Culture of Death
By Wesley J. Smith
Encounter Books
San Francisco, CA
2000

Reviewed by Louis F. DeBoer

This book, subtitled, "The Assault on Medical Ethics in America" is a shocking expose of how advanced the defense and even the practice of euthanasia is in this country. The author shows how mainstream this thinking has become in the medical establishment and how this transformation was accomplished through the recent science (?) of bioethics. This subject is pervasively taught not only at all medical schools, but on all major college campuses and is highly promoted in the secular media. Based on atheistic values and evolutionary philosophy it picks up where the discredited science and practice of eugenics left off early in the last century. He traces this thinking from the eugenics movement, through the medical philosophy of Nazi Germany, to the present. In quote after quote he substantiates that if Hitler lost militarily, philosophically he is alive and well. Starting with "the quality of life as a basis for the right to life" paradigm of this new morality he exposes not just euthanasia, but retroactive abortion of babies born with defects (Your editor would never have made it in this brave new world, as he has two conditions for which modern bioethicists would decree the death penalty). He deals with the newly created moral "duty to die"  and the drive to redefine what constitutes death so as to maximize the harvesting of organs. He exposes the contradictions of this movement that is so quick to destroy human life while earnestly contending for animal rights. In fact as he documents there is far more legal protection for animals at all stages of their life cycle than for the unborn, the elderly, and the disabled among the human population. 

The book is a revelation of how far we have come as a society since casting the Christian Scriptures out of our public schools and Christian principles out of the marketplace of ideas in our culture. The weakness of the book, manifested throughout, is obvious in Chapter 7, "Towards a 'Human Rights' Bioethics." Without a clear Biblical position he can do little more than mount a futile rear guard action, while mouthing a few platitudes. The author knows only what he is against, not what he is for. 

The weakness of this book clearly demonstrates why we have this problem in the Western world and why victory is not in sight on these issues. The author is appalled at the "culture of death" and is zealously seeking to maintain the traditional position of Western medicine. However, he is not coming from a Christian view point. He only has an undefined sense of humaneness, medical tradition, and the Hippocratic oath on his side. He has no chance against the juggernaut of the modern medical bioethics establishment. If evolution is true, and its corollary, "survival of the fittest" is accepted, the logical position of the bioethicists will be unassailable and impregnable. Darwinian thinking produced these horrors in Nazi Germany and will do the same in the rest of the West. 

The authors predicament is starkly revealed in his ambivalence with respect to the issue of abortion. One senses from his remarks that he is opposed to it, but he has no basis for defending his feelings. And feelings are all they are. He has no clearly defined convictions on the subject. He confesses that he is wrestling with the issue, but having no Biblical convictions with regard to the sacredness of life created in the image of God, no willingness to leave all matters of life and death in the hands of a sovereign Creator, and no clue as to at what point a fetus becomes a human being, he is paralyzed on this issue. To him things are a lot clearer at the other end of the spectrum when dealing with euthanasia.

The two issues can not, however, be so easily separated. Both are part and parcel of one's world view with respect to life and death, and can only be defended by the same principles. And now as in the past, they will always show up together. In fact the one is a logical consequence of the other. For the surviving siblings of the aborted millions, who were sacrificed on the altar of convenience, will, having learned the lesson from their parents, not hesitate to sacrifice the lives of their parents on the same altar, when they become an inconvenience in their old age. And that is simply the justice and judgment of God on the generation that defined freedom in terms of abortion rights. 

Ultimately, only a return to the Mosaic account of the creation in Genesis and to the sixth commandment in the Decalogue, can provide a foundation for overthrowing the culture of death. As Christ put it in the Scriptures, "...all they that hate me love death." The culture of death is just another proof of that, and another indication of how our society hates God and His Christ. May God grant us national repentance for these sins.