Arthur L. Caplan (born 1950) is an American ethicist and professor of bioethics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine.

He was successfully treated at Children's Hospital in Boston and went on to play sports at Framingham North High School.

[7] Caplan has stated that this life-threatening illness was a formative experience that influenced his later commitment to philosophy and bioethics.

[8][9] His dissertation, Philosophical Issues Concerning the Synthetic Theory of Evolution, was co-supervised by Ernest Nagel and Sidney Morgenbesser.

[5] In 1977, Caplan met Daniel Callahan, a philosopher who co-founded The Hastings Center (now in Garrison, New York) with psychiatrist Willard Gaylin.

[5] In 1987, Caplan moved to the University of Minnesota, where he became a professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Surgery and the first director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics.

During his time at Minnesota he was active on issues relating to organ transplantation and genetics and worked with Rosalie A. Kane on dilemmas of "everyday ethics" involving treatment of the elderly.

[5] Caplan secured the first apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, from Lewis Sullivan, M.D., then secretary of HHS, in 1991.

[13] While at the University of Pennsylvania, he became the first bioethicist to be sued for his professional role, after his involvement in a gene therapy trial that resulted in the death of research subject Jesse Gelsinger.

Also in 2009, he called for tightening restrictions on fertility clinics and IVF and has written extensively in favor of embryonic stem cell research.

[3][19][20] Recent activity has included spearheading a movement to relax restrictions on blood donations by gay men and urging postponement of the Rio Summer Olympics because of the Zika virus threat.

Caplan has been criticized by some classical philosophers for his "hands-on philosophy",[26] and by some colleagues for his enthusiastic engagement with the media.

In 2021, Caplan published a commentary on a medical news website titled "It’s Okay for Docs to Refuse to Treat Unvaccinated Patients".

[32][33] Caplan is the author and editor of more than 35 books and more than 860 papers in peer-reviewed journals of medicine, science, philosophy, bioethics, and health policy.

[48] Caplan has served on a number of national committees, including as chair of the National Cancer Institute Biobanking Ethics Working Group[49] and chair of the Advisory Committee to the Department of Health and Human Services on Blood Safety and Availability.

[52] He is an adviser to DARPA on synthetic biology[53] and has addressed the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

In December 2019, CompAC (the Compassionate Use Advisory Committees), which Caplan founded and chairs, received the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA's Innovation Award.