Censorship of the Patient-Physician Relationship

A New Florida Law

1. Lindsey Murtagh, JD, MPH; 
2. Matthew Miller, MD, MPH, ScD

Author Affiliations: Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts.

1. Corresponding Author: Matthew Miller, MD, MPH, ScD, Harvard School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115 (mmiller@hsph.harvard.edu).

More author information

In June 2011, Florida House Bill 155 (HB155)^1​ became law, marking an unprecedented intrusion into the patient-physician relationship. The law states that licensed Florida health care practitioners and health care facilities “should refrain from making a written inquiry or asking questions concerning the ownership of a firearm or ammunition by the patient or by a family member of the patient, or the presence of a firearm in a private home or other domicile of the patient or a family member of the patient.” Additionally, practitioners and facilities are instructed against recording such information (if disclosed) in the medical record. Exceptions accompany both prohibitions. If a clinician “in good faith believes” that the information is “relevant to the patient's medical care or safety, or the safety of others” she or he may inquire; entry into the medical record is only prohibited if the clinician “knows” it is “not relevant.”

These exceptions are broad, but poorly defined, and violators face disciplinary action from the Board of Medicine under Florida Statute §456.072(2) that may include penalties such as suspension or revocation of a clinician's license or an administrative fine of up to $10 000. Given the potentially harsh penalties for breaching the law and the vague guidance regarding exceptional circumstances, this Florida law, entitled “Privacy of Firearm Owners,”¹ will likely have a chilling effect on patient-physician discussions about the risks posed by a gun in the home, even in situations permissible under the statute. We believe this law is a form of censorship that directly undermines the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship. With other states having considered bills similar to the Florida firearm owners' privacy law,^2​ we explore the medical, ethical, and legal issues presented by the law./.../

Drug to Fight Any Viral Infection

Transmission electron micrograph of the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus

CMSP / Getty Images

Scientists at MIT are developing a new drug that may fight viruses as effectively as antibiotics like penicillin dispatch bacteria. The broad-spectrum treatment is designed to trigger cell-suicide in cells that have been invaded by any virus, thereby halting infection, [...]

By MEREDITH MELNICK

HTTP://WWW.PLOSONE.ORG/ARTICLE/INFO%3ADOI%2F10.1371%2FJOURNAL.PONE.0022572

New Treatment Against Leukemia Shows Promise

Study: New Treatment Against Leukemia Shows Promise in Three Patients
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

Scientists are reporting the first clear success with a new approach for treating leukemia — turning the patients' own blood cells into assassins that hunt and destroy their cancer cells. They've only done it in three patients so far, but [...]

DNA in Space? Biological Building Blocks Found in Meteorites

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK Thursday, Aug. 11, 2011

Meteorites contain a large variety of nucleobases, an essential building block of DNA.

Chris Smith / NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

• COMMENTScientists have been finding evidence of life inside meteorites for well over 100 years — that, or the building blocks of life. The claims of life have been debunked every time, most recently just this past March. It always turns out to be a wishful interpretation of chemicals, minerals and tiny structures inside the meteorite that couldbe the fossilized husks of long-dead bacteria, but almost certainly aren't.

The building blocks, though, have proven a lot more convincing. As far back as the 1960's, it was clear that amino acids, which link up to form proteins, can and do form in space. And now, scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, are claiming that another set of molecules crucial to life have also rained down on Earth: adenine and guanine, two of the four so-called nucleobases that, along with cytosine and thymine, form the rungs of DNA's ladder-like structure./.../(See pictures of meteors that fell from the sky.)

Social Media’s Impact on Kids A Mixed Bag

Social media has both risks and benefits to children, according to psychologists who study their effects. And some believe parents’ usual efforts to monitor their child’s online activity are frankly a waste of time.

Home » News » Technology News » Social Media’s Impact on Kids A Mixed Bag

 
By RICK NAUERT PHD Senior News Editor

Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on August 8, 2011

The comments were presented during the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.

“While nobody can deny that Facebook has altered the landscape of social interaction, particularly among young people, we are just now starting to see solid psychological research demonstrating both the positives and the negatives,” said Larry D. Rosen, Ph.D., who has done extensive research on the “psychology of technology.”/.../

Bike Sharing Could Save Lives: Study

A study of Barcelona's bike-sharing program -- called Bicing -- showed that the system not only saved 9,000 tons of pollution from carbon dioxide, but it also led to 12 fewer cycling deaths a year. The study was published last week in the British Medical Journal.

Tobacco Industry Agriculture Exploitation

SIGNATURES

207 

PETITIONING

World Health Organization Tobacco Free Initiative

+ 1 other

STARTED BY

Marty Otañez

OVERVIEW 

While they produce the key ingredient for one of the most profitable industries in the world, tobacco farmers are often trapped in poverty where they experience many forms of exploitation due to the practices of Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and other cigarette manufacturers, and Universal Corporation, Alliance One International, and other leaf buying companies. Child labor, forced labor, bonded labor, debt servitude, poverty wages and other labor violations characterize the conditions for many workers. The US Department of Labor has identified at least fifteen countries whose tobacco is produced by forced and/or child labor. Individuals working in tobacco fields are the most affected by pesticide poisoning and Green Tobacco Sickness (nicotine poisoning through skin absorption). Tobacco growing communities are also impacted by soil depletion, water pollution, deforestation and food insecurity. Focusing this important day on the labor rights, human rights and environmental issues in tobacco farming will play a critical role in calling attention to the practices of cigarette manufacturers and leaf buying companies that contribute to these problems and inspire new initiatives to end these abuses.

