Category: Arthur Caplan

Bioethicist Art Caplan: Chinese Scientists Try To Alter Genomes In Human Embryos

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A new piece by contributor Art Caplan in Forbes:

Bet you did not know that today is National DNA Day. It is. But before we all begin to party over our biological programming, remember this is also the day when the world is trying to figure out how to respond to a paper from a team of scientists in China stating that they tried to alter the genomes of human embryos using a new technique known as CRISPR.

Without getting bogged down in the details, CRISPR it is a new powerful tool that permits editing or clipping out segments of DNA and inserting novel genetic material. The Chinese group used it for the first time in human embryos, thereby taking a baby step across the line to trying out a technology that someday could be used to change the DNA of our descendants to repair genetic diseases, get rid of traits we don’t like or to try and build better, improved babies. Yes, that is the low moan of eugenics you hear in the background of this CRISPR experiment. Happy National DNA Day to you, too. […]

Read the full article here.

Bioethicists Art Caplan & Tom Mayo: Lawmakers have no business legislating end-of-life decisions

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A new piece by contributor Art Caplan along with Tom Mayo in The Dallas Morning News:

This week, the Texas Legislature considered restoring to pregnant women a right every other adult Texan already enjoys: the right to make health-care treatment decisions in an advance directive or through the next-of-kin who speaks for them.

House Bill 3183 would eliminate all vestiges of the “pregnancy exclusion” from Texas’ Advance Directives Act. If it passes, the bill would remove the basis on which a Fort Worth hospital in 2013 kept brain-dead and pregnant Marlise Muñoz on life support for two months. This was done despite her husband’s insistence that his wife would not want to be hooked up to machines under those circumstances.

Eventually, a trial court agreed with her husband and declared that the pregnancy exclusion and the entire Advance Directives Act did not apply to a patient once she had died. That was only after Marlise Muñoz’s family had to endure the unimaginable pain of watching her corpse deteriorate before their eyes. Little wonder that they support “Marlise’s Law” and were in Austin to testify in support of the bill. […]

Read the full article here.

Bioethicist Art Caplan: Actress Sofia Vergara Can’t Destroy Her Embryos

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A new piece by contributor Art Caplan on NBC News:

Nick Loeb and Sofia Vergara once were a huge item. Today, they are back in the tabloid press because of a dispute over frozen, human embryos.

The 42-year-old actress and star of “Modern Family,” one of the top-earning women in Hollywood, announced her engagement to the wealthy, 40-year old businessman in 2012. Last May, Vergara announced they had split amid a host of abuse allegations.

Their squabble now has grown to include Loeb suing Vergara in California to prevent her from destroying two frozen female embryos, which court documents say they created using in vitro fertilization in November 2013. […]

Read the full article here.

Bioethicist Art Caplan: German Mom Expecting Quads at 65 is ‘Irresponsible’

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A new piece by contributor Art Caplan on NBC News:

Berlin school teacher Annegret Raunigk is proudly prolific and, at age 65, not done making babies — pregnant with quadruplets that would enlarge her family from 13 to 17 children. Why?

Raunigk said she became pregnant again because her 9-year-old daughter asked for a younger sibling. (Her first 12 children — by five men — are ages 22 to 44). She told German tabloid Bild that donated eggs were fertilized and implanted at a clinic in Ukraine. Multiple attempts were required to get the eggs to fertilize. She did not say whose sperm was used or if the egg donor was paid.

Some media outlets have trotted out the usual fluffy descriptions of “miracle” and “gift” while trying to figure out if she is the oldest woman ever to have a child (she isn’t) or to have quadruplets (almost certainly she is). But this line of reporting completely misses the mark.

What she is doing is unethical. […]

Read the full article here.

Bioethicist Art Caplan: Ten years after Terri Schiavo, death debates still divide us

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A new piece by contributor Art Caplan on Today Health:

Terri Schiavo died 10 years ago today — not long after her feeding tube was removed by order of a Florida judge acting at the request of Schiavo’s husband that his wife be allowed to die.

She was 41 and had spent nearly half her life in a vegetative state after suffering a cardiac arrest in 1990, causing a severe lack of oxygen and brain damage. The highly publicized legal case surrounding her husband’s plea not to keep her artificially alive roused debates across the world and at the U.S. Supreme Court.

What is Schiavo’s legacy? What have we since learned about brain function, vegetative states, and how we should talk about death — long before we’re gone?

Continue reading here.

