Arthur Caplan Quotations

[Cloning] can't make you immortal because clearly the clone is a different person. If I take twins and shoot one of them, it will be faint consolation to the dead one that the other one is still running around, even though they are genetically identical. So the road to immortality is not through cloning.

A moral principle in genetic testing is that it should always be done with the consent of the individual. No one wants someone snooping into his DNA.

Renegade scientists and totalitarian loonies are not the folks most likely to abuse genetic engineering. You and I are-not because we are bad but because we want to do good. In a world dominated by competition, parents understandably want to give their kids every advantage. ... The most likely way for eugenics to enter into our lives is through the front door as nervous parents ... will fall over one another to be first to give Junior a better set of genes.

Bodies aren't the same as Coca-Cola cans.

The more you start prohibiting donors, the more you are going to have less blood in the supply. It's still not clear you can get it from blood transfusions.

Do good in the name of children. Do good in the name of public health.

The challenge is for bioethicists to position themselves to be on panels, boards and other decision making bodies where oublic policy positions wil be established-where the exploding changes in health care that are now underway will be addressed.

The use of fetuses as organ and tissue donors is a ticking time bomb of bioethics.

There has never been just 'coach class' health care, but with these amenities you are seeing people get priorities according to your ability to pay. It's one thing to say you get perks; it's another to say you can buy your way to the head of the line.

With terminal illness, your fate is sealed. Morally, we're more comfortable with a situation where you don't cause death, but you hasten it. We think that's a bright line. Comparing the U.S. with Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal for patients suffering 'intolerable health problems.'

People ask, 'Is the science going to run ahead of the ethics?' I don't think that's always the problem. I think it's that the science runs ahead of the politics. Bioethics can alert people to something coming down the road, but it doesn't mean policy and politicians are going to pay attention. They tend to respond when there's an immediate crisis. The job of the ethicist, in some ways, is to warn or be prophetic. You can yell loudly, but you can't necessarily get everybody to leave the cinema, so to speak.

The time to talk about it [genetic engineering to improve a baby's genes] in schools and churches and magazines and debate societies is now. If you wait, five years from now the gene doctor will be hanging out the MAKE A SMARTER BABY sign down the street.

Should we give away refrigerators? Sure. Trips? Yeah. Fur coats? Who cares. But when we turn the quest for medical care into Queen for a Day, we have gone too far -- ethically. A show that gives out good medicine as a prize is immoral.

Basically, you shouldn't be sending out anything until you have that letter in hand.

I don't think it's unethical to have a wife volunteer to have a piece of her liver given to her child or her husband. I think it's even ethical to do for friends.

I think that may have damaged some of what he tried to accomplish.

Research in the past has wound up abusing, harming or hurting people. You want to stick to these regulations as carefully as possible, because they really make sure the welfare and interests of human subjects are protected.

There's really a very small amount of research going on now, but it is increasing and will continue to grow.

Privacy drives the concern about these databases. People are fearful that information about genetics could be used against them. The very things that make a population good to study also make it tricky.

Anyone who thinks (a) there is adequate supervision of clinical trials or (b) clinical trials at Phase One are not risky ain't paying attention.

There isn't much input from the public. I think there should be.

It seems to me the number one vaccine policy question has as much to do with ethics as science.

It was really a bone thrown out to conservatives who knew exactly what he meant. What they are concerned about is embryo destruction, as if the embryo is a person.

It's hard to look back and remember how surprising and shocking that was -- that human beings can actually be made outside the body.

It's hard for me to imagine it going forward the way it is, given the complete discrediting of a purported partner.

I'm sure there is no threat to anyone's identity. But we are starting down that road.

If you exchange business ethics for medical ethics, this is the result. One prosecution for insider trading will have more deterrent effect than all the seminars, media reports and policy reforms combined.