Bayer revisited

Bayer accuses me of wrongly claiming that he holds a negative thesis about the role that the liberal emphasis on privacy rights has had on AIDS public health policy. In his reply to my review essay, he denies holding such a thesis and, moreover, makes the stronger claim that his position is sympathetic to liberalism, or at least to some versions of it. Although I appreciate Bayer's efforts to clarify his views about liberalism and a "culture of restraint and responsibility", it is clear to me that our differences are related not to a misunderstanding on my part, but to a fundamental disagreement concerning what liberalism as a political philosophy is, and what public policy implications it entails in the case of AIDS....     

NHS "indicators of success": what do they tell us? Radical Statistics Health Group.

In the absence of any systematic evaluation of the changes it has made to the NHS, the government cites three "indicators of success." These are record numbers of patients treated, shorter waiting times for hospital treatment, and more children being immunised against the main childhood diseases. Closer inspection of the statistics reveals that they do not support the conclusions inferred from them and that they are misleading measures of the impact of the changes made to the NHS.     

Researching and teaching in the field of ethnic and racial studies: a view from continental Europe

In the first part of the article, I make a few general comments inspired by the reading of Banton's article. I claim that the field of ethnic and racial studies is often dominated by an "Anglo-Americentric" vision that leads to a negation of the variety of approaches to ethnic and racial studies throughout the world. I claim that a process of "decentration" is necessary in order to foster the diversity in our field. In the second part of the article, I make specific comments inspired by my experience as researcher and teacher in a fragmented society such as Belgium. One conclusion is that our teaching has to be contextualized in order to avoid misunderstandings and the reproduction of inadequate conceptions and confusions about ethnic and racial issues among our students.     

Work injury: a second look at the doctor's first report

Injured employees require medical care and, if disabled, compensation payments for subsistence. The law requires that the employer or insurance carrier supply these benefits promptly. In the absence of prompt and adequate information from the attending physician, these benefits are withheld. The necessary information required to process employee's claim is that called for on the standard accident report form, commonly called the "pink slip." Not to supply this minimum information may constitute a hardship on the employee. By supplying more elaborate information than that called for, the physician may be increasing his load of "paper work" immeasurably.     

The politics of human heredity in the USSR, 1920-1940

After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Iurii Filipchenko (in Petrograd) and Nikolai Koltsov (in Moscow) created centers of genetic research where eugenics prospered as a socially relevant part of the new "experimental" biology. The Russian Eugenics Society, established in 1920, was dominated by research-oriented professionals. However, Bolshevik activists in the movement tried to translate eugenics into social policies (among them, sterilization) and in 1929, Marxist geneticist Alexander Serebrovsky was stimulated by the forthcoming Five-Year Plan to urge a massive eugenic program of human artificial insemination. With the advent of Stalinism, such attempts to "biologize" social phenomena became ideologically untenable and the society was abolished in 1930. Three years later, however, a number of eugenicists reassembled in the world's first institute of medical genetics, created by Bolshevik physician Solomon Levit after this return from a postdoctoral year in Texas with H.J. Muller. Muller himself moved to the Soviet Union in 1933, where he agitated for eugenics and wrote Stalin in 1936 to urge an artificial insemination program. Shortly thereafter, Muller left Russia, several of his colleagues were shot, and the Institute of Medical Genetics was disbanded. During the next three decades, Lysenkoists regularly invoked the Soviet eugenic legacy to claim that genetics itself was fascist.     

Bacteriological testing of a modified laminar flow microbiological safety cabinet

A modified microbiological safety cabinet which can be used as a class II and a class III safety cabinet has been bacteriologically tested. This cabinet makes use of a high-speed down-flow air curtain in the front opening to minimize the amount of air escaping over the arms of the operator. By using artificial aerosols and a dummy or a test person placing his arms into the working opening of the cabinet, a transfer from the inside to the environment was detected only when the highest concentration of the test aerosol was used. Since the number of bacteria detected was very low, this is considered to be acceptable. when the cabinet was used as a class III type, with a glove panel mounted in the front opening, leakage from the environment occurred. This could be completely prevented by fixing tape over the hinge of the front panel.The conclusion is drawn that this type of biohazard hood can be safely used as a class II and a class III microbiological safety cabinet, provided the construction of the hinge of the front panel will be adapted to prevent transfer from the environment to the working area.     

Where is the silver lining? Anxious doctors ask.

When Nova Scotia elected a Liberal government in September 1993, a wave of optimism washed over the province''s medical community. One of their own, Dr. John Savage, was now premier, and another, Dr. Ron Stewart, was minister of health. However, anticipation soon turned to anger as Stewart took aim at physician fees and hospital costs to help reduce the province''s health care budget by $62 million. Last November, relations between him and the Medical Society of Nova Scotia (MSNS) hit bottom. In an uncharacteristically political move, the society launched an ad campaign featuring slogans such as "Death by 1000 cuts" and "Uncle Sam want me. Ron Stewart doesn''t." Four months later, the health department and the MSNS called a truce, with an agreement that many physicians consider a positive step. Today the province and its doctors are speaking again, and the medical society is working hard to help define physicians'' roles in a new, regionalized health care system. But has the mood of doctors really improved? Last spring, CMAJ interviewed a cross section of Nova Scotia physicians to find out.     

Commentary: the year in nuclear receptor control of metabolism

This commentary highlights some of the most important discoveries in the field of nuclear receptor control of metabolism that occurred over the past year (2009 to 2010). As might be expected in a field that encompasses several hundred active laboratories, the task of providing a balanced look at these discoveries was daunting. Thus, to help make the selection of these discoveries, a small panel of colleagues was recruited to help. After selecting the top candidate discoveries from a Google search and a PubMed search, the panel was asked to rank them. These final selections were presented at "The Year In Basic Science Session" of the Annual Meeting of the Endocrine Society, ENDO 2010, the highlights of which are reproduced in this article.     

The Effects of Feature-Based Priming and Visual Working Memory on Oculomotor Capture

Recently, it has been demonstrated that objects held in working memory can influence rapid oculomotor selection. This has been taken as evidence that perceptual salience can be modified by active working memory representations. The goal of the present study was to examine whether these results could also be caused by feature-based priming. In two experiments, participants were asked to saccade to a target line segment of a certain orientation that was presented together with a to-be-ignored distractor. Both objects were given a task-irrelevant color that varied per trial. In a secondary task, a color had to be memorized, and that color could either match the color of the target, match the color of the distractor, or it did not match the color of any of the objects in the search task. The memory task was completed either after the search task (Experiment 1), or before it (Experiment 2). The results showed that in both experiments the memorized color biased oculomotor selection. Eye movements were more frequently drawn towards objects that matched the memorized color, irrespective of whether the memory task was completed after (Experiment 1) or before (Experiment 2) the search task. This bias was particularly prevalent in short-latency saccades. The results show that early oculomotor selection performance is not only affected by properties that are actively maintained in working memory but also by those previously memorized. Both working memory and feature priming can cause early biases in oculomotor selection.     

Psychiatry and the law

In Rex vs. Arnold (1724) it was held that to avail himself of the defense of insanity "a man must be totally deprived of his understanding and memory, so as not to know what he is doing, no more than an infant, a brute, or a wild beast." Although there has been some modification of this formula in most jurisdictions, the courts still operate under the McNaghten Rule (1843) which is no more logical and actually is more difficult to apply. That such a situation exists in 1956 is a reflection on the indifference of society-and particularly the courts which it elects-as well as on the failure of modern psychiatry to communicate its viewpoint to society. If we are to correct the sad formulae of the "right and wrong" and "policeman at the elbow" tests, we must have more study and better methods of communication in this area.A similar state of confusion exists in the methods of commitment of mentally ill people to psychiatric hospitals. The methods prescribed by law are archaic and cruel-and again reflect the failure of modern psychiatry to communicate its understanding to the legislatures and courts. There are many other areas of conflict between law (which looks to the past for its insights) and psychiatry (which seeks for its concepts in the current scientific advances).     

The Phenomenon of Personalization of the Environment: A Theoretical

The changes taking place in the residential environment have raised a very acute question: How to give due consideration to the distinctive features of the particular human being and the laws and patterns of his activity and social intercourse; how to include the "human element" in the ever more complicated mechanism of environmental planning as the man-made world, from the apartment to urban agglomerations, is shaped and transformed? Quests for an answer to this question over the past fifteen to twenty years have produced a new area of psychological investigation, most commonly referred to as "environmental psychology."     

Transformation in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dang</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">ki</Emphasis> Healing: The Embodied Self and Perceived Legitimacy

Since spirit possession in mediumship and shamanism resembles psychotic symptoms, early researchers perceived spirit mediums and shamans as psychiatric patients whose psychopathology was culturally sanctioned. However, other researchers have not only challenged this assumption, but also proposed that spirit possession has transformative benefits. The idiom of spirit possession provides cultural meanings for spirit mediums and shamans to express and transform their personal experiences. The present case study focuses on dang-ki healing, a form of Chinese mediumship practiced in Singapore, in which a deity possesses a human (i.e., dang-ki) to offer aid to supplicants. This study seeks to explore whether involvement in dang-ki healing is transformative; and if so, how the dang-ki’s transformation is related to his self and the perceived legitimacy of his mediumship. At a shrine, I interviewed 20 participants, including a male dang-ki, 10 temple assistants, and nine clients. The results obtained were supportive of the therapeutic nature of spirit possession. First, there is a relationship between his self-transformation and the perceived legitimacy of his mediumship. As his clients and community have recognized his spirit possession as genuine, and the healing power of his possessing god, he is able to make use of mediumship as a means for spiritual development. Second, he has developed his spirituality by internalizing his god’s positive traits (e.g., compassion). Deities worshipped in dang-ki healing can be conceptualized as ideal selves who represent a wide range of positive traits and moral values of Chinese culture. Thus, the possession of a deity is the embodiment of an ideal self. Finally, the dang-ki’s transformation may run parallel to his god’s transformation. In Chinese religions, gods have to constantly develop their spirituality even though they are already gods. An understanding of the god’s spiritual development further sheds light on the dang-ki’s self-transformation.     

Social Awareness in Monkeys

Tests of self-awareness in nonhuman primates have to date beenconcerned almost entirely with the recognition of an animal'sreflection in a mirror. By contrast, we know much less aboutnon-human primates' perception of their place within a socialnetwork, or of their understanding of themselves as individualswith unique sets of social relationships. Here we review evidencethat monkeys who fail the mirror test may nonetheless behaveas if they recognize themselves as distinct individuals, eachof whom occupies a unique place in society and has a specificset of relations with others. A free-ranging vervet monkey,baboon, or macaque recognizes other members of his group asindividuals. He also recognizes matrilineal kin groups, lineardominance rank orders, and behaves as if he recognizes his ownunique place within them. This sense of "social self" in monkeys,however, is markedly different from self-awareness in humans.Although monkeys may behave in ways that accurately place themselveswithin a social network, they are unaware of the knowledge thatallows them to do so: they do not know what they know, cannotreflect on what they know, and cannot become the object of theirown attention.     

Octopus vulgaris uses visual information to determine the location of its arm

Octopuses are intelligent, soft-bodied animals with keen senses that perform reliably in a variety of visual and tactile learning tasks. However, researchers have found them disappointing in that they consistently fail in operant tasks that require them to combine central nervous system reward information with visual and peripheral knowledge of the location of their arms. Wells claimed that in order to filter and integrate an abundance of multisensory inputs that might inform the animal of the position of a single arm, octopuses would need an exceptional computing mechanism, and "There is no evidence that such a system exists in Octopus, or in any other soft bodied animal." Recent electrophysiological experiments, which found no clear somatotopic organization in the higher motor centers, support this claim. We developed a three-choice maze that required an octopus to use a single arm to reach a visually marked goal compartment. Using this operant task, we show for the first time that Octopus vulgaris is capable of guiding a single arm in a complex movement to a location. Thus, we claim that octopuses can combine peripheral arm location information with visual input to control goal-directed complex movements.     