Bioethicist Art Caplan: Pilots Need Mental Health Screening — And Doctors Do, Too

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A new piece by contributor Art Caplan on Forbes:

The entirely predictable media obsession with the tragedy of the Germanwings jetliner that crashed into the French Alps on March 25 is moving forward full force. The media, especially cable television, love airline disasters. Once German prosecutors revealed that Andreas Lubitz, the pilot at the controls of the Germanwings jetliner when it crashed, had a mental illness but had kept the diagnosis hidden from his employer, all media hell broke loose.

One of the key questions raised by the spectre of mental illness was whether the pilot’s doctors tried to establish Lubitz’s mental fitness to fly and if they were concerned should they have revealed their worries to his employer. Despite a whole lot of talking heads jawing on these points few had anything useful to say since almost none of the experts consulted seemed familiar with the accuracy of mental health screening, or with the nature of German requirements for health screenings for crews or mechanics, or with German privacy law. When the discussion shifted to what about America, things still stayed fuzzy. […]

Continue reading here.

Bioethicist Art Caplan: Why a New Alzheimer’s Drug Isn’t A No-Brainer

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A new piece by contributor Art Caplan on NBC News:

Biogen, a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech company, announced last week that early tests of their new drug aducanumab, a monoclonal antibody, had shown impressive results in treating those with early stage Alzheimer’s disease. The drug significantly reduced the amyloid plaque buildup in the brain that is associated with Alzheimer’s.

In a very early stage safety test aducanumab slowed the cognitive decline and dementia associated with Alzheimer’s in people. On the Mini Mental Status Exam, a widely used measure of cognitive function, people at risk of Alzheimer’s who got a placebo lost around 3 points over a year. But those who got the lowest dose of aducanumab worsened by just two points and those who got a higher dose lost less than a point.

Biogen was so excited by the early results in 166 volunteers that it is going to try to go directly to a much bigger clinical trial of the drug. Wall Street was very excited too—Biogen’s stock price shot up 10 percent. […]

See the full article here.

Bioethicist Art Caplan: UK Man, His Surrogate Mom and Their Baby Are Family

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A new piece by contributor Art Caplan on NBC News:

A British high court has permitted Kyle Casson, a single man, to adopt an eight-month-old boy who was carried and delivered by a surrogate — Casson’s own mother.

To diagram this family tree, Casson, 27, technically adopted not his son but his brother because the woman who carried the baby to term is, legally, the mother. That also means that Casson’s mom gave birth, technically, to a son and a grandson at the same time.

Biologically, the child is her grandson.

The ruling traverses an array of ethical twists and turns. Let’s start with the more common fault lines. […]

Read the full article here.

Bioethicist Art Caplan: Why Are Guns a Taboo Topic on Campaign Trail?

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A new piece by contributor Art Caplan on NBC News:

Guns are a medical issue — no matter how often the NRA denies it. Eight national health groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, just released a joint statement echoing that sentiment.

But among the barrage of media questions leveled at politicians on the presidential campaign trail, no one is asking the contenders about firearms. The topic appears to be strangely and entirely off limits.

Everything else seems to be fair game: Do you think President Obama loves this country? What do you think about vaccines? Do you believe in evolution? Did you embellish anything on your resume? Do embryos have rights? Are you too old, fat, short, ill-tempered, religious, atheistic, feminist, or in the pocket of your donors to make a good President? […]

Continue reading here.

Naturopaths — Not What The Doctor Ordered For Vaccine Exemptions

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A new piece by contributor Art Caplan in Forbes:

There are lots of reasons why measles, having gone to Disneyland, is enjoying a comeback around the United States and Canada. Unfounded fears of autism scare some parents. Others buy the daffy conspiracy theory that pharmaceutical companies are just pushing vaccination to make a buck. Some parents invoke religious concerns despite that fact that hardly any religions think vaccination is bad and most teach that it is an obligation in order to protect children and the vulnerable in the community.

One key reason behind falling vaccination rates is that if you believe any of the above untruths it is very easy to get an exemption. Most states let you out on religious or philosophical grounds. Every state excuses you or your kids for health reasons. So you might presume those ducking vaccines get approval to dodge vaccination from physicians. Uh uh. In 17 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico naturopaths, healers who believe in a mishmash of nutritional medicine, botanical medicine, naturopathic physical medicine including chiropractic manipulative therapy, rolfing, iridology, and homeopathy among other New Agey philosophies can get licenses in their state. There are thousands practicing in the United States. Put aside the issue of why states are recognizing these ‘healers’ who rely on an evidence base only a few steps above astrology and palm-reading. The fact is in many states a naturopath can excuse a child from vaccination. And since many naturopaths take a pretty dim view of vaccination they give a lot of exemptions. […]

Read the full article here.