Culture of Death is a thoroughly researched and readable work of morally charged resistance to anti-human ideas and trends now being aggressively pushed in our society. With assisted suicide becoming legalized, forced dehydration of persistently unconscious patients becoming normalized, and health care perhaps becoming rationed, the equality and sanctity of human life ethic seems on the ropes. Wesley J. Smith provides a roadmap of the ideas, events, and trends that have brought matters to this point – and which will surely continue if left unchecked.
The book presents a sharp sustained critique of the bioethics movement. It traces the sayings, writings, doings of Fletcher, Singer, Kevorkian and other well-knowns who have severally, if not jointly, injected into medical ethics the false, pernicious, and revolting idea that there are human lives unworthy of life. Prominent among supposed unworthies are infants with birth defects, persons with serious cognitive or physical disabilities, and terminally ill patients.
Thanks to Smith, the crude utilitarian ethics that characterize most bioethical thinking receives the critical scrutiny it deserves. The analysis of what Smith terms “futile care theory” – the replacement of objective medical determinations for subjective (relativist) value judgments about patient treatment – is another one of the book’s most significant contributions.
For those who read the original edition -- as this reviewer did a dozen years ago -- this 2016 edition remains entirely worth your while. For one, a new reading provides a stark reminder of the human rights dangers that need to be opposed. Also, the content is updated throughout. The brand new chapter on biological colonialism – black market trafficking in human organs, commercial surrogacy, and all – is also extremely important. Transhumanism, yet another anti-human ideology, also comes in for cursory but much needed scrutinizing.
This book is priority reading for defenders of human equality and dignity. It is an all-in-one historical backgrounder, analytical resource, urgent warning, and call to action. If the subject matter of the book is often dark, the real life future for the vulnerable among us will only become darker if we do not push back and reassert the basis for human rights... Get the book. Read it.
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