Dr. Arthur Caplan
Co-Sponsorship
Dr. Arthur Caplan is Director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania where he is Trustee Professor and Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Engineering and Philosophy. Prior to coming to the University of Pennsylvania, he had been the Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Minnesota, and the Associate Director of the Hastings Center.
Recognized internationally as an expert on medical ethics, Dr. Caplan has enormous publications, including nineteen books and more than 350 articles and reviews in professional journals. His most recent book is Moral Matters: Ethical Issues in Medicine and the Life Sciences (1995).
Dr. Caplan was a consultant for The President Health Care Task Force, Office of Technology Assessment of the United States Congress, and National Institutes of Health. He is now on the Presidents Commission on Gulf War Illnesses. He is a frequent commentator in the media including National Public Radio, Nightline, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Time Magazine.
There is a widespread belief that the field of assisted reproduction is one of the most tightly regulated, closely monitored areas in all of health care. Many inside and outside the field think the moral and legal climate governing the making of babies using artificial means in America is appropriate. They are wrong.
Since the birth of Louise Brown in 1978, the field of assisted reproduction has been stumbling along in the United States with relatively little internal oversight, token external regulation and an ostrich-like posture toward growing societal unease about the the intersection of technology and the making of babies. As a result the field has seen many instances of dubious and illegal conduct including most recently the scandal involving stolen embryos at the University of California-Irvine. If steps are not
taken to insure more public accountability on the part of those who engage in assisted reproduction, there is a very grave danger of a ferocious societal backlash against those eager to apply technology and scientific knowledge to the creation of human life. That would be tragic. Those who are infertile, whose lives are at risk should they become pregnant and those who might transmit grave genetic disorders to their children stand to gain much from further advance in the area of reproductive technology. Can reproductive technology be kept on a moral leash of sufficient strength to insure that the rights, dignity and interests of those who use it or who are created by it are protected?
As more and more is learned about the role of personal behavior and lifestyle in maintaining health questions begin to arise about the extent to which bad habits should be taken into account in rationing access to scare medical resources. When individuals such as Mickey Mantle, Larry Hagman or David Crosby secure access to liver transplants after years of alchohol or drug abuse concerns are voiced about the wisdom and fairness of our health care system. Similarly when an accused murderer can receive a heart transplant at public expense or an death row inmate have access by right to better care than the average American questions are raised about the role sin and personal character should play in making decisions at the bedside and in forming national and state health policy. Recent disputes in the allocation of transplants nicely illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of trying to use sin as a criterion by which to allocate medical resources.
Amgen, the world's largest biotechnology company located in Thousand Osks, California, joined the California Lutheran University as a co-sponsor of the 1995 and 1996 Harold Stoner Clark Lectures, and provided a grant to support the lecture series in these two years.
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The Harold Stoner Clark Lectures /1996 /chenxi@robles.callutheran.edu
