Arthur Caplan
Chair, Department of Medical Ethics, University of Pennsylvania
Posts by Arthur Caplan
- From Bioethics Briefings
Organ Transplantation
Read the PostFrom Bioethics BriefingsFraming the Issue Every day about 22 people in the United States die waiting for organ transplants. The deaths are especially tragic since many might be prevented if more organs were available. Every day very hard choices have to be made about who will live and who will die. With more than 100,000 pe...Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Research Ethics Meets the New Marketplace
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The Great Leap Backward
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayThe government and many residents of the state of Texas like to brag about their love of personal freedom and individual choice. That is why it is so strange and morally repugnant that the state has turned for guidance on how to manage reproductive decisions to the Chinese Communist Party of the Mao Zedong era.Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
How to Make It Right: Covid Reparations
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Why We Need a Covid-19 Commission
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayCongress recently announced plans for an independent commission to investigate the facts and causes of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. This 1/6 Commission is to be modelled after the 9/11 Commission. A national commission to investigate the disaster that the Covid-19 virus has caused in America must also be launched.Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Should Covid Vaccination Schedules Deviate from the Status Quo–as a Last Resort?
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayLast month, with concerns over the supply and coordinated administration of coronavirus vaccines escalating, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conceded that “any available mRNA COVID-19 vaccine” may be used to complete vaccination in “exceptional situations” preventing multi-dose manufacturer matching. While presented solely as a last resort, this guidance reflects a dilemma currently sweeping across the medical and health policy worlds: given limited supply, should vaccination efforts—still only authorized for emergency use in this country—deviate from evidence-driven, studied regimens to maximize individuals reached?Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Ashamed to Be Vaccinated? The Ethics of Health Care Employees Forgoing Unfair Priority
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssaySuppose you are young, healthy, employed in a health care system and that your line of work does not require leaving the low-risk comfort of your home. Now suppose that your employer offers you a vaccine. You know there are others in your community who are at greater risk of contracting and dying from Covid-19 than you. Should you accept the dose?Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Coronavirus Mutation Panic
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayThe headlines are terrifying: A highly contagious new variant of the coronavirus is circulating in England. As the story spread, politicians and media outlets reported a devastating statistic: the new strain is 70% more transmissible than other strains of the virus. This has led to new lockdowns; many border closures; flight cancellations; and people fleeing the U.K. by train, boat, and plane. But is any of this necessary? Is the world suffering from mutation panic?Read the Post - Bioethics Forum Essay
Fair Compensation for Rare Vaccine Harms
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Accepting the Challenge: Covid Vaccine Challenge Trials Can Be Ethically Justified
Read the PostBioethics Forum EssayThe Covid-19 pandemic is unlikely to end until there is a safe, effective, and widely distributed vaccine. How soon can researchers achieve this goal? The answer largely depends on which strategies researchers are willing to adopt. One potential strategy is to conduct human challenge studies, in which researchers give an experimental vaccine to healthy volunteers and then test—or “challenge”—the vaccine by purposely exposing volunteers to the virus. Although a growing number of voices are calling on researchers to employ this strategy, the proposal is generating a heated debate about the ethics of such research.Read the Post
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