Faculty Bibliography

Dermatologists say that razor bumps are found only in those who shave, the condition gets worse for those who continue to shave and remission invariably occurs after people affected by the condition stop shaving for about a month. The condition, pseudofolliculitis barbae, 'is a disorder that is really generated by societal pressures to force individuals with coarse, curly hair to shave,' said Dr. Stanford I. Lamberg, a dermatologist at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore. A Maryland hearing examiner ruled that a ban on beards that allowed no exceptions for medical reasons was discriminatory under Maryland's civil rights laws. But courts in other states have held that there is no constitutional right to grow a beard and that companies can require employees to be clean-shaven. Because accurate surveys have not been conducted, it is not known how many men with the problem have been forced to shave to get or keep a job

The second advance was the development of an animal model for the disorder. Researchers at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., reproduced features of the disorder in rats. #1,500 Cases Reported Federal health officials said they did not yet know whether the contaminant itself was the cause of the disorder or whether it was a ''marker'' for another substance that was. Nor do investigators know how the chemical contaminated the of L-tryptophan, an amino acid, in the manufacturing process

The infant mortality rate in the US reached the lowest level ever in 1989, 9.7 per 1,000 live births, but it remains higher than those in many industrialized nations

Scientists said they have identified the chemicals that produce underarm odor in a discovery that is expected to spur researchers in the $1.6 billion deodorant industry to find more effective and longer-lasting products

Increasing use of a controversial statistical method to evaluate medical therapies and surgical procedures, called meta-analysis, is beginning to affect profoundly the care of pregnant women and patients with cancer, heart disease and other common conditions

A report in the Annals of Internal Medicine revealed a new AIDS therapy called photopheresis that has been tested on five patients with AIDS-related complex. The process involves subjecting some of the patient's blood to ultraviolet light and then returning it to the body

''The perspective of prevention must be woven through the fabric of medical education,'' Dr. [Robert G. Petersdorf] said. But in an era when much of medical practice hinges on high technology, ''courses in preventive medicine may be boring and are not what turns medical students on,'' he said. He added, ''The marginal role that prevention plays in medical education and medical practice is rooted deeply in the culture of American medicine, discouraging any temptation to believe that superficial efforts at reform will be adopted or sustained.'' ''There is plenty that needs to be done for sick people,'' said Dr. Gilbert S. Omenn, a medical geneticist who is dean of the school of public health and community medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. ''But you could make tremendous advancements on the prevention side without taking anything away from diagnosis and treatment.'' Dr. [R. Palmer Beasley] said that ''as medicine's understanding has deepened, the competition between various departments for time in the curriculum has intensified.''

According to a new federal study, perpetrators of family violence often have records of repeated violence, leading researchers to suggest that people at high risk could be identified

Scientists had previously found evidence of AIDS infection dating to 1959 in one blood sample collected in a research study in Zaire. But no one knows if the Zairian, who was not identified, ever developed AIDS. In 1985, the Manchester team ran into another frustration. Although a blood test for the AIDS virus had by then been developed, the sailor's blood samples had not been saved. As a result, the doctors could not verify the presumed diagnosis of AIDS. Dr. Gerald Corbitt, a virologist at University of Manchester, said that by testing the virus identified in the sailor's tissues and comparing it with the virus from present-day AIDS cases, his team hopes to determine what variation, if any, has occurred in the molecular structure of the AIDS virus in the past 30 years