Thursday, March 20, 2008

The ceremonial closing of the tabs

I've been reading all kinds of stuff this week, including census records for insane asylums in the 1890's, and I've got a few things to close up.

From the New England Journal of Medicine:

Guns, Fear, the Constitution, and the Public's Health

The premed student I mentor sent that to me. Very disturbing and educational. It debunks several myths such as that laxer gun laws lead to lower crime.

Gun violence is often an unintended consequence of gun ownership. Americans have purchased millions of guns, predominantly handguns, believing that having a gun at home makes them safer. In fact, handgun purchasers substantially increase their risk of a violent death. This increase begins the moment the gun is acquired — suicide is the leading cause of death among handgun owners in the first year after purchase — and lasts for years.

The risks associated with household exposure to guns apply not only to the people who buy them; epidemiologically, there can be said to be "passive" gun owners who are analogous to passive smokers. Living in a home where there are guns increases the risk of homicide by 40 to 170% and the risk of suicide by 90 to 460%. Young people who commit suicide with a gun usually use a weapon kept at home, and among women in shelters for victims of domestic violence, two thirds of those who come from homes with guns have had those guns used against them.

Also from the same journal:

A calcified traumatic hematoma.

Check out the image, it's really interesting. The patient is having it surgically removed because he can't wear a helmet. I'm guessing he's also subject to a certain amount of teasing.

A sad article about adoption and "feeble-minded" children.

Henry Herbert Goddard, Director of the Training School for Backward and Feeble-Minded Children in Vineland, New Jersey, was the single most prominent authority on “feeble-mindedness” during the early part of the century. Best known for introducing the term “moron” into the English language, he was outspoken about his opposition to adoption and his preference for institutionalization. “Normal” children were qualified for family life, according to his view. “Feeble-minded” children were not.


And

Elaborate classification schemes for mental deviation were created—separating idiots from imbeciles and morons from dullards—in hopes that they would improve selection and placement techniques. Mental evaluation was considered so important to making adoption work that W.H. Slingerland, author of one of the first professional texts on family placement, issued the following warning in 1919. “To put a low grade mental defective in a family home where a normal child was expected is a social crime, once to be condoned because of ignorance, but now inexcusable in a well-ordered and progressive child-placing agency.”


And finally, let's match Terry Pratchett's one million dollar donation to Alzheimer's research. This week I saw an article saying that one in eight baby boomers has this illness. But there is little money for research, for every dollar that cancer research gets Alzheimer's gets three cents.

http://www.matchitforpratchett.org/

Let's help change that.

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