No (,) More Bolam Please: Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board

Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board concerned a negligent non‐disclose of certain risks involved in natural birth. The Supreme Court departed from Sidaway v Bethlem Royal Hospital, which formerly governed negligent risk disclosure. A new test was adopted: risks that are material must be disclosed, the materiality of a risk to be decided by reference to a reasonable person in the patient's position, or where the medical professional should be reasonably aware a particular patient is likely to attach significance to that risk. The Court emphasised risk disclosure practices must focus on what the patient wants to know. Yet the Court's portrayal of this change as a development of Sidaway is questionable. The decision is problematic in its engagement with precedent, the new test's future implications and statements regarding therapeutic privilege. Despite rejecting Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee's relevance to risk disclosure, this case is likely to remain relevant.     

Collecting information on disability in the 2000 Census: an example of interagency cooperation

The United States Constitution requires that an enumeration (or census) of the population be conducted every 10 years to apportion seats in the House of Representatives. Census information is also used to allocate funds and to plan and manage programs. Census 2000 occurs on April 1, 2000, when one-sixth of all American households will be mailed the "long form," containing disability, demographic, economic, and housing questions. Although no short set of commonly accepted questions on disability existed, one was developed for Census 2000 by a collaborative, federal interagency work group on disability, convened by the Office of Management and Budget. The work group consisted of staff from the Social Security Administration (SSA), the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Census Bureau, and other agencies. They reviewed questions initially proposed by the Census Bureau, developed an alternative proposal, tested both versions in the Census Bureau's cognitive questionnaire lab, and on the basis of testing, derived a consensus version for Census 2000. In many ways, the six questions now contained on Census 2000 are an improvement over previous efforts. Disability is ascertained for children as well as for adults, and information will be collected separately for several domains of disability (for example, sensory, mental, physical). The need for a brief set of disability measures goes beyond Census 2000. If such data were collected regularly on national surveys, critical policy and program concerns across agencies could be addressed because better information could be gathered on changes in disability prevalence and on the characteristics of persons with disabilities. Other similar efforts include the former Disability Evaluation Study, now known as the National Study of Health and Activity--a national sample survey on working-age disability to be conducted by SSA--and the President's Task Force on the Employment of Adults with Disabilities (Executive Order 13078).     

U.S. Navy and Marine Corps recruit training deaths in San Diego, California, 1973-1985; a review of 31 cases.

The deaths of military recruits associated with training activities nearly always fall under close scrutiny from relatives of the deceased recruit and the media. The literature contains isolated case reports of recruit deaths but no comprehensive reviews of all deaths at a single training facility. The purpose of this study is to describe the circumstances and causes of all recruit deaths occurring at the Naval Training Command and the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, California, from 1973 through 1985. Thirty-one male recruits died in training during this period; eight died from medical conditions not detected by preenlistment questioning or examination. In five of these cases, the conditions were probably known to the recruit but were not listed on a medical history form. Seven recruits died in incidents related to training, and there were six cases of "sudden cardiac death," as well as eight deaths caused by infectious diseases.