Doctors accountable

The prime technical innovator and product champion for glass-ceramics was a physical chemist, S. Donald Stookey (b. 1915 Figure 9.14), who Joined the Corning Laboratory in 1940 after a chemical doctorate at MIT. He has given an account of... 

Like many American chemists of his generation, Carothers was a product of the Midwest. Born on April 27, 1896, he grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, attended college in Missouri, and earned a doctorate in chemistry in Illinois. He was the oldest of four children, and, by all accounts, his upbringing was deeply religious, straitlaced, and narrow in outlook. 

Human illness, as a result of microbial infection, is an ever-increasing public health crisis. Children often represent the most at-risk population. Worldwide every year billions of cases of microbial infection occur and millions of deaths can be directly attributed to microbial pathogens.1 The Centers for Disease Control estimates that microbial infections are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, with approximately 75,000 deaths attributable to microbial pathogens annually.2 Not only are there serious physical health effects associated with microbial infections, but the cost of health care associated with microbial infections is shocking. For example, in the United States alone, upper respiratory tract infections in children under the age of 15 account for more than 50 million visits to a doctor s office each year.3... 

Two mid-term objectives are closely related to the principal goal of RP. The first of them has to do with encouraging price competition, as it provides an incentive for companies to bring their prices close to the reference level. This is precisely one of the reasons why the European Commission5 recommends RP. The second mid-term objective concerns incentives, as it takes into account the cost-effectiveness ratio of prescription drags by increasing the financial responsibility of patients, which in turn may influence prescriber decisions. It is important to note that, unlike in traditional co-payment, under this system the patient s share of the cost of the product is avoidable if the patient and/or doctor select a product with a price that does not exceed the reference price. 

In chapter 4 of his thesis, Borrell17 studies selective financing and price-cap regulation. The model he applies, Dixit and Stiglitz s monopolistic competition model, poses certain problems. The preference for variety and the fact that utility depends on the number of units consumed are not so clear as in other markets. The model does not take into account the complex relationship between doctor and patient. The fact that innovation only represents a fixed cost also raises doubts. 

John Frederick Helvetius (see plate 13), an eminent doctor of medicine, and physician to the Prince of Orange, published at the Hague in 1667 the following remarkable account of a transmutation he claimed to have effected. Certain points of resemblance between this account and that of van Helmont (e.g., in each case the Stone is described as a glassy substance of a pale yellow colour) are worth noticing "On the 27 December,... 

How do we reconcile the EPA s decision to pursue a ban on chlorpyrifos (after one of the most extensive scientific reviews of a pesticide ever conducted) with the scientific accounts of an expert like Doctor Gots (from an International Center, no less ). We would of course be required to weigh some immensely... 

The indefatigable Sp5 Ephraim Goodman found the doctor s report in an Austrian journal published almost 100 years before both Forrer s group and our own. Fluent in German, Goodman was readily able to render a translation. It was a clinical account of the doctor s experience at the Royal Imperial Jail in Prague. 

The Office of Fiealth Economics has also published a review entitled What are My Chances Doctor which takes into account not only treatment by drugs but also the hazards of surgery. People perceive risk in many different ways that would seem to the objective scientist alarmingly irrational. The distinction between risk and hazard has been nicely illustrated by Ferner (Figure 15.1), who has defined risk as the probability that a particular adverse outcome occurs during a given quantum of exposure to a hazard. ... 

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