Professor Arthur L. Caplan

Arthur L. Caplan, Ph.D., FAAAS is the Emanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics, Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and the Director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
 
Art is the author or editor of twenty-five books and over 500 papers in refereed journals of medicine, science, philosophy, bioethics, and health policy. His most recent book is Smart Mice Not So Smart People: An Interesting and Amusing Guide to Bioethics.
 
Art authored Am I My Brother’s Keeper?: The Ethical Frontiers of Biomedicine and If I Were a Rich Man Could I Buy a Pancreas?: And Other Essays on the Ethics of Health Care, edited When Medicine Went Mad: Bioethics and the Holocaust, and coedited Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology, Who Owns Life?, The American Medical Ethics Revolution: How the AMA’s Code of Ethics Has Transformed Physicians’ Relationships to Patients, Professionals, and Society, Assisted Suicide: Finding Common Ground, and Compelled Compassion: Government Intervention in the Treatment of Critically Ill Newborns.
 
He authored the papers Neutrality Is Not Morality: The Ethics of Genetic Counseling, Organ Transplants: The Cost of Success, and Odds and Ends: Trust and the Debate over Medical Futility, and coauthored the papers Public Policy Governing Organ and Tissue Procurement in the United States: Results from the National Organ and Tissue Procurement Study, Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients, The Ethical Validity of Using Nuclear Transfer in Human Transplantation, Ethical Considerations in Synthesizing a Minimal Genome, Special Supplement: Ethical and Policy Issues in Rehabilitation Medicine, Bioethics Consultation in the Private Sector, and Attack of the Anti-Cloners.
 
Art has served on a number of national and international committees including as the Chair National Cancer Institute Biobanking Ethics Working Group, the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the United Nations on Human Cloning, the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Department of Health and Human Services on Blood Safety and Availability. He also served as a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Illnesses, the special advisory committee to the International Olympic Committee on genetics and gene therapy, the ethics committee of the American Society of Gene Therapy, and the special advisory panel to the National Institutes of Mental Health on human experimentation on vulnerable subjects.
 
He has consulted with many corporations, not for profit organizations and consumer organizations. He is a member of the board of directors of The Keystone Center, Tengion, the National Center for Policy Research on Women and Families, Octagon, Iron Disorders Foundation, and the National Disease Research Interchange.
 
Art writes a regular column on bioethics for MSNBC.com. He is a frequent guest and commentator on various media outlets.
 
He is the recipient of many awards and honors including the McGovern Medal of the American Medical Writers Association, Person of the Year 2001 from USA Today, one of the fifty most influential people in American health care by Modern Health Care magazine, one of the ten most influential people in America in biotechnology by the National Journal and one of the ten most influential people in the ethics of biotechnology over the past ten years by the editors of the journal Nature Biotechnology. He holds seven honorary degrees from colleges and medical schools. He is a fellow of the Hastings Center, the NY Academy of Medicine, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
 
Art earned his B.A. at Brandeis University in 1971 and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science at Columbia University in 1979.
 
Watch an Interview with Arthur L. Caplan and Arthur Caplan – The Future of Naturalism Interview. Watch the Charlie Rose Human Genome Special and the Charlie Rose Cloning Human Embryos Special. Read Organ Donation via Internet Raises Ethical Concerns: An Expert Interview With Arthur L. Caplan, PhD and Human Embryo Disposal Raises Ethical Issues: A Newsmaker Interview With Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, and Andrea Gurmankin, PhD, MBe.