Our work on nonhuman personhood was cited yesterday in the New York Times Dot Earth blog, which led to snark from the Right, and lots of signups and likes on our Facebook page.

While the bioconservative site BioEdge merely notes “...‘Personhood Beyond the Human’ is sponsored the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, a think tank for enhancement…”, biocon bombast-blower Wesley J. Smith writes in the National Review that

The animal rights, mainstream bioethics, and the transhumanist movements each want to destroy society’s belief in the unique value of human life: Animal rightists in order to create moral equality between us and fauna; transhumanists because they are a eugenics movement and believe they have to knock humans off the pedestal of exceptionalism as a predicate to engaging in biological recreationism; and mainstream bioethics would make membership in the human species morally irrelevant to allow the utilitarian exploitation of some of us as a natural resource (among other reasons).  These allies are coming together in a big conference at Yale in December…