Objectives:

Articulate the ethical questions in VCA, Describe the differences in the ethical challenges between VCA and Solid Organ Transplants and enumerate possible solutions.

Kevin Reid's Biography:

Kevin Reid, DMD, MS, MA is the Chair of the Transplant Ethics Advisory Board and the Medical Director of Clinical Ethics at Mayo Clinic Rochester. Dr. Reid is embedded in the Transplant Medicine Center where he provides ethical analyses regarding morally-challenging issues related to Transplant Medicine. Dr. Reid holds a graduate degree in Medical Ethics from the Medical College of Wisconsin. In addition to his role in Transplant Medicine Ethics, Dr. Reid diagnoses and manages chronic orofacial pain. His research focus is on ethical issues related to the diagnosis and management of chronic pain. Dr. Reid has been on staff at Mayo Clinic Rochester for 23 years. He previously served as the Chair of the Department of Dental Specialties and has held numerous other roles, both within the department and external to the department of Dental Specialties.

Arthur Leonard Caplan's Biography:

Prior to coming to NYU School of Medicine, Dr. Caplan was the Sidney D. Caplan Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, where he created the Center for Bioethics and the Department of Medical Ethics. Caplan has also taught at the University of Minnesota, where he founded the Center for Biomedical Ethics, the University of Pittsburgh, and Columbia University.  He received his PhD from Columbia University.

Dr. Caplan is the author or editor of thirty-five books and over 750 papers in peer reviewed journals. His most recent books are The Ethics of Sport, (Oxford University Press, 2016 with Brendan Parent), Vaccination Ethics and Policy, (MIT Press, 2017 with Jason Schwartz) and Getting to Good: Research Integrity in Biomedicine  Springer, 2018 with Barbara Redman).

He has served on a number of national and international committees including as the chair of the National Cancer Institute Biobanking Ethics Working Group, chair of the Advisory Committee to the United Nations on Human Cloning; chair of the Advisory Committee to the Department of Health and Human Services on Blood Safety and Availability. He has also served on the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Illnesses, the special advisory committee to the International Olympic Committee on genetics and gene therapy, the Special Advisory Panel to the National Institutes of Mental Health on Human Experimentation on Vulnerable Subjects, the Wellcome Trust Advisory Panel on Research in Humanitarian Crises, and the co-director of the Joint Council of Europe/United Nations Study on Trafficking in Organs and Body Parts.  He is the co-founder and a board member of the ge2p2 global foundation. The Foundation has a special focus on bioethical and policy issues involving clinical development of and access to medicines, especially in low resource and humanitarian contexts.

Caplan has served since 2015 as the chairperson of the Compassionate Use Advisory Committee (CompAC), an independent group of internationally recognized medical experts, bioethicists and patient representatives which advises Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals about requests for compassionate use of some of its investigational medicines.

Dr. Caplan is a regular commentator on bioethics and health care issues for WebMD/Medscape, for WGBH radio in Boston.  He appears frequently as a guest and commentator on various other national and international media outlets.

Dr. Caplan is the recipient of many awards and honors including the McGovern Medal of the American Medical Writers Association and the Franklin Award from the City of Philadelphia. He was a USA Today 2001 “Person of the Year and was described as one of the ten most influential people in science by Discover magazine in 2008.  He has also been honored as one of the fifty most influential people in American health care by Modern Health Care magazine, one of the ten most influential people in America in biotechnology by the National Journal, one of the ten most influential people in the ethics of biotechnology by the editors of Nature Biotechnology, and one of the 100 most influential people in biotechnology by Scientific American magazine. He received the Patricia Price Browne Prize in Biomedical Ethics for 2011. In 2014 he was selected to receive the Public Service Award from the National Science Foundation/National Science Board, which honors individuals and groups that have made substantial contributions to increasing public understanding of science and engineering in the United States. In 2016 the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) honored him with their Rare Impact Award. He also received the FDA/Reagen-Udall Foundation Innovation Award for 2019.

He holds seven honorary degrees from colleges and medical schools.