Product Development
Caplan sees a host of bioethical turning points coming out of the pandemic
Bioethicist Arthur Caplan on how the post-pandemic world will see changes from patient consent to DSMBs to data dissemination
Bioethicist Arthur Caplan on how the post-pandemic world will see changes from patient consent to DSMBs to scientific publishing.
The reckoning that will come after the pandemic will see broad if not tectonic shifts in drug development, from clinical trial conduct to scientific publishing, according to bioethicist Arthur Caplan. The botched rollout of vaccines has lessons too.
In an interview with BioCentury, Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at New York University School of Medicine, said the lagging distribution of vaccines in the U.S. and the U.K., in contrast to the much-lauded program in Israel, demonstrates the value of an integrated healthcare system and the importance of coupling that with a coordinated government strategy.
As of Jan. 6, Israel had administered 18.4 doses per 100 people in the population, compared with 1.79 for the U.S. and 1.91 for the U.K., according to data from the University of Oxford.
The poor rollouts have brought to the fore discussions about deviating from the authorized regimen to stretch supplies and immunize more people. Caplan disagrees with FDA’s stance to resist this, and argues desperate times call for desperate measures.
“When people insist on the same standards of evidence in the middle of a plague as they would running a clinical trial for psoriasis, I think it's a mistake.”
He also thinks that the process