Stress-Induced Impairment of a Working Memory Task: Role of Spiking Rate and Spiking History Predicted Discharge

Stress, pervasive in society, contributes to over half of all work place accidents a year and over time can contribute to a variety of psychiatric disorders including depression, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Stress impairs higher cognitive processes, dependent on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and that involve maintenance and integration of information over extended periods, including working memory and attention. Substantial evidence has demonstrated a relationship between patterns of PFC neuron spiking activity (action-potential discharge) and components of delayed-response tasks used to probe PFC-dependent cognitive function in rats and monkeys. During delay periods of these tasks, persistent spiking activity is posited to be essential for the maintenance of information for working memory and attention. However, the degree to which stress-induced impairment in PFC-dependent cognition involves changes in task-related spiking rates or the ability for PFC neurons to retain information over time remains unknown. In the current study, spiking activity was recorded from the medial PFC of rats performing a delayed-response task of working memory during acute noise stress (93 db). Spike history-predicted discharge (SHPD) for PFC neurons was quantified as a measure of the degree to which ongoing neuronal discharge can be predicted by past spiking activity and reflects the degree to which past information is retained by these neurons over time. We found that PFC neuron discharge is predicted by their past spiking patterns for nearly one second. Acute stress impaired SHPD, selectively during delay intervals of the task, and simultaneously impaired task performance. Despite the reduction in delay-related SHPD, stress increased delay-related spiking rates. These findings suggest that neural codes utilizing SHPD within PFC networks likely reflects an additional important neurophysiological mechanism for maintenance of past information over time. Stress-related impairment of this mechanism is posited to contribute to the cognition-impairing actions of stress.     

Desired Division, Disavowed Division: An Analysis of the Labeling of the Bilingual Unit as Separatist in an Aotearoa/New Zealand School

In this article, I offer a new interpretation of non-Mäori parents' claim that a Mäori/English bilingual school unit in Aotearoa/New Zealand is separatist. I show that while some use such a claim to defend monoculturalism and white hegemony, others use it to come to terms with Aotearoa/New Zealand's postcolonial nationhood, globalization, and a changing meaning of "ethnic harmony." I suggest collaborations to rearticulate the latter parents' concerns, thereby creating new alliances to support minority education.     

The UK’s 100,000 Genomes Project: manifesting policymakers’ expectations

The UK’s 100,000 Genomes Project has the aim of sequencing 100,000 genomes from UK National Health Service (NHS) patients while concomitantly transforming clinical care such that whole genome sequencing becomes routine clinical practice in the UK. Policymakers claim that the project will revolutionize NHS care. We wished to explore the 100,000 Genomes Project, and in particular, the extent to which policymaker claims have helped or hindered the work of those associated with Genomics England – the company established by the Department of Health to deliver the project. We interviewed 20 individuals linked to, or working for Genomics England. Interviewees had double-edged views about the context within which they were working. On the one hand, policymakers’ expectations attached to the venture were considered vacuous “genohype”; on the other hand, they were considered the impetus needed for those trying to advance genomic research into clinical practice. Findings should be considered for future genomes projects.     

On Negating Positivism: An Anthropological Dialectic

Continuing a discussion initiated by Paul Roscoe in the pages of this journal, this essay situates positivism as a social and philosophic movement adversarily responding to the "negative dialectic" of 18th- and 19th-century critical philosophy. Notably, positivistic ideologies and practices have been manifest in cultural anthropology, linguistic analysis without "meaning," and "the new archaeology." Because funding agencies have accepted the positivistic claim that it embodies "the scientific method," interpretivists and other dissidents have had to become "rice positivists," while graduate programs have required that research be fitted into a scenario of "hypothesis testing" of "theoretical problems."