By entering the medical profession, physicians have consented to accept a standard level of risk of infection. In most instances, the risk of contracting HIV does not exceed this level.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1919.

A recurring problem in psychiatry is the meaningfulness, or otherwise, of its domain. Critics of psychiatry accuse the discipline of misconstruing mental phenomena and behavior, including the verbal sort, as meaningless symptoms, in keeping with other medical specialisms. A myoclonic jerk is taken by the neurologist to mean nothing beyond signaling pathology of the nervous system. But this approach, critics argue, strips psychiatric phenomena of their meaning. Accordingly, Louis Sass has described a tendency, "particularly among organic psychiatrists… to ignore the (...) psychological interpretation or empathic understanding of mental symptoms". Neuropsychiatric symptoms such as visual hallucinations... (shrink)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [271]-285) and index.

I was seven or eight years old. In Hebrew school we had just learned the Aleph-Bet and were, haltingly, beginning to sound out words. As we spoke the ancient text, our teacher translated: "... And God said: 'Let there be light.' And there was light. ..."[note 2] Here was magic; here was the supernatural; here was the creation of the universe. I resonated to the story. I was filled with wonder, far more than had ever been elicited by any fairy (...) tale my parents had read to me. I pictured in my imagination the majesty of it: God speaks and Nature obeys. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Just Doctoring: Medical Ethics in the Liberal State. By Troyen A. Brennan. The Ends of Human Life: Medical Ethics in a Liberal Polity. By Ezekiel J. Emanuel.

Empirical evidence is reviewed indicating that the extraordinary aspects of the human mind are due to our species’ ability to go beyond simple “dyadic associations” and to process the relations among three items of information simultaneously. Classic explanations of the “triadic” nature of human skills have been advocated by various scholars in the context of the evolution of human cognition. Here I summarize the core processes as found in (i) the syntax of language, (ii) tool-usage, and (iii) joint attention. I (...) then review the triadic foundations of two perceptual phenomena of great importance in human aesthetics: (iv) harmony perception and (v) pictorial depth perception. In all five subfields of human psychology, most previous work has emphasized the recursive, hierarchical complexity of such “higher cognition,” but a strongly reductionist approach indicates that the core mechanisms are triadic. It is concluded that the cognitive skills traditionally considered to be “uniquely” human require three-way associational processing that most non-Primate animal species find difficult or impossible, but all members of Homo sapiens – regardless of small cultural differences – find easy and inherently intriguing. (shrink)

: The "dead donor rule" is increasingly under attack for several reasons. First, there has long been disagreement about whether there is a correct or coherent definition of "death." Second, it has long been clear that the concept and ascertainment of "brain death" is medically flawed. Third, the requirement stands in the way of improving organ supply by prohibiting organ removal from patients who have little to lose—e.g., infants with anencephaly—and from patients who ardently want to donate while still alive—e.g., (...) patients in a permanent vegetative state. One argument against abandoning the dead donor rule has been that the rule is important to the general public. There is now data suggesting that this assumption also may be flawed. These findings add additional weight to proposals to abandon the dead donor rule so that organ supply can be expanded in a way that is consistent with traditional notions of ethics, law, public policy, and public opinion. (shrink)

The policy changes governing the relations between the pharmaceutical, medical device and service industries and academic clinical research physicians, recommended by the Institute of Medicine,1 the American Academy of Medical Colleges,2 and much discussed in the media and on our campuses, aim to create some protective ethical firewalls. However, some potentially critical consequences of these steps are missed if we do not acknowledge what else is on the table, and who is sitting at it. By only reacting defensively to the (...) juggernaut of righteous indignation over the loss of purity in a faculty physician's approach to medical problem solving, we are allowing the process to blind us to the difficulties in establishing fair and equitable management of all of the potential conflicts of commitment and conflicts of interest we incur, not only as faculty members, but also as departments and academic medical centres . Critically, this involves all sources of revenue—private, commercial and public—that support our professional and institutional commitments as well as our personal finances.i To counter the present crackdown on inappropriate financial relationships effectively, we will need to reframe the questions, and convince all stakeholders to the process that there is more to this crisis than can be resolved through our public confessions of commercial largesse obliged. The Phrma Code guidelines3 have resulted in what is believed to be a defensible, if as yet legally untested, compartmentalisation of the commercial sector's marketing, medical education and research sponsorship activities. We at the AMC are a long way from understanding how those same missions, as they emanate from our multifarious commitments, can be isolated and individually managed. Defining the parameters for establishing institutional conflicts of interest and commitment are beyond our essay's scope, but with the very public emphasis on capitalist subversion of …. (shrink)

Index to the Dhammasangani. Compiled by Tetsuya Tabata, Satoshi Nonome and Shoko Bando. Pali Text Society, London 1987. vii, 128 pp. £8.75.

Mixed-strategy equilibria are typically rather unstable in evolutionary game theory. “Monocyclic” games, such as Rock–Paper–Scissors, have only mixed equilibria, some of which are “stable” in the sense that sequential best replies lead to them; yet, even these games are prone to stable cycles under discrete-time simultaneous best replies, giving an unusual equilibrium-selection problem. This article analyzes such games in a random-utility setting where changing strategies is costly, and the speed of the dynamic is, thus, endogenous. The stochastically stable outcome is (...) determined by the cost of switching strategies; when switching costs are high, mixed equilibria are selected, whereas when switching costs are low, cycles are selected. (shrink)

The views and arguments presented in these papers provide a comprehensive review of the ethical problems raised by market societies and their impact on the quality of our lives.

“We shouldn’t be scared of philosophy. Ideas are always in charge, we might as well get self-conscious about what they are.”.