As changes in modern science challenge the definitions of parent and child, health and disease, even life and death, society faces the problem of encountering new biomedical technologies with old ethical assumptions. For Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania and a watchdog of the social consequences of change, the future and its opportunities must not supplant the human touch.
His latest book, Am I My Brother's Keeper?, examines advances in biomedical technology, from fetal-tissue research to gene therapy, and the ways in which the speed of these advances may be surpassing our ethical underpinnings, our ability to deal with individuals as individuals.
The world according to Caplan is increasingly complex, a place in which every advance in biomedicine - in vitro fertilization, surrogate mothering, artificial insemination - has brought its own ethical dilemma. Caplan comes down squarely on the side of the individual, championing the primacy of the human element in health-care science. He decries what he sees as the adversarial relationship evolving between doctors and patients.
Caplan imparts a passion for his subject despite a dry, sometimes relentlessly academic style (and a decidedly gender-specific title). Sometimes his passion generates contradictions. His fiery condemnation of eugenics as performed by the government becomes an endorsement of eugenics when practiced by individuals, yet his distinctions between the two are imprecise. But mostly this book is thought-provoking, bringing a scientist's reason and a moralist's outrage to bear on a subject that's largely escaped attention.
##### Am I My Brother's Keeper?: The Ethical Frontiers of Biomedicine, by Arthur L. Caplan: US$24.95. Indiana University Press: (800) 842 6796, on the Web at www.indiana.edu/~iupress/.
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