Professor Capron to head new global bioethics initiative

The World Health Organization has appointed Alexander M. Capron, a professor of law and medicine at the University of Southern California, to head its new Ethics and Health Initiative, which will address bioethics in health care and research worldwide. As WHO's first director of ethics, Capron will lead the global health agency's most significant activities in the field of bioethics to date.

"This newly established unit is the first to address the ethical issues in health policy and biomedical science from the global perspective of WHO," says Capron, University Professor and the Henry W. Bruce Professor of Equity at USC Law and co-director of the university's Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics. "In the past decade, ethical issues in health care around the world have become crucially important as much more research is being conducted by pharmaceutical companies as well as with government sponsorship. It has become obvious that any organization that deals with global issues in health care cannot avoid addressing the ethical concerns."

Capron will report directly to WHO Director General Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland and will be based out of WHO headquarters in Geneva. Working with WHO regional offices, he will assist member countries in developing their own bioethics standards and procedures, especially in improving their capacity to oversee the increasing amount of research with human subjects. He also will oversee the creation of a group of WHO Collaborating Centers on Ethics. These centers, to be located in universities and research centers around the world, will assist WHO in studying the most critical ethical issues of the day and developing analyses and policies. Capron is taking a two-year leave of absence from the university and is moving with his family to Geneva.

Capron's appointment comes at a time when ethical issues raised by the astonishing biomedical advancements of the modern age from cloning to the mapping of the human genome, from the search for an AIDS vaccine to expensive forms of life-support have become an inescapable part of healthcare policymaking. At the same time, many basic principles of bioethics, such as respecting patient's choices about treatment, have come to be regarded as virtually universal standards in all countries.

Capron, who is also a professor of medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at USC, comes to the job with a long list of credentials. He was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, having previously chaired the Biomedical Ethics Advisory Committee for the Congress and directed the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The author or editor of eight books and hundreds of journal articles and chapters on a wide range of bioethics topics, Capron says he is grateful for this "opportunity to play a role in WHO's effort to increase understanding of ethical and social issues involving health care policy around the world."