Faculty Bibliography

News item: This week, Yum Brands Inc. will ban smoking in its KFC and Pizza Hut restaurants. No-smoking signs will be posted at all 1,200 KFC and 1,675 Pizza Hut restaurants owned by Yum. The 8,800 outlets owned by franchisees will make that call for themselves

Caplan discusses how it is possible that science finds itself stuck in the middle of the Intelligent Design debate in twenty-first century America. He finds it important to debate Intelligent Design for the sake of educating Americans about the nature of science and scientific discourse

Caplan reviews The Truth about the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What To Do about It by Marcia Angell; On the Take: How Medicine's Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health by Jerome P. Kassirer; and Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs by Jerry Avorn

Now the airwaves and blogs are bursting with debates about whether [Rafael Palmeiro] has succeeded in lying his way right out of Cooperstown. There is, however, a much bigger and more fundamental ethical question raised by the Palmeiro implosion and the steroid scandal that continues to haunt major league baseball

People who don't tell the truth are very good at lying to your face. Anyone who has watched the truth-shaving of such well-known confabulators as Ken Lay, Bill Clinton, Bernard Ebbers and Charles Keating knows what I mean. Baltimore Oriole slugger Rafael Palmeiro apparently has joined the ranks of those who will be remembered as being good at delivering the big lie

A tearful memorial service was held Tuesday in Mountain View, Calif., for Thomas Herrion, 23, an offensive lineman for the San Francisco 49ers football team. The service drew more than 500 people, including the commissioner of the National Football League, Paul Tagliabue, and many other NFL officials and coaches. Their grief for the loss of this young athlete was sincere. But the NFL does not seem to have gotten one message it needs to learn from Herrion's death: Players in the NFL have gotten too fat

[...]he asserts vociferously and creatively in this book that it is by seeking to adopt a human-rights framework that bioethics can secure justice -- both for those whose needs for basic health care are unmet and for those for whom hard choices must be made about when and how to use expensive medical technologies

Whether the number of organs available for transplant would be positively or negatively affected by providing benefits to families of organ donors has been debated by policymakers, ethicists and the transplant community at large. We designed a telephone survey to measure public opinion regarding the use of benefits in general and of five types in particular: funeral benefits, charitable contributions, travel/lodging expenses, direct payments and medical expenses. Of the 971 adults who completed the survey (response rate = 69%), all were from Pennsylvania households, 45.6% were registered organ donors, and 51.7% were nonwhite. Although 59% of respondents favored the general idea of incentives, support for specific incentives ranged from 53% (direct payment) to 84% (medical expenses). Among those registered as donors, more nonwhites than whites supported funeral benefits (88% vs. 81%; p = 0.038), direct payment (63% vs. 41%; p < 0.001) and medical expenses (92% vs. 84%; p = 0.013). Among those not registered as donors, more nonwhites supported direct payment (64% vs. 46%; p = 0.001). Most respondents believed that benefits would not influence their own behavior concerning donation but would influence the behavior of others. While benefits appear to be favored, their true impact can only be assessed through pilot programs.