Wesley J. Smith. In this deeply felt but cooly argued book, Wesley Smith goes behind the scenes of our health care system to show how a new, self-proclaimed elite of 'bioethicists' threaten patient welfare by undermining the Hippocratic Oath. Under this new worldview, 'death' is being redefined to include 'irreversible' coma. The case is being made for organ harvesting from the terminally ill and disabled. Cognitively disabled patients are dehydrated to death by having their tube-supplied food and water withheld.
Animals receive greater protection in medical experiments than people.
These ideas have consequences for individuals and for policy too, as Smith shows in his analysis of medicine in the state of Oregon, where assisted suicide is covered under Medicaid but some organ transplants are not. After reading Culture of Death, it will be hard to disagree with Wesley Smith's contention that we stand at a medical and cultural crossroads and that we must embrace a new bioethics of human rights if we are to reassert the sanctity of life.