Medical Ethics

Arthur Caplan, one of the nation's best-known medical ethicists, is leaving the University of Pennsylvania for work with New York University's Langone Medical Center. Caplan, who has worked at the University of Pennsylvania school of medicine since 1994, start works July 1 at Langone, the New York school said in a statement. He will serve as director of the new Division of Medical Ethics in the Department of Population Health. Until January this year, Caplan was the director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics.

There's a genetic testing revolution underway at your local hospital. And it's causing doctors and medical students to confront some very thorny issues. "Personalized medicine" uses genetic information derived from tests to predict a patient's chances of coming down with diseases and offers ways of tailoring some cures. Could testing on a fetus show that the person has the potential to be autistic? Gay? If so, what will parents do with the information? A product of a $30 billion effort to sequence the human genome, the tests until recently have been limited to those wealthy enough to pay up to $10,000.

Bioethics expert George Annas has spoken at hospitals and universities nationwide about medical bias, AIDS, and the right to die. But it was a lecture touching on human rights and Guantanamo Bay that landed him in the center of a debate that some say threatens free speech at Philadelphia's VA Hospital. After Annas' speech, given Sept. 28 to more than 100 people at the Veterans Administration hospital, the Department of Veterans Affairs received a single, unsigned letter of complaint questioning whether federal agencies should sponsor speakers who oppose current administration policies.

Lower Moreland police officers, firefighters and ambulance service personnel will be honored during the second annual Recognition Night Service set for 6:30 p.m. Feb. 12 at Memorial Baptist Church, 2680 Huntingdon Pike in Huntingdon Valley. Participating in the interfaith service will be clergy from churches and synagogues in Huntingdon Valley. Special commendations will be awarded to retiring Police Officers Joseph Dixey for 27 years' service and Donald Hessing for 30 years' service.

Arthur Caplan is chairman of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Yo. Whassup? Has youse heard dat Geno's Steaks in Sout Philly got a sign up dat sez you gotta order in English to get a steak? Dat's right - if youse ain't sayin "wit wiz" or "widout," den you ain't no Merican and shunt get a cheesesteak, much less a hoagie. Well, dat sign shd stay. Dey din take down the sign at Chink's Steaks, an dey shun take diss one down needa.

The first of four interfaith adult education classes on ethics will be held at 8 p.m. Monday at St. John Chrysostom School Auditorium, 615 S. Providence Rd., Wallingford. Eleanor Myers, professor at Temple University Law School, will speak on "Ethics as Rules of Conduct Recognized in the Fields of Business, Medicine and Law. " The classes are co-sponsored by Congregation Ohev Shalom and Swarthmore Presbyterian Church. Subsequent sessions will be held at 8 p.m. at the following locations: Feb. 10, Ohev Shalom, 2 Chester Rd., Wallingford.

A citizens' committee on medical ethics joined yesterday a growing chorus of voices criticizing the state ombudsman for the elderly and his review of all decisions to discontinue life support for dying nursing-home patients. The group's chairwoman, Mary Strong, said the review is unnecessary and delays such decisions. "That causes a great deal of anguish on the families," she said. "The nursing homes can do nothing for fear of the ombudsman. " She said that the review, ordered by Hector Rodriguez, the ombudsman for the institutionalized elderly, also contradicts the findings of an extensive survey released in the summer by her group, the Citizens' Committee on Biomedical Ethics.

New state guidelines that were intended to stop interference by the government in the decisions of nursing-home patients to die with dignity actually do just the opposite and should be scrapped, a blue-ribbon medical- ethics panel said yesterday. During a regular meeting of the New Jersey Bioethics Commission, members sharply criticized guidelines for living wills proposed last week by Health Commissioner Molly Joel Coye. One commission member said the proposal "defies any common sense.

Joseph Hassman, the Cherry Hill physician whose medical license was revoked after he tearfully pleaded guilty to the mercy killing last year of his terminally ill mother-in-law, has returned to work. At a sparsely attended and unpublicized hearing Oct. 14, the state Board of Medical Examiners unanimously reinstated Hassman's license after deciding that he had "demonstrated his rehabilitation," a board spokesman said yesterday. Hassman, a former member of the Cherry Hill Township Council, had admitted administering a lethal dose of drugs to his mother-in-law, Esther Davis, 80, as she lay in bed at the Linwood Convalescent Center in April 1986.

By Arthur Caplan and David Magnus The headlines were frightening. Parents had not been properly informed that doctors were putting their extremely premature infants at risk in a study of oxygen treatment. The lead government agency providing oversight to biomedical research said the informed-consent forms did not tell the parents about "reasonably foreseeable risks," which included blindness and death. This would be a horrific violation of research ethics if it were true.