Over the past week, there has been a lot of news coverage regarding the case of Rom Houben, a man in Belgium who was labeled as being in a persistent vegetative state. He was severely injured in an auto accident in 1983, and since shortly after that has been regarded as being in a persistent … Continue reading Art Caplan “Debunks” 23-year Misdiagnosis of PVS in Belgium, But Omits Some Details
On Monday, June 8, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an op-ed by bioethicist Art Caplan. Expressing his concern over the news that Al Pacino plans to play Jack Kevorkian in a movie for HBO, Caplan thought it was time to do some preemptive truth-telling about Jack Kevorkian. His commentary is titled “The truth: Kevorkian was less … Continue reading Phil. Inquirer: Art Caplan Delivers Some Truth About Kevorkian, But Misses (or Evades) His Real Impact on Assisted Suicide Movement
Turns out the story ABC was doing on Warnock did run – and included part of Art Caplan’s remarks: When Dr. Jonathan Groner, a surgeon and ethicist at Ohio State University, heard of a suggestion by a well-known British philosopher that those with dementia have a “duty to die” in order to minimize the burden … Continue reading Followup on Caplan, Warnock and ABC
Art Caplan, Director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, dropped me a line to give me his reaction to Warnock’s comments about people with dementia. He gave these to a reporter at ABC but says they weren’t used in whatever coverage they ended up giving to Warnock: No one has a duty to … Continue reading Followup on Warnock – Art Caplan Strongly Disagrees With “Duty to Die”
(Note – I’ve made slight edits from yesterday’s original version of this entry to eliminate some ambiguity in places. Hopefully, these minor edits fix that ambiguity.) During the last week of July, the news broke that a grand jury refused to indict Dr. Anna Pou on charges related to the deaths of four patients in … Continue reading Did Katrina Prosecutor Mean to Lose All Along?
