Bioethicists delve into some fascinating questions about some of the most difficult choices involved in medicine, wrestling with crucibles about the when to treat and when not to, the limits of human life, human potential, the quality of life, and even what it means to be human.
These intriguing questions are the bioethicist's daily grind. But just because the questions can be intriguing does not mean the lives of bioethicists are all that exciting. Certainly a life spent writing reports, plotting charts, and skimming law journals would not make for good television.
But then again... Variety reports that CBS has given a pilot production commitment for a show "inspired by" Arthur Caplan, founding director of NY Langone Medical Center's Department of Population Health.
Caplan has edited 32 books and more than 600 papers in peer-reviewed journals, according to NYU, but it doesn't seem likely that the show, called "Austen's Razor," would be about those.
"Screenwriter-novelist David Klass ("Kiss the Girls") and his pediatrician-author sister Perri Klass are writing the pilot with Caplan. The story follows a brilliant bioethicist who is called in at crisis moments to solve the most complicated, dynamic and confounding medical issues imaginable," Variety says.