Arthur Caplan Quotes

It took 23 years from Abraxane being conceived to us showing now with conclusiveness that it works in pancreatic cancer. We cannot afford as a society to wait another 23 years to make sure that the patients get the right care, at the right time, at the right place.

If we can validate our scientific bets in the clinic, if we can bring valuable new treatments to patients that need them, that will be our ultimate measure of success.

Modern medical advances have helped millions of people live longer, healthier lives. We owe these improvements to decades of investment in medical research.

I do not believe that Congress or the Administration should prohibit the medical community from pursuing a promising avenue of research that may improve the lives of millions of Americans.

If you put me in charge of the medical research budget, I would cancel all primary research, I would cancel all new trials, for just one year, and I would spend the money exclusively on making sure that we make the best possible use of the clinical evidence that we already have.

Huge sums are invested globally in medical research and development - and with good reason.

New drugs and surgical techniques offer promise in the fight against cancer, Alzheimer's, tuberculosis, AIDS, and a host of other life-threatening diseases. Animal research has been, and continues to be, fundamental to advancements in medicine.

I have an obligation to use what I know to try to bring real, usable medical science to every doctor and bedside and patient.

In 2003, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and a year later, a national ethics committee in France, said that face transplantation would be going too far. The risk of complication would far outweigh the benefits.

The problem we are trying to solve is that of drugs that would have never seen the light of day for reasons that have nothing to do with the inherent properties of drug candidates themselves and more to do with bureaucratic institutions within which they often sit.

Drug companies are a bit like high school boyfriends - they're much more concerned with getting inside you than being effective once they're in there.

What we should care about is health - reduction of morbidity and mortality. Too often, we instead pay attention to whether something is 'normal.' A hospital may spend several million dollars separating a pair of conjoined twins, even though that separation is likely to leave them worse off.

How do you deliver the best possible and affordable health care to maximize health?

There's always going to be the need for new medications, better medications.

I agree, the world would be a better place if doctors were less enthusiastic about adopting very new drugs.

I don't believe medical discoveries are doing much to advance human life. As fast as we create ways to extend it we are inventing ways to shorten it.

Over the years, HIV/AIDS activists and their allies have been pioneers in creating new frontiers in the medical establishment. Through their efforts, the FDA drug approval procedures were reformed so promising new therapies could reach desperate patients quicker.

Now, what tends to happen is that the stories get hyped. And the medicines are not quite as revolutionary and as dramatic as they seem to be. But, certainly, various phases of this problem are being attacked by the pharmaceutical companies.

I think that in the 21st century, medical biology will advance at a more rapid pace than before.

Advances in science and medical research and public health policies have meant that life expectancy for Australians is one of the highest in the world.

Analytical pharmacology has got an important and exciting future.

Drug discovery is terribly expensive, just to find out how one drug could or could not work and all its side effects.

I think modern societies have to ask a very basic question: What strategies buy the most health for people? Doctors can do so many marvelous things now. They can keep a corpse alive, almost.

We must always remember that all medical interventions have risk, and very little can be asserted with 100 percent certainty.

The United States has an active pharmaceutical industry that has brought huge benefits to the U.S. public. Most Americans, who benefit from these advances, have little understanding of how difficult it is to create an important new medical therapy and make it available to improve public health.