AI: The Next Challenge for Bioethics with Prof Arthur Caplan

Bioethics gained a foothold in Western Medicine during the 1950s and 1960s as advancing medical technologies and practices raised questions about how, when, why, and for whom they should be used among others. Health care consumers began demanding involvement in health care decisions affecting them as well. As medicine became more specialized, bioethics specialties formed in fields such as human subject research, organ transplantation, blood safety and availability, gene therapies, human cloning, and fair access to health care services. Now comes artificial intelligence (AI) and its rapid adoption into health care, including applications in clinical decisions for individual patients. 

We are joined by professor and ethicist Arthur Caplan, who has been involved in or has instigated many of the important developments in bioethics. We discuss how the bioethics field has responded to past changes in health care, and how it should respond now to AI adoption in patient care decisions. 

Links

Biosketch for our guest Professor Arthur Caplan 
Russell Teagarden’s essay on Shannon Valor’s book here at medhum.org. 

Citations and attributions

Vallor S. The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2024.

Audio clip: I, Robot [film]. Proyas A, director. Los Angeles, CA: 20th Century Fox; 2004.

Episode image: 
A patient performs a self-administered history at a cathode ray tube.
Credit: Navy Medicine, No restrictions via Wikimedia Commons
Web image generated by medhum.org.

Thanks to Professor Arthur Caplan for his insightful contributions to this episode. 

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