Dr. Arthur Caplan, Professor of Bioethics at NYU Langone Interview

Dr. Arthur Caplan talks to Mendte in the Morning about using ChatGPT or other AI software to diagnose medical issues.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's bring in one of our favorite guests, doctor Arthur Kaplan,
professor of bioethics at New York University Land Gone Medical Center. Doctor,
thank you so much as always for being here.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
All right, let's start with this because I think this
is something that just about everybody deals with. What's that rash?
All of us, I think have had a rash at
some time, and you're kind of embarrassed sometimes because you
think it may be nothing to go to the doctor,
and so you go to Google for medical help. I

(00:36):
can already tell before I even ask the question, You're
not going to like this idea. But is it a
good idea?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
No, you know I won't like that. And here's why.
The way Google runs is it surfs around, not just
to answer your question, but in general it builds up
its knowledge base. We'll just go all over the web
and pulls down everything about itchy and rash and on

(01:06):
my left forearm and whatever. And what that is is
called open AI. It just means Larry, it's taking its
information anywhere it can get it. But there's a lot
of misinformation out there on the web. So anybody who
keeps posting and saying, well, that rash is caused by
your cell phone, that's going to be part of what

(01:28):
Google sees and spits back to you. So you can look.
And I know people are gonna look. I'm not telling
you not to look, but you really have to be
wary of the information you get back. Don't use it
as a substitute for going to the doctor. If you're worried.
There's a lot of telemedicine. You can take a picture

(01:49):
of your rash, send it to your doctor. Google. Yeah. Look,
it's not one hundred percent wrong, but it's often wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
No. I I've had long conversations with my doctor about
this because just like everybody else, nobody's gonna care what
is said. Everybody's gonna google something and they're gonna you know,
their eyes always go to the worst thing, the worst
thing it could possibly be, and then they're scared to
death and they go to the doctor. And when they
bring it up, the doctor says, oh, you went to

(02:18):
doctor Google. And my doctor says it is the bane
of his existence because it takes time to explain every
single time, right, that it's not.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
That exactly, So you're stuck. We have to debunk the
misinformation before you get down to brass tacks about well
what really is it. By the way, listeners, there are
a couple of these sites up there that say, take
a picture of your private parts and we'll tell you
if you have a venereal disease. Bad idea, bad, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
I think, boy, I wonder what they're after. I want
to know what they really want.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Well, I think at first it's money, but it could
be could be something else. But again, remember you gond
have venereal disease without you showing symptoms. That's why it's not,
you know, reliable, and I don't want to trust that
as a place to get diagnosed, and so unplus, you
need advice about what to do. That's that's just an
example of bad, bad telemedicine by a company that wants

(03:25):
to just get into your wallet.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
It's also just great advice generally, if anybody on the
internet asks you to take pictures of your genitals, you
say no, I think.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
That's a we can come away today with that as
our lessons today, solid advice.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
So more and more and I understand this completely. By
the way, more and more older Americans want to know
they're Alzheimer's status. Uh, is it possible to find out
your Alzheimer's status?

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Well, there are some tests that are starting to emerge.
These are basically you spit in a cup, kind of
like the old ancestry twenty three and me idea, and
they run and look for certain genes. So some forms
of Alzheimer's are actually heritable. They run in families and
you can pick that up. The majority of Alzheimer's, however,

(04:17):
is not, and we don't know what to look for
in terms of genes, so we don't accurately test. So
I'm going to say, if you had a long history
of Alzheimer's a lot of people in the family, you
probably could get tested. Here's the ethics question. If you
get tested and it says you're at risk, we don't

(04:37):
have a cure, we don't have an intervention. So the
real question is do you want to know about something
that right now we can't stop.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, you know, I think we've talked about this before.
My mom had Alzheimer's, and I was heavily involved with
the Alzheimer's Association, and they had their convention last year
and they said, and you you can tell me what
the ingredient is because I'm not coming up with it
off the top of my head. The working ingredient in ozepic.

(05:07):
They are studying that because they came out with initial
findings that it can help maybe not prevent Alzheimer's, but
put off Alzheimer's.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Have you heard, yeah, chemic gluten. You know it's interesting
because even there, it may be that what really helps
lou Alzheimer's is controlling your weight. Yep. It's probably not
a magic drug. It's more if you control your weight,
obesity I think contributes to the speed at which Alzheimer's occurs.

(05:37):
And again I think I don't know that. I think
people are looking around at that idea. But again I've
bet if you as listeners, a lot of them would say,
well if you can't fix it, he can't cure it.
That I don't want to know, So no test for me.
I would understand it. I would get tested because I'd
still like to plan my life if I was gonna
become demented, and I don't want to be a burden

(05:59):
to others like to plan. But I think there's a
lot of people don't want to walk around with that
knowledge in their head.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
No, I understand, now, you wanted to talk about Bill
Belichick and his young girlfriend.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
What a day? First pictures of her genitals and now
Bill Belichick A look. What I want to talk about
is whether it's acceptable ethically to talk about his relationship.
If you, Larry, you're kind of a sports guy, I am.
You know, Belichick is a famous coach. He is now

(06:36):
at North Carolina. Nobody in the NFL decided they wanted
to bring him on as a coach, so he went
to the college ranks. He has a very young girlfriend,
and he's done a number of interviews where the girlfriend
has intervene acted like his pr person. That led people
to start to say, what's the seventy three year old

(06:56):
guy doing with a twenty four year old part I
don't know that it is appropriate for us to be
wondering about that. I mean, obviously some questions are going
to arise. People ask that about the Richard Gears and
the Larry Kings and older men with you know, very
young wives. But I'm not going to criticize that. You know,

(07:22):
it's up to them to figure out what they're doing,
Whether she should be controlling him, whether she should be
acting as his agent, whether the University of North Carolina
have to interact with her as part of his job.
That's a different story. I think you can criticize that.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
Ah, come on, everybody's going to talk about the fact
that he's seventy four and she's seventy three and she's
twenty four. That's just human nature. But you know what, right, And.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
It's a little bit like googling. But what I'm trying
to say is it you could talk about it. I
get it, it's a curiosity, it's unusual speculator, blah blah
blah blah. But at the end of the day, you
should always remind your kid, you know, it's up to
the two people to decide who they love. I you know,
we can kick it around a little bit for amusement,

(08:10):
but ultimately I kind of want to stay out of
people's relationship

Speaker 1 (08:15):
Things that way, all right, Doctor Arthur Kaplan, Professor of
Bioethics at New York University Lean Gone Medical Center, Thank
you so much.