Detection of haptoglobin from concentrated urine samples by enzyme immunoassay

The detection of haptoglobin (Hp) from serum and bloodstains is utilized extensively in forensic science laboratories in order to include or exclude possible donors. There is an increasing need to make the same discriminations utilizing genetic markers from urine samples. This paper describes the use of enzyme immunoassay and Western blotting (electrophoretic) techniques to determine Hp phenotypes from concentrated urine samples. Serum and urine specimens were collected from volunteer donors. The serum sample from each donor was typed for Hp. The urine specimens were concentrated 3000-fold from the starting volume of 15 mL to a final volume of 5 microL and applied to the gradient polyacrylamide gels. This procedure allows the separation of Hp samples into the three common phenotypes as well as the other rare variants found in humans. The Western blotting electrophoretic technique was used to achieve the transfer of Hp bands from the gels to the nitrocellulose membranes. Enzyme immunoassay with goat anti-Hp antiserum and rabbit anti-goat immunoglobulin alkaline phosphatase conjugate were used to identify the Hp bands from the concentrated samples. Specimens stored for six months at -22 degrees C were also concentrated and typed successfully. Recent implementation of drug-screening policies has resulted in an increase in the submission of substituted urine specimens. The above procedure can be used to detect an additional genetic marker from urine samples and thus facilitate the identity of the donor.     

Genomic research and incidental findings.

The Human Genome Project showed that there is significant genetic variation within the population. Current research is accumