Author: Arthur Caplan

Americans are fooling themselves if they think they can escape disease threats in far-off lands.

There are risks, but the prospect of reducing parasitic diseases through gene-drive genetic engineering seems too good to pass up.

Advocates for fetal “personhood” gain ground in part because scientists and clinicians quail from calling out their errors of fact.

If family feelings—including religious beliefs—can mandate prolonged medical care for the dead, society suffers.

Two main ethical concerns are advanced against the legalization of physician-assisted suicide.

Can the United States ration health care? This question looms large as the nation moves to expand access to health insurance.

The newly revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychi-atric Association (APA)—DSM-5—was released this past May at the Association’s an nual meeting in San Francisco. Rarely has a new book met such a universal cacophony of critical reviews. Even before the tome had hit print, critics were falling over one another …

Ariel Sharon has been in the news over the past few months even though he has not moved a muscle, uttered a word, or showed any sign of consciousness since 2006. The fact that he is able to make headlines while in a permanent vegetative state shows both the impact the “Lion of Israel” had …

If there is any silver lining in the moronic, ignorant, and grossly offensive statements offered about rape by the failed candidates for Senate in the recently concluded election, Missouri’s Congressman Todd Akin and Indiana’s Richard Mourdock, it is that they may have finally shown both the folly and the moral dodginess inherent in efforts by …

Should your elected officials have the authority to tell you what you can eat or drink? New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is, to his credit, one of very few politicians in the United States willing to engage in any way with threats to public health. He has been very concerned about the toll obesity has …

For doctors, the old saw “Gag me with a spoon” no longer applies. Today it is “Gag me with a (a) toxic chemical, (b) gun, or (c) transvaginal ultrasound probe.” This appears to be the new ethics of medicine for doctors in America. Why are we letting state legislators, religious zealots, and big business tell …

As I write this, celebrity chef Paula Deen is being defended in some quarters against critics, including me, who have accused her of gross hypocrisy in taking on the nicely compensated role of shill for a diabetes drug. After not disclosing the fact that she had diabetes for three years while promoting foods that give …

Just before this past Thanksgiving, I spent three days inside Vatican City at a very unusual conference. The topic was stem-cell research, a subject of fierce political and moral debate because some forms of stem-cell research involve human embryos or, potentially, cloned human embryos. So what was I, a known proponent of embryonic stem-cell research, …

Thirty-four-year-old Bei Bei Shuai came to Indianapolis from China ten years ago. She opened a restaurant, met a guy, and planned to get married. But last year she found out that the man was already married and was unwilling to leave his wife for her. She was so depressed that just before Christmas, on December …

Why has there been so much hype in the ongoing debate about public funding for stem cell research in the United States? The answer is simple and can be summarized in one word: abortion. Some forms of stem cell research involving the use of embryos require embryo destruction to extract a stem cell. Others, involving …

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has announced a plan to create a new program to jump-start the development of new drugs and therapies. The new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences will have the mission of trying to bring promising basic NIH research closer to clinical trials. To make this …

The United States has been dragged kicking and screaming by the Obama administration into enacting health-reform legislation. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became law on March 23, 2010; its status looked shaky, but it was amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which became law on March 30. The …

What is going on in the drug and device industry? Hardly a month goes by without a medication or medical device being identified as having dangerous side-effects, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) holding hearings, lawyers taking out ads looking for victims, class-action suits getting filed, or patients being left to talk with their equally …

If you type “genetic testing” into a search engine and take a quick trip around the Internet, you will be in for quite a journey. You will find companies offering to test your DNA so that you can trace your genealogy back across the eons of time. Some offer to find you a mate by …

When you think of hunger strikes, two images likely come to mind. In 1980, seven Northern Irish Republican prisoners launched a hunger strike in Belfast’s Maze prison. They were protesting the revocation of their prisoner-of-war status by the British government. This initial hunger strike led to a series of others, during which Bobbie Sands became …

The Code of Ethics of the American Nursing Association contains some stirring language when it comes to you and me. Provision 2.1 of the Code, entitled “Primacy of Patient’s Interests,” states unequivocally that the nurse’s “primary commitment is to the recipient of nursing and healthcare services.” The American Medical Association and other medical groups invoke …

Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi in Brooklyn, New York, called himself a “matchmaker.” However, he was not arranging dates for his congregants. Rosenbaum is one of five rabbis indicted for brokering the sale of black-market kidneys and livers. He found poor, vulnerable people in Israel and allegedly paid them $10,000 to travel to …

How quickly the story shifted. Initially, the birth of eight children to thirty-three-year-old Nadya Suleman was greeted with gushing stories throughout the media. But the story soon went south, as it should have. For the birth of eight babies to a single woman who has six other young children under the age of eight, no …

Twelve-year-old Motl Brody was diagnosed with a highly malignant brain tumor in February of 2008. In June of last year, his parents brought the boy from their home in Brooklyn, New York, to the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. At Children’s, Motl underwent highly invasive, last-ditch brain surgery. It did not work. Motl …

The news that a team of researchers in New York (led by Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center) had genetically altered a human embryo stirred up quite an ethical controversy. Commentators have warned that this experiment is the first step toward designer babies …

When Dolly the cloned sheep’s existence was revealed to the world ten years ago, panic ensued. World leaders, including presidents Clinton and Bush, the pope, and numerous prime ministers, spent the next few months condemning Dolly’s creation and warning about the horror of human cloning. At the time, my view was that there was no …

What the government should do In the past two months I have talked with many people who have a keen interest in whether the Senate will decide to ban therapeutic cloning. At a conference at a Philadelphia hospital, a large number of people, their bodies racked with tremors from Parkinson’s disease, gathered to hear me …