Read Petition Letter

Pneumologia: Princípios e Prática

Do AMICOR Luiz Carlos Correa da Silva

2513 - AMICOR 14

Caros AMICOR, seguem abaixo os links para as postagens da última semana que podem ser acessados também diretamente visitando o Blog

▼  2011 (498)

• ▼  August (17)
  • Influenza Recycling and Epidemiologic Evolution
  • Compression Stockings Help Sleep Apnea
  • Gene Fingerprint Points Out Dangerous Plaques
  • Antidepressant Use Up Among Undiagnosed Americans
  • British Library 
  • Graphic Warnings for Cigarette Labels

• • Int. Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related...
  • global tobacco epidemic, 2011
  • Estudios Socioespaciales
  • noncommunicable diseases
  • More Exercise Means Better Heart Health
  • Endoplasmic Stress Protein C/EBP Homologous in Art...
  • New Clinical Profile of Stress Cardiomyopathy CME
  • Milk and Soy Protein Intake Reduce Systolic BP
  • Tiny blood card offers easier tests for remote are...
  • UN Summit on non-communicable diseases

• ►  July (64)

• Health care in Brazil
• 
  

Influenza Recycling and Epidemiologic Evolution

A AMICOR Dra. Maria Inês Reinert Azambuja estará domingo, dia 07, no Congresso Mundial de Epidemiologia apresentando o Poster que poderá ser aberto clicando no título.
3. CONCLUSION: Omran was right when he postulated a role for epidemiology in the development of a theory of population change, but he failed to provide one, constrained as he was by the ideas of his time – economic development and biologic degeneration.
We are now at a different moment, when ideas of gene-environment interactions and of a continuing ‘updating’ of our biology are well developed and ecologic approaches to human health, common before the inception of the degenerative idea, need to be recovered.
Alternativa de acesso: 
https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AX-0JjscwhtpZGQ4enZycHFfNzgwZzl0cGdxZ2c&hl=en_US

Compression Stockings Help Sleep Apnea

By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today Published: August 05, 2011 Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner

Compression stockings might be a simple – and low-tech – way to improve sleep apnea in patients who also have chronic venous insufficiency in the lower limbs, researchers reported. In a small randomized cross-over study, wearing the stockings during the day reduced episodes of apnea and hypopnea by more than a third, according to Stefania Redolfi, MD, now at the University of Brescia in Brescia, Italy, and colleagues in Paris and Toronto./.../

Gene Fingerprint Points Out Dangerous Plaques

By Crystal Phend, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today Published: August 04, 2011 Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco. Action Points   Explain that a genetic signature might pinpoint arterial plaques that are prone to cause strokes. Point out that a profile of above average expression of five microRNA segments characterized about three-quarters of the stroke patients whereas traditional risk factors didn't differ from asymptomatic cases. Note that the results could not prove a causal role of the microRNA signature in plaque destabilization. A genetic signature might pinpoint arterial plaques that are prone to cause strokes, Italian researchers found. Carotid atherosclerosis in ischemic stroke patients expressed higher levels of five microRNA segments compared with asymptomatic cases, Francesco Cipollone, MD, of "G. d'Annunzio" University in Chieti, Italy, and colleagues reported. A profile of above average expression of the microRNAs characterized about three-quarters of the stroke patients whereas traditional risk factors didn't differ from asymptomatic cases, they reported online in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association. Thus, this profile might pick out unstable plaques to identify patients at risk for ischemic events while also presenting a way to treat them, Cipollone's group suggested./.../

Antidepressant Use Up Among Undiagnosed Americans

First Posted: 8/4/11 01:48 PM ET Updated: 8/4/11 03:21 PM ET

Antidepressants are increasingly prescribed for people who have not been diagnosed with an actual psychiatric disorder, according to a new study that raises questions about whether or not the drugs are being prescribed inappropriately or too often.

According to the new study, published Thursday in the journal Health Affairs, nearly three-quarters of prescriptions written for antidepressants in 2007 came from non-psychiatrists, up from 60 percent a decade earlier./.../

British Library offers e-classics app for iPad

The electronic copy of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe includes elaborate line drawings

Continue reading the main story

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The British Library is making digital copies of more than 40,000 classic books available for the iPad.

Texts appear in fully digitised form, complete with original page markings and drawings, as opposed to the plain formatting associated with other types of e-books.

All of the works date from the 18th and 19th centuries and include novels, poetry and historical accounts.

Users must pay a monthly subscription of £1.99 to access the full collection.

"E-books tend to be rather two-dimensional. Rather flat and dull to look at," said Simon Bell, head of partnerships at the British Library.

"One of beauties of this is that it tries to represent in facsimile the beauty of the book."/.../

Half of Alzheimer's Cases Preventable?

More than half of the cases of Alzheimer's disease worldwide could be prevented if enough people made relatively simple lifestyle changes. Evidence presented at the Alzheimer Association's International Conference in Paris in July illustrated that seven factors are associated with up to half of all Alzheimer's cases:

1. Low education (possibly because less education means less opportunity to develop neural connections to carry into old age)
2. Smoking
3. Too little exercise (the leading problem in the U.S.)
4. Untreated or inadequately treated depression
5. Mid-life high blood pressure
6. Diabetes
7. Mid-life obesity

The risk factors were gleaned from research performed by Deborah Barnes, Ph.D., a mental health researcher at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, who analyzed studies from around the world that included data from hundreds of thousands of participants. Researchers estimated that cutting these risk factors by 25 percent could reduce Alzheimer's incidence worldwide by three million cases and by half a million fewer cases in the U.S.