Arizona's remarkably progressive involuntary treatment laws might have allowed Loughner's school to act. They permit involuntary evaluation and treatment of a person who desperately needs it.
Informed, willing and healthy prisoners should not be deprived of the opportunity to help the sick while improving their own prospects once they are free.
What should we make of Arizona's new law for rationing organ transplants?
The medical profession has suffered some serious self-inflicted wounds, and a new book by Carl Elliott focuses on how he thinks medicine has gone wrong but is short on solutions.
Altruism is simply not enough to satisfy the global organ shortage that has spawned illegal and unregulated organ markets, so government-sponsored compensation of healthy of individuals who are willing to give one of their kidneys is the best short-term solution.
The policy climate that will greet new doctors will put the prospect of rich doctor-patient relationships under further strain, but an induction ritual acknowledging as much would not hurt.
A new rule broadens the definition of post-traumatic stress disorder, allowing non-combat veterans to receive disability benefits for being traumatized by events they did not actually experience.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is implementing new rules that seek to make it easier for veterans that have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder to receive disability, but misapplied largess can undermine the recovery prospects of other veterans.
Governments must provide in-kind incentives in order to spur organ donations, as altruism cannot be the sole legitimate motive for donating, and to achieve the true end of saving more lives.
Meaningful rewards for living donations could provide the answer to the kidney shortage.
There is more data out now that helps us look into the correlation between the brain and the phenomenon of addiction.
As ingenious, painstaking and justifiably attention-getting as domino swaps are, they should not blot out the dismal news that rates of kidney donation, from both living and deceased donors, fall woefully short of the need.
The American Psychiatric Association has released the blueprint for the fifth edition of its official handbook of diagnoses, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Will the proposed revisions, which could place more of the population under pathology, help us to better understand mental disorders?
Is it politically desirable for society to credit a designated group called "bioethicists" with expertise in resolving the most difficult moral questions?
American Journal of Bioethics
January 29, 2010
What are the implications of the brain disease model of addiction?
Israel should be commended for its two-pronged approach to its organ problem: incentives and efforts to combat trafficking.
Observing Bioethics chronicles the growth of bioethics as a profession through a combination of interviews with major figures in the field and personal observations by the authors.
There is nothing bizarre or macabre about the reciprocal benefits of incentivized organ donation.
Expelling college students for suicidal thoughts or behavior violates clinical common sense; instead, universities should adopt enlightened individualized approaches to helping these vulnerable students.
Can marketers tell how successful a product will be by measuring consumers' brainwave responses to advertisements?
The U.S. Preventive Task Force's recent recommendation that women should not begin routine mammograms until age fifty has sparked controversy.
Kaplan and Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry
November 20, 2009
Chapter covering the clinical reality and political implications of posttraumatic stress disorder.
We must enable more patients in wealthy countries to obtain transplants at home by empowering their governments, under strict regulation, to offer incentives to prospective donors.
For grant-winners whose studies will involve human volunteers, another big hurdle remains: federal ethics regulations.
As long as an organ shortage persists there will be black markets; the only remedy is more organs.
Congress must permit donors to accept third-party benefits for saving the life of a stranger, otherwise desperate patients and donors will continue to be reluctant co-conspirators in crime.
Did Steve Jobs' wealth buy him a faster liver transplant? It certainly helped--and the Apple CEO's odyssey showcases some of the problems with organ donations in America.
It is time for a state to challenge the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act and offer funeral benefits or some other reward to the estate of those who will give their organs at death.
A true public health solution to inadequate care--one that seeks to maximize the health of all Americans--would more properly target all underserved populations, irrespective of group membership.
The public is receptive to the idea of rewarding organ donors. It's time to leverage that receptivity.
Altering public attitudes toward the mentally ill depends largely on whether they receive treatment that works.
Singapore's new law is a positive step toward making the transplant market more transparent.
To help remedy the organ shortage, the District of Columbia should pass a law enabling donors to receive benefits for their sacrifice.
We should offer well-informed individuals a reward if they are willing to save a stranger's life.
Our nation's current organ donation system relies on altruism alone, but a regime of donor compensation would be better.
