Bioethicist raises piercing questions at University Faculty Forum

Arthur Caplan, bioethicist and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania

2:56 p.m., Sept. 22, 2003--Should humans clone their pets, sell their organs, use the latest advances in neuroscience to improve their intelligence and behavior? Should parents, if they have the money and ambition, map and chart the brains of their children? And, what about livestock, crops and the precarious balance of global agriculture? Should farm animals and plants be supermanufactured in clone-farms if the process resulted in an end to malnutrition?

According to Arthur Caplan, bioethicist and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, the answer is, “No. Absolutely not.” But then again, what if doing so ushered in an age free from organ shortages, criminal behavior and world hunger? What if doing so produced not only sure and relatively inexpensive results, but also global balance and freedom from suffering?

In his speech to the University Faculty Forum on Wednesday, Sept. 17, Caplan raised all these questions and more in a lecture that ranged from the ethics of cloning to the ethics of organ donorship to the ethical conundrums presented by the latest advances in the wide-open (and highly exploitable) field of neuroscience.

Posing a series of provocative what-if scenarios to his audience of approximately 150 UD faculty, staff and students, Caplan raised tough ethical questions and explored the possibilities that might result from mining scientific advances in a day and age when altruism, religion and basic human scruples often take a backseat to economics and opportunity.

“Do no harm is the core medical principle,” Caplan said, setting the stage for his exploration on the topic of organ donorship. “And, there is no question that losing a vital part of yourself is harmful. Yet, despite the aggressive drive for organ donorship, more organs came from living donors last year than from cadavers. This raises a number of public policy questions.”

Some of those questions, Caplan said, involved minor ethical dilemmas, such as medical liability issues and the problems presented by informing donors and patients of their risks. But the biggest questions of all, he said, were raised by the overwhelming organ donor shortage itself.

Sticking to his explorative tone, Caplan elaborated. Should people be coerced or bribed into giving up their organs upon death? he asked. Should animals be plundered for exchangeable parts? Should the market be opened for the sale of organs?

Well, perhaps. But every solution comes with its own set of problems, Caplan cautioned, and every shift impinges something else.

Branching his discussion into pet cloning, brain research and the host of accompanying ethical quandaries each scientific alteration brings, Caplan continued probing for answers throughout his hour-long lecture.

“The questions raised by bioethics are cross-cutting,” he concluded. “Public policy issues have to intersect with education and communication and follow-up procedures with doctors, patients and the general public. Bioethics is a relatively new field, but the issues that it explores are exploding on us very quickly. There are a lot of ethical concerns out there that need more attention than they’re getting.”

Caplan closed his lecture with a question-and-answer session in which he fielded a variety of questions from both faculty and staff.

The lecture, which was part of the 2003-04 University Faculty Forum series sponsored by the Office of the Provost, was held in the Rodney Room of the Perkins Student Center. The next lecture in the series is planned for noon, Tuesday, Oct. 28, and will feature guest speaker James G. Neal, vice president for information services and university librarian at Columbia University. For more information, call 831-2102.

Article by Becca Hutchinson
Photo by Duane Perry

E-mail this article

To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]