We use the format of a hypothetical case study to review issues related to pharmaceutical product approval and physician prescribing practices. In this case, a new FDA-approved drug is recommended for a patient who subsequently experiences an adverse event that may or may not be related to the prescription. This case raises a number of ethical and legal considerations physicians routinely face when deciding whether to recommend such drugs for their patients. Despite the need for ongoing observation by the regulatory (...) apparatus, physicians should be cognizant of the limitations of the drug approval system and the post-approval prescription drug surveillance system. We discuss physicians’ ethical obligations when faced with a newly approved drug, including seeking out independent sources of learning, reporting adverse effects, and notifying patients about limitations in available knowledge about therapeutic recommendations. (shrink)

Amph. prol. 90–91. In the Amphitruo Plautus runs great risk of giving oflence by bringing Jupiter on the stage. In the prologue he conciliates the audience by saying that this Jupiter is no god but a mere actor. : 26 sqq. Etenim ille quois hue iussu uenio Iuppiter Non minu' quam uostrum quiuis formidat malum: Humana matre natus, humano patre, Mirari non est aequom sibi si praetimet.

Cicero defines gloria as frequens de aliquo fama cum laude, ‘much talk about a person to his praise.’ When the talk is by the person himself, the word takes the signification ‘boast’.

Caper in his section on the preposition ex cited Ennius, Ann. 309:nauibus explebant sese terrasque replebant,and declared that Virgil used the verb with this antique sense in Aen. 6, 545:discedam; explebo numerum reddarque tenebris,i.e. ‘minuam vestrum numerum.’This we are told in Servius' note, which begins: Ut diximus supra, explebo est minuam. Thilo gives no reference to any such previous words of Servius, and I have failed to find them. Can it be that Servius has carelessly transcribed a note of Donatus, (...) and that Donatus had discussed ex minuens at Geo. 2, 65, or 4, 145? Donatus' note on Terence, Hec. 755, is Explere exinanire Terentianum est; the passage of Terence is:eas ad mulieres huc intro atque istuc iusiurandum idempolliceare illis: exple animum îs teque hoc crimine expedi,i.e., relieve their mind of suspicion against Pamphilus and free yourself from this charge. The phrase recurs in the next Scene :illis modo explete animum.i atque exple animum îs, coge ut credant. (shrink)

Phage DNA packaging occurs by DNA translocation into a prohead. Terminases are enzymes which initiate DNA packaging by cutting the DNA concatemer, and they are closely fitted structurally to the portal vertex of the prohead to form a ‘packasome’. Analysis among a number of phages supports an active role of the terminases in coupling ATP hydrolysis to DNA translocation through the portal. In phage T4 the small terminase subunit promotes a sequence‐specific terminase gene amplification within the chromosome. This link between (...) recombination and packaging suggests a DNA synapsis mechanism by the terminase to control packaging initiation, formally homologous to eukaryotic chromosome segregation. (shrink)

In the Glossary-codex, Vat. Lat. 1469, written in the year 908, fol. 83 has been assigned to ‘glossae collectae.’ They begin : In Passione Apostolorum. Iussit eum inaumachia cathomis consumi. Cathomis: uirgis nodosis. Hie naumachia forum signat Romanorum quod Prorostris dicitur eo quod rostra, etc.. In Sancto Sebastiano. Saturnus apocatasticus : id est dispositor et destructor fatorum. Annus tuus ex diametro susceptus est. Diametrum est, etc. ‘Glossae collectae’ from the Bible and from Jerome's prefaces come next.

The AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) has written a position paper on how social medical use challenges medical professionalism. The report offers persuasive ethical and practical guidelines for nonclinical internet use, specifically for social networking.This commentary provides a framework from which to apply these guidelines, but adds that there may be important situations in which physicians are not able to act in accordance. The guidelines call for professional reporting of questionable online portrayals or behaviors, but this commentary (...) argues that this may be not only cumbersome to implement, but may violate aspects of constitutional rights. While online social networking may in many ways be a new application of old challenges, there may be other aspects that require novel approaches to medical professionalism. (shrink)

Since Teuffel's Römische Literatur mentions s.v. Varius the famous entry in the Monte Cassino MS. incipit thvestes varii, but ignores its occurrence in a Benevento MS. , it may be well to give some account of the latter codex. For I read with amusement a recent article in this journal in which the writer severely censured Mr. Garrod's ignorance of the entry in Paris 7530, but revealed his own ignorance by assuming that it was the scribe of the Paris MS. (...) who had the lost tragedy of Varius before him. (shrink)

Egypt has not yet given us a Greek original of Plautus, unless the paltry Hibeh fragments belong to the original of the Aulularia. If they do, then Plautus departed widely from the Greek. And that is what one would expect. Read any ‘sermo’ in Plautus and see how recklessly he abandons himself to the vagaries of his humour. Clearly no ‘icily regular’ Greek is his guide there. Still a ray of light has come from Egypt that illumines one dark spot (...) in Plautus, the end of the first Scene of the Bacchides. The two sisters retreat into the house after a line which appears in our editions in this form. (shrink)

The Teubner edition of Festus de Verborum Significatu had scarcely appeared when Professor Anspach announced his discovery of a MS. of Isidore's Etymologies with some Scholia taken from Festus. Last Easter, in the limited time at my disposal, I transcribed from the MS. the greater part of this Isidore Commentary and, later, received a transcript of the remainder from Abbe Liebaert some weeks before his death. Although hampered by the deficiencies of our University Library, I am unwilling to keep this (...) new evidence any longer from students of Festus. (shrink)

In the Teubner edition, just published, I had to reduce the apparatus criticus to the smallest possible dimensions. All conjectures that were merely probable and not fairly certain had to be excluded. Some of them that are new may find a place here. There is only one MS. of Festus′ epitome of Verrius. It is now at Naples, and is said to have been found in Illyria. Dr. E. A. Loew, the leading authority on Italian script, tells us that it (...) was written at Rome towards the end of the eleventh century. It must have been rescued from a fire; for the outer edges of all the pages are burned away, so that the greater part of the outer of the two columns on each page has been lost. The chief task for editors is to fill up by conjecture these gaps in the outer columns. Scaliger won immortal fame in this work, although many of his conjectures merely followed out a suggestion of his predecessor, Augustini. Ursini and Miiller were of service in adapting to the conditions of space the stop-gaps of Scaliger, and both of them, chiefly Miiller, added excellent conjectures of their own. The conjectural supplements, printed in italics in Müller's edition, have often, especially in German students′ dissertations, been treated as if they were actually part of the text. The Hungarian editor, Emil Thewrewk, who first provided satisfactory manuscript material for Paulus′ epitome of Festus, in order to prevent this error, took the extreme course of omitting these supplements in his edition; although many of them are made absolutely certain by the words of Paulus. I have taken a middle course between Miiller and Thewrewk and have admitted the certain and the probable supplements, leaving blanks elsewhere. The supplements are printed within angular brackets, the merely probable supplements being in italic type. (shrink)

Charisivs, in his chapter on Adverbs, cites for Hispane a line of Ennius' Annals : Hispane, non Romane memoretis loqui me. Professor Norden , the apostle of Combinations-forschung, combines this fact with another fact mentioned by Livy , the celebre per Hispaniam responsum of a Spanish town to a Roman embassy. But why does he ignore a third fact which must be brought into any combination that can be convincing—the quotation of this line of Ennius by Festus in a paragraph (...) which apparently deals with Graeco-Roman affinities ? (shrink)

The line is preserved in a passage of Consentius ‘De Barbarismis et Metaplasmis’ : sicut Lucilius ‘ore corupto’; dempsit enim unam litteram per metaplasmum, r; et Ennius ‘huic statuam,’ etc.

Everyone interested in Latin Etymology knows the last word on mehercle, that the old vocative of meus is prefixed to the old Second Declension form Herclus, Voc. -lě. Without discussing whether this explanation is wholly true or partly wrong, I wish here to disqualify two pieces of evidence. Both originate from a marginal annotation on Rufinus' translation of Eusebius' Church History in, I think, a seventh-century English MS. These marginalia were used for the Leyden Glossary and for the common source (...) of the E E and Corpus Glossaries. The compiler of Leid. transferred them unaltered to his pages; and in the section devoted to Rufinus glosses we find Mehercule: mi fortis. The other compiler often recasts them for dictionary purposes. He gave this item the form Herculus: fortis . But of course the original annotation mi fortis was a mere lucky guess, and the substitution of ‘Herculus’ for Hercules was sheer ignorance. (shrink)

That Isidore′s etymological encyclopaedia should still remain to be edited seems strange at first sight; a book which makes a bridge between ancient and modern learning, and gives us a picture of the arts and sciences in Spain in the seventh century. Arevalo′s edition has a fair text, but practically no apparatus criticus; Otto′s offers the variants of a few worthless MSS. to support a very poor text. Since Otto′s, published some eighty years ago, there have been promises of editions, (...) but no actual edition. (shrink)

How any editor of Plautus can become one of the slash-cut-and-carve critics I cannot understand. The fair garden-beds of Plautus are scored all over with the hoof-prints of the reckless emender. Take this line of the Poenulus for example. Hanno gets a sight of his two long-lost daughters and is surprised to find how they have grown:Haecine meae sunt filiae?Quantae e quantillis iam sunt factae!His would-be son-in-law, not a very refined youth, says with a smile:Scin quid est?Thraecae sunt: in celonem (...) sustolli solent. (shrink)