Faculty Bibliography

One area in which money alone doesn't rule the day in America is transplantation. Since 1984, the nation's system for deciding who gets scarce organs for transplant has relied both on the ability to pay and a rule-based, physician-determined rationing system. It's about as close as the country has ever come to making tough decisions about who gets life-saving therapy. Here, Caplan shares the case of ten-year-old Sarah Murnaghan who recently put that system to its most severe test ever

Caplan talks about Ariel Sharon's brain activity. Sharon was the eleventh prime minister of Israel, serving from 2001 to 2006. He has been diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state since suffering first a minor stroke and then another massive one on Jan 4, 2006. A respirator and a feeding tube have kept him alive for seven years at Sheba Hospital in Tel Hashomer, Israel. Last January, a team of doctors and neuroscientists from Israel's Soroka University Medical Center was hired to subject the now eighty-four-year-old Sharon to a series of sophisticated brain scans. The team showed the former prime minister pictures of random houses, which he would not be expected to be familiar with. Then they flashed a picture of his own house before his eyes. When the images of his own home were shown, areas of his brain "lit up" with activity. Similarly, his brain "fired up" in response to hearing family voices but not when nonsensical gibberish sounds were played for him

Caplan cites some criticisms of the newly revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association--DSM-5. The DSM is often described as the bible of the mental health field--and unfortunate misnomer that leaves it open to attack as a compendium of divinely inspired truths about human behavior. The most common criticism in the reviews and books is that DSM-5 proliferates diseases beyond the boundaries of common sense

The NY SAFE Act requires individuals who own a handgun or an assault rifle to recertify their permits every 5 years; limits the capacity of ammo clips to 7 shots; clarifies and broadens the definition of assault weapons to restrict their sale; and requires nearly all gun transfers between private parties to be conducted through a federal firearms licensee, subject to a federal National Instant Criminal Background Check. There has long been a legal obligation in most states, generated by the famous 1976 Tarasoffcase in California, that mental health care professionals disclose a threat of violence to an identifiable third party if they think the threat is credible and the act imminent

A 2013 poll in The New York Times found that three-quarters of Americans have concerns about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in their food; most are worried about health effects. Thirty-seven percent of those with worries fear that GM foods cause cancer or allergies

Experts agree that influenza vaccination of health-care personnel (HCP) is the best method of preventing nosocomial outbreaks. Because voluntary uptake among HCP has not achieved recommended levels, hundreds of health-care facilities and twenty states have implemented mandatory vaccination programs. How- ever, employee unions assert that unilateral changes to working conditions violate established principles of collective bargaining. In this article, we argue that mandatory vaccination in the health-care context is supported by ethics, science, and law. We examine nosocomial influenza outbreaks and how hospitals have attempted to curb infections through mandatory HCP influenza vaccination policies. We also explore employee unions' administrative and legal chal- lenges to the requirements. Finally, we suggest an approach to resolving the dispute between HCP labor representatives and health-care facility management. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

BACKGROUND: The creation of each edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of psychiatry has proven enormously controversial. The current effort to revise the 'bible' of disorder definitions for the field of mental health is no exception. The controversy around DSM-5 reached a crescendo with the announcement from National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) that the institute would focus efforts on the development of their own psychiatric nosology, the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) (NIMH, 2013). DISCUSSION: The RDoC seem to be structured around the concern that the only way to find objectivity in the classification of diseases or disorders in psychiatry is to begin with biology and work back to symptoms. Values infuse medical categories in various ways and drive practical considerations about where and how to divide up constellations of already agreed upon symptoms. SUMMARY: We briefly argue that all nosologies are infused with values and, while we should continue to sharpen the psychiatric nosology, normativity will permeate even the strictest biologically based taxonomy; this need not be a bad thing.

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." J.S. Mill, On Liberty "Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else" Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." Oliver Wendell Holmes David Ropiek in his useful essay on how society should respond to the risks created by those who choose not to vaccinate themselves or their children does a very useful job of identifying the enormous costs in money and health that non-vaccinators create. (1) He also pinpoints the many factors that drive vaccine resistance locating them not in a misunderstanding of the facts but, in fears and negative emotions. (1) It is important to pay attention to his message since frequently those who want to try to reduce vaccine hesitation or outright non-vaccination behavior put their faith in education and resort to an invocation of the facts about the value of vaccines when it is fear and emotions that must be addressed. (2.)