From civil rights to health care rights

Professor Alex Capron’s expertise in bioethics made him the choice to lead the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical Behavioral Research in 1978.

Professor Alex Capron’s career is marked by some opportune twists. As an economics major at Swarthmore College, he was drawn to civil rights activism, and after landing in jail for a week, was impressed with the civil rights lawyers defending him and his fellow activists, leading to a change in focus.

While at Yale Law School, he worked a summer internship in Mississippi with renowned civil rights champion Marian Wright, then with the NAACP, researching school segregation and local efforts at marginalizing Black families at a tumultuous, dangerous time in the South. Capron seemed destined for a career concerned with justice, choice and human rights, and that’s what happened — just not in the way he expected.

“It wasn’t the study of law as such that led me into health care law, ethics and policy,” he says. “It was serendipity.”

The next twist came when his second clerkship opportunity fizzled out, and encouraged by friends, he returned to Yale to teach and work with Jay Katz, a psychoanalyst and law school professor, on a pioneering casebook about experimentation with human beings.

That led to an NIH-funded research project on the ethical and legal issues raised by what he and Katz called “catastrophic diseases,” namely, end-stage kidney and heart failure, and by their treatment with organ transplantation and kidney dialysis.

“I found myself fascinated with all this,” he says. “I hadn’t been a biology major, and I’d never given thought to a career in medicine, but these issues, which involved questions of fairness and justice, access to resources, people being able to make choices, and basic human rights, resonated deeply with me.”

In 1971, Capron became a founding fellow of The Hastings Center, the world’s first bioethics institute, and participated with academics from other universities in research groups focusing on a wide range of topics in medicine and research. This new, interdisciplinary area of inquiry combined philosophy, religion, law, the social and behavioral sciences, biology and medicine — something he never imagined in law school.

When Congress created the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research in 1978, Capron was well positioned to be appointed as its executive director. The commission developed 10 reports during its three-year tenure, on topics ranging from equitable access to health care and compensation for injuries in clinical trials, to death and informed consent in medical care.

“It’s very gratifying that many of our conclusions were adopted in federal regulations and state laws and helped shape judicial decisions,” Capron says.

Alex Capron (front row, right, at an event celebrating his retirement) admires colleagues’ achievements, collegiality and enthusiasm.

In 1984, Capron was hired by USC Law School as the inaugural Norman Topping Chair in Law, Medicine and Policy at USC, a joint appointment in the law school and Keck School of Medicine of USC. He quickly found a kindred spirit in David Goldstein, M.D., then head of the LAC+USC residency program in internal medicine. They worked to help medical students navigate ethical and legal issues in patient care and appreciate the collaborative nature of medicine.

With the partnership came the launch in 1991 of the Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics, a campus-wide organized research unit that Capron co-directed with Goldstein until the latter’s death in 2017. The center carried out sponsored research projects, held national and international conferences on medical and research ethics, and organized public policy initiatives, such as the California Consortium on Patient Self- Determination.

As a member of the USC Gould faculty, Capron admires colleagues’ scholarly and professional achievements, as well as their collegiality and enthusiasm to help each other refine their scholarship and teaching.

“The emphasis we have had for 60 years on interdisciplinarity went beyond what existed at most other law faculties, so outstanding, original thinkers with many kinds of interests have been drawn to USC Gould,” he says.

Capron has authored or co-authored 17 books; testified 10 times before Congress on ethical and legal issues in medicine; served twice as vice dean for faculty and academic affairs and won numerous accolades, including selection by Phi Kappa Phil as its National Scholar for 2022-24. He also took a four-year leave from 2002-2006 to serve as the first director of Ethics, Trade, Human Rights and Health Law at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.

Even in retirement, he continues to participate in research projects and is on a National Academy of Medicine committee examining specific obstacles in clinical trials. He’s also keeping his eye on the growing concerns about avian influenza. “Nature has many surprises,” he says. And, so do careers.