According to pop science, brain chemistry is the reason all those smart people fell for Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme.
Divorce settlements have always cost an arm and a leg, but as the shocking Batista case demonstrates, vital organs are now fair game. Can altruism ever be regulated?
Is it ethical for doctors to prescribe placebos to patients?
The government should devise a safe, regulated system in which would-be donors are offered incentives to donate a kidney.
AEI Online
September 11, 2008
Despite claims to the contrary, addiction is not a universal ailment. There are certain characteristics that increase the risk of becoming addicted to drugs.
Despite claims to the contrary, addiction is not a universal ailment. There are certain characteristics that increase the risk of becoming addicted to drugs.
The National Kidney Foundation's recalcitrance on financial incentives for organ donors is hurting the very constituency it purports to serve.
Efforts to improve the health of minorities will be most successful when they target the factors associated with socioeconomic disadvantage.
Legalizing the sale of organs will correct, not copy, the sins of the organ black market.
Should criminals have equal access to scarce medical treatments?
Enhancing health care for racial and ethnic minorities must include creative solutions.
Full disability status may undermine the possibility of recovery because its very nature suggests a small likelihood of improvement.
In the face of a global organ shortage, countries are cracking down on "transplant tourism"--travel by patients to procure organs overseas.
The real threat to medicine and the public interest is suppression of freedom of university-based researchers to interact with their scientific colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry.
Many of the quandaries that plague transplant medicine flow from the need to ration scarce resources.
The organ transplant list is approaching 100,000 patients, but the waitlist doesn't reflect the full scope of the problem.
Veterans diagnosed with major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder,or any other anxiety disorder stemming from military activity need to be treated as well as compensated.
Psychiatry has transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorders due to the uncertainty of the true workings of the brain.
A personal story of heroic altruism (and the painful limits of altruism).
There are few behaviors more deserving of stigmatization than addiction.
Why aren't we closer to understanding the relationship between manifest illness and its underlying causes?
A bad incentive structure creates a dire shortage.
Addiction is not a brain disease, regardless of what Congress claims.
Testimony on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other personality disorders affecting U.S. military veterans.
Some questions we can legitimately ask ofthe potential U.S. Surgeon General.
We can limit the social, physical, and economic damage of drug addictionby treating addicts as people with the power to shape their own lives.
It is not shared history withpatients, but rather variety and quality of experience that determine how successful psychotherapistscan be.
Do not expect change any time soon. Federal "advocates" are standing in the way of reform.
The latest bad rap for OxyContin threatens to inflict more pain on those who truly benefit from the drug.
In her book Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington sows more distrust and alienation, widening the very "health divide" that she seeks to repair.
Altruism is beautiful, but it is not powerful enough to save everyone who needs a kidney.
Compulsorytreatment may prevent future massacres like the one at Virginia Tech.
A review ofJonathan Cohn's Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis--and the People Who Pay the Price.
When a kind-hearted donor givesa strangerher kidney, who is exploited?
The Norwood Act is specifically designed to help patients who already have a willing donor but cannot receivea kidney transplant because of biological incompatibility.
Has the prevalence of residual post-traumatic stress disorder been overstated?
Sally Satel, M.D., reviews a book about how campus therapists sabotage their patients.
Can a person ascribe blame for his present-day actions to events from his past?
The common-sense use of the term "addiction" is that regular consumption is irresistible and that it creates problems. Caffeine use does not fit this profile.
Eleven Americans die each day because they cannot get a kidney transplant. The best way to provide more kidneys is tocompensate donors.
An exceptional friendship provides a remarkable window into the state of organ donations in this country.
For the new generation of Iraq war veterans, it is imperative that we pair our proper concern over the scope of the care they need with serious consideration of the philosophy guiding that care.
Few veterans are likely to endure a subsequent lifetime of chronic anguish or dysfunction of the kind that requires long-term disability entitlement.
Strict monitoring, with predictable and meaningful consequences is often the best medicine for people with addictions.
Every drinker has a moral obligation to examine what he does when intoxicated.
Instead of letting thousands die each year while waiting for an organ transplant, we should test the market’s ability to meet the demand.
A review of Ronald Dworkin's book Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class.
The message is clear: A slowly dying patient must not take any initiative to save his own life, even though the status quo is pitifully inadequate.
If we really want to increase the supply of organs, we need to try incentives--financial and otherwise.
The imperative to innovate and experiment is great because altruism alone cannot solve the problems of the organ donation system.
Company funded trials are valuable, but more needs to be done.
The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has released its Consensus Statement of Mental Health Recovery. It is a travesty of psychiatric care.
Are differences in treatment due to deliberate discrimination or other (less invidious) factors?
The Department of Veterans Affairs is now paying compensation for post-traumatic stress disordera newround of veterans--those in their 50s and 60s who fought in Vietnam.
A review of Harry Bruinius's Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity.
The “biased-doctor” model is a woeful misimpression of reality, but one that has become a staple of the “health disparities” campaign.
The search for better anti-addiction medications is worthy, but we have to be realistic. The passive model of drug treatment for addiction is a pipe dream.
Cigarette smoke may not be an equal opportunity carcinogen.
What does it take to get the FDA to revisit a precedent?
Is it really more ethical for people to go on dialysis or die while waiting for an organ?
The fact is that meth is a devastating drug for those who abuse it, casting a vast halo of destruction across communities. To say so is not crying meth.
The Weekly Standard
October 31, 2005
In the world of science policy, it is not a matter of truth on one side and distortion on the other. Each side exploits ambiguities and uncertainties to suit its needs.
National Review Online
September 27, 2005
Research is about averages while clinical practice is always about the individual in the doctor's office. Balancing symptom relief with side effects is a delicate and idiosyncratic process.
A lesson from 9/11 is that therapists must find a balance between letting people know help is available and suggesting that they need help when they do not.
The Breastapo are at it again, trying to dictate what American women should and shouldn't do with their breasts.
New York Times
August 16, 2005
Why is marijuana, of all drugs, the main target of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy?
Washington Post
August 14, 2005
Being human is not a condition in need of a cure.
A review of The Ethical Brain, by Michael S. Gazzaniga.
Recent years have seen a flood of books and articles pushing the notion that Americans are emotionally damaged. Please.
Tech Central Station
June 14, 2005
At issue in Geneva are claims by indigenous and local communities that foreign interests are exploiting their cultural and biological bounties.
Los Angeles Times
June 13, 2005
The right kind of mental health treatment for returning veterans is vital.
New York Times
June 8, 2005
Developing cannabis into aneffective prescription medication can be a goal within reach. But it will take a federal government that is truly open to the research that it claims to value.
New York Post
May 12, 2005
A new report shows that children attending school near Ground Zero on9/11were muchless likely to have a mental disorder than children anywhere else in New York City.
New York Sun
April 25, 2005
An interview with resident scholarsChristina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, authors ofOne Nation under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance.
AEI Online
April 14, 2005
Indignation over Harvard president Lawrence Summers's commentsregarding possible differences between men and women has exposed the lack of intellectual debate in academia.
National Review Online
April 12, 2005
In the feminist mind, a woman has the right to choose what she does to her bodyso long as she chooses the right thing.
Apparently, a woman has the right to choose what she does to her body as long as she chooses the right thing.
Wall Street Journal
March 29, 2005
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University hosted a forum for indignation over the possibility of inborn differences between the sexes raised by Larry Summers.
New York Times
March 29, 2005
Psychological aid is regarded by non-Western recipients as a kind gesture but a bad fit; Sri Lanken health officials discouragedcounselors to their country daysafter the tsunami struck.
Advertising Age
February 28, 2005
With shows like Seinfeld and Lawand Order people just can't get enough, in part because NBC understood that their proliferation would make them more, not less, addictive.
USA Today
February 21, 2005
All behaviors have physical markers. As neuroscientists identify more of them, will anyone be held accountable for anything?
Tech Central Station
February 16, 2005
Changes to the rules for patenting new discoveries derived from natural molecules could destroy theincentive to pursue cures.
New York Times
January 18, 2005
Major cuts in drug- and alcohol-related harm depend not on genes but on choices by policy makers and individual citizens.
Psychiatric aid should not be the first kind of assistance on a trauma scene.
Medical Progress Today (Manhattan Institute)
December 10, 2004
Diseases and treatments are not colorblind, so doctors and researchers should not be either.
New York Times
October 19, 2004
States should require that prosecutors first obtain declarations from qualified medical experts as to the good faith of the physician in question before charges are filed.
New York Times
October 10, 2004
In her new book The Cult of Personality, Annie Murphy Paul argues that personality tests confine people by identifying weaknesses thateither arenot there or can be overcome.
Medical Progress Today
September 30, 2004
The Food and Drug Administration should not allow sensationalism in the media to unduly influence its treatment of SSRIs and anti-depressant drugs.
Do antidepressants cause suicide in children? After simmering for over a year, the question boiled over beginning in the summer of 2004.
Wall Street Journal
September 10, 2004
Do such commonly prescribed antidepressants as Celexa, Paxil, and Zoloft cause suicide in children?
The problem with OxyContin is not the medicine itself, but its deliberate misuse.
The Public Interest
September 1, 2004
A number of influential recent studies purport to show that inequality in income--not poverty per se--has detrimental health consequences.
Wall Street Journal
August 6, 2004
It is long past time to put aside the incendiary claim that racism plays a meaningful role in the health status of African-Americans.
Los Angeles Times
July 1, 2004
As attention turns to the International AIDS Conference,the World Health Organizationmust regain the world's confidence and not foist unproven drug therapies on the world's poor.
New York Times
June 29, 2004
The temptation to psychoanalyze public figures from the safety of an armchair is a strong one, perhaps stronger for those with professional credentials.
New York Times
May 25, 2004
Drug regulators in Britain urge doctors not to use certain antidepressants, but in the United States officials have yet to make up their minds on safety issues.
Wall Street Journal
May 7, 2004
The surgeon general recentlytold Congress that "there is no significant scientific evidence that suggests smokeless tobacco is a safer alternative to cigarettes"; this is patently false.
The Weekly Standard
April 12, 2004
Sciencepolicy-watchersnow have the President's Council on Bioethics in their crosshairs.
Snus in particular, and smokeless tobacco in general, provide clear, lifesaving advantages over smoking that antitobacco activists refuse to acknowledge.
New York Times
April 6, 2004
Snus in particular, and smokeless tobacco in general, provide clear, lifesaving advantages over smoking that antitobacco activists refuse to acknowledge.
Some soldiers will return from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe psychological problems. However, imposing on them the questionable legacy of Vietnam will not do them any service.
New York Times
March 5, 2004
130,000 American troops will soon return from Iraq. Their arrival will bring joy to their families and gratitude from the nation. It will also renew a debate over post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Weekly Standard
March 1, 2004
The HHS report on health care disparities rightly attacks the disparity issue as a socioeconomic problem tied to access to quality care and to the health literacy of potential patients.
Althoughpost-traumatic stress disorder may notbe thatwidespread, debate has been renewed with an eye toward helping soldiers from Iraq reintegrate into civilian society.
AEI Bradley Lecture
February 9, 2004
Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel discuss the rise of "therapism" in America.
Psychiatric Services
December 1, 2003
New York Times
November 1, 2003
For many thousands of mentally ill people, America has failed to make good on John F. Kennedy's promise of 40 years ago.
AEI Online
November 1, 2003
Properly treating--rather than criminalizing--mental illness requires reforming our fragmented mental health care system and relaxing regulations to encourage patients to seek treatment.
USA Today
October 27, 2003
OxyContin, which offers relief to patients with searing, prolonged agony due to diseases such as cancer, neurological illness and degenerative discs, is getting a bad rap.
The Weekly Standard
October 13, 2003
The Senate's mental health parity bill is ill-conceived.
U.S. Air Force Academy
September 1, 2003
National Review Online
July 29, 2003
The president’s mental-health commission in denial.
Wall Street Journal
July 23, 2003
We should be tough about limiting the insurance burden for such drugs to those who do have serious illness, but if people pay for safe psychopharmacology, that should be their choice.
The New Republic
May 19, 2003
Richard J. McNally's Remembering Trauma is a powerful counterweight to literature that is often sloppy and to a field that is too often susceptible to the promptings of politics and culture.
Wall Street Journal
May 2, 2003
The Iraqi people have surely suffered terribly, but whether the war has rendered many of them in need of therapy is another matter entirely.
The word "addiction" is perilously close to losing any meaning, especially if lawyers can turn fast food into an addiction and pin liability on restaurants.
New York Times
March 3, 2003
The issue of forced medication is by no means new.
Psychiatric Services
March 1, 2003
Tech Central Station
February 3, 2003
OxyContin, the potent prescription painkiller, is in the spotlight.
It has been wisely said that alternative medicines are only alternative until they are proven to work--and then they are medicine.
The New York Times
September 13, 2002
The Wall Street Journal
July 26, 2002
As the anniversary of Sept. 11 looms we will be barraged with warnings of a resurgence of angst, butour natural resilience will serve us once again.
The New York Times
May 5, 2002
When it comes to practicing medicine, stereotyping often works.
The Vocal Majority
May 1, 2002
The Wall Street Journal
April 4, 2002
Are doctors prejudiced?
The Wall Street Journal
March 14, 2002
Sentence seriously mentally ill offenders to psychiatric treatment for the same length of time one would sentence any other offender.
Women's Quarterly
January 1, 2002
Jed Diamond insists that more than twenty-five million men in the U.S. between the ages of forty and fifty-five are now going through male menopause.
Wall Street Journal
December 13, 2001
The public health profession is not prepared for “preparedness” if one looks to the American Public Health Association for guidance.
Tech Central Station
December 7, 2001
Policy Review
December 1, 2001
Deliberately ignoring race in biomedical research can lead to inferior or improper treatment.
Wall Street Journal
October 15, 2001
Many grief counselors thinkthat Sept. 11 attacks triggered a national mental health crisis; not so.
American Experiment Quarterly
October 1, 2001
Review of PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine by Sally Satel.
The Wall Street Journal
September 11, 2001
To portrayAndrea Yatesasa symbol of motherhood underduressis a cynical move that trivializes a serious mental illness.
Washington Post
September 9, 2001
Science and politics do not mix very well, particularly when it comes to such hot-button issues as diversity.
Totake and perhaps face trial and execution, orto avoid medication, escape a deadly prosecution, but face a sentenceof years of psychic torment?
The Boston Globe
August 11, 2001
The Weekly Standard
July 16, 2001
Social conditionsaffect physical well-being, but public health practitioners arewrong to think they have special expertise in changing the income distribution ordefining social justice.
Physician's Weekly
June 11, 2001
Psychiatric Services
June 1, 2001
The Wall Street Journal
May 10, 2001
Independent Women's Forum discusses why government, schools, businesses, and hospitals have suffered under the regime of political correctness.
The Wall Street Journal
April 27, 2001
Robert Downey, Jr., is not an icon of a botched war on drugs; he is not evidence of the failure of criminal sanctions, his situation shouldn't argue against the virtues of drug treatment.
National Review Online
April 23, 2001
Orlando Sentinel
April 1, 2001
Social activists, scholars and even health professionals are telling us that the culture of medicine is to blame for many illnesses.
The Wall Street Journal
March 8, 2001
Women's groupsmust make women appear embattled and shortchanged if they are to gain government support, raise funds, and justify themselves in the eyes of the public.
Bridge News
February 28, 2001
What is urgently needed at the bedside of patients is not self-styled professional ethicists, but ethical doctors.
New York Post
January 31, 2001
Physician's Weekly
January 15, 2001
AEI Bradley Lecture Series
January 8, 2001
Sally Satel's Bradley Lecture.
The Atlantic Monthly
January 1, 2001
Ex Femina
October 1, 2000
As a psychiatrist, I have prescribed these anti-depressants to hundreds of people and, yes, there can be serious side effects, but those are very rare.
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