Choices–in a column ostensibly about […]

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We Should Follow Iran’s Kidney Selling OK?

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There is growing pressure among the utilitarian bioethics crowd to permit the poor to sell their kidneys–and there is already a thriving biological colonialism in kidney selling that prays on the world’s most destitute. Apparently, Iran permits this odious practice in the open–and now a new book this way comes extolling the idea. From the […]

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Moving Organ Donors Instead of Organs

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I think this is a very good idea. Rather than procure organs in disparate hospitals, in the Midwest, they are now moving donors to a centralized location. From the AP story: For decades, surgeons have traveled to far-off hospitals to remove organs from brain-dead donors and then rushed back to transplant them. Now an experiment […]

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What “Human Exceptionalism” Means

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Kathryn Jean Lopez interviewed me about my new ebook, The War on Humans. Those interested can read it for themselves. But I want to quote one small section because I am so often asked about what I mean by the term human exceptionalism. From “Losing Human Dignity:” LOPEZ: How do you define “human exceptionalism”? SMITH: […]

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Pediatrician Group Opposes Child Euthanasia

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Medical and professional organizations too often remain silent in the face of clamoring suicide promotion. I have written, for example, of the shameful crickets-chirping abdication of responsibility by suicide prevention community to the face of blatant suicide promotion of prescribed-death activists. Now, with Belgium legalizing child euthanasia–no age limit–and count them, two pro child euthanasia columns in the […]

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FDA Moving Toward OK for 3-Parent Embryos

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An experimental technique for creating embryos with three biological parents appears to be moving toward an okay from the FDA. Ostensibly to prevent mitochondrial disease, the experiment would use one genetically modified egg (with the nucleus from another egg), and sperm to create a new human life via IVF. Now, an FDA committee is holding hearings […]

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Quebec Conservatives Euthanize Euthanasia Bill?

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I admit, I don’t understand parliamentary politics. But it appears that the Liberal Party (conservatives) in Quebec just might have euthanized the euthanasia bill. From the CBC story: The Philippe Couillard-led Quebec Liberals have blocked the passage of Quebec’s end-of-life legislation, Bill 52, said parliamentary house leader Stéphane Bédard. He had strong words for Couillard, […]

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Swiss Clinic Suicide Over Lost Beauty

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There is no limit to the death culture any more. An elderly Italian woman paid Dignitas 10,000 Euros to be made dead because she had lost her looks and was lonely. From the Daily Mail story: A healthy Italian woman paid a Swiss right-to-die clinic to take her life because she was ‘unhappy about losing her […]

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In Vitro Fantasies

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Yesterday the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology announced that IVF birth rates reached an all time high in 2012, accounting for 1.5% of all births in the United States. Incidentally, this news reached me just a few hours after I completed an interview with a woman who went down the path of several failed IVF cycles […]

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Pushing Multi-Hospital Death Panels

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The medical/legal intelligentsia continues to promote empowering committees of “experts” to rule on which patients can receive wanted life-extending treatment and which should be refused based on “quality of life” and financial considerations. Now an article by Thaddeus Mason Pope in the New York Law School Law Review urges the creation of multi-institutional ethics committees to make […]

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Another Push for Child Euthanasia in LA Times

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Good grief. In less than one week, the op/ed page of the LA Times has been used twice as a platform to push child euthanasia. Pay very careful attention: These articles demonstrate that all the soothing bromides from assisted suicide advocates about how “aid in dying” here will be reserved to the competent, adult terminally ill–only self-administered–are bunk! Megan Daum […]

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Judge Blocks Execution Drug Used in Assisted Suicide

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This is pretty rich. We are frequently told by activists that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, and indeed, that allegedly includes lethal injection. Yet, many of these same advocates support assisted suicide–as in the ACLU. Now, a federal judge has blocked a pharmacy in Missouri from selling a drug used in executions. From […]

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It is Meaningful Information

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In Anonymous Father’s Day Barry says, How many people, if they are told that they are sitting in an office across from somebody or they’re on a factory floor for the last ten years across from someone who is actually their brother, would say, “Oh yeah, so what . . .”? For most people, it’s […]

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Who Cares What Great Palliative Docs Think?

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The greatest palliative care physicians of our era are (or were) against assisted suicide. Dame Cecily Saunders–one of the great medical humanitarians in history for creating the modern hospice movement–told me that she saw assisted suicide as, by definition, denying the dignity of dying patients. Dr. Kathleen Foley, perhaps the most respected practicing palliative care physician […]

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