New Film, The War on Humans, Explores the Growing Call for Granting Human Rights and Legal "Personhood" to Plants and Animals

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Feb 11, 2014, 08:00 ET

SEATTLE, Feb. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Are humans the enemy? Should pigs and peas have constitutional rights? The War on Humans, a provocative 31-minute documentary from Discovery Institute exploring growing efforts to disparage the value of humans in the name of saving the planet, will be released online February 18^th at www.waronhumans.com.

The documentary features bioethicist and Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith, who has authored a companion e-book with the same title that will be released on February 18^th by Discovery Institute Press. In the book he investigates the views of anti-human activists who want to grant civil rights to animals, plants, and "Mother Earth," and who want to reduce the human population by up to 90%.

"Western Civilization, which has brought us so much freedom and prosperity, depends on a worldview that embraces the unique intrinsic value of human life," explains Smith. "That crucial understanding is now under energetic and widespread assault—perhaps most dangerously from the radical environmental movement that not only rejects human exceptionalism, but declares us to be the enemies of the planet. In this view, if we would only see ourselves as one unexceptional part of nature, we will tread more gently upon the earth. But I say that if we redefine ourselves as just another animal in the forest, that's precisely how we will act."

The book has been praised by author and journalist Nat Hentoff, a noted civil libertarian and free speech advocate: "If there were an international award for continuing to focus on and document cultural and political threats to basic human life and potential--I emphasize human—the winner would be Wesley J. Smith. Smith has now written a riveting expose of this multi-dimensional assault on human beings that for life saving reasons—I kid you not—must be read by human beings beyond their political, religious, and all other affiliations."

Other scholars interviewed for the film include Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler; Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Dr. John West, author of Darwin Day in America; and Biologic Institute biologist Dr. Ann Gauger, co-author of Science and Human Origins.

Lawyer and award winning author, Wesley J. Smith, is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism. He is also a consultant to the Patients Rights Council and a special consultant for the Center for Bioethics and Culture. In May 2004, because of his work in bioethics, Smith was named one of the nation's premier expert thinkers in bioengineering by the National Journal. Visit Smith's blog Human Exceptionalism hosted by National Review Online.

SOURCE Discovery Institute