Wesley J. Smith is a San Francisco-based attorney, columnist and anti-euthanasia activist. He is the author of Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder (Times Books/Random House, 1997).

Margaret Pabst Battin is a philosophy professor at the University of Utah and a leading figure in the public debate on end-of-life issues. She has written extensively on religious and ethical concerns in physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia and has researched active euthanasia and assisted suicide in the Netherlands. Her books include Ending Life: Ethics and the […]

Dr. Robert Brody is a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and chief of the Pain Consultation Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital. A former hospice director, he is a Compassion & Choices board member.

Barbara Coombs Lee is chief petitioner of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. She is the president of Compassion & Choices, formed when the Compassion in Dying Federation, based in Portland, merged with End-of-Life Choices, formerly known as the Hemlock Society.

Timothy Quill, a professor of medicine, psychiatry and palliative care at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, was the lead physician plaintiff in the 1977 New York state legal case challenging the prohibition of physician-assisted suicide. He is co-editor of Physician-Assisted Dying: The Case for Palliative Care and Patient Choice and author of Caring for Patients at […]

Richard Carrier holds a doctorate in ancient history, and his research specialties include the origins of Christianity. He is the author of Sense & Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism, and he contributed chapters (“Why the Resurrection Is Unbelievable” and “Christianity Was Not Responsible for Modern Science”) to the book The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (2010). […]

Pete Wernick has a doctorate in sociology and wrote a chapter on parenting in a secular/religious marriage for the book Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion (2007). He lives in Colorado.

Edwin Curley is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has argued that the commands and permissions that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures attribute to God make it incredible that the morally perfect being of Christian theology […]

Hector Avalos is a professor of religious studies at Iowa State University and former executive director of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, a division of the Council for Secular Humanism. He specializes in biblical studies. His books include Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence; The End of Biblical Studies; and Se Puede Saber si Dios Existe? [Can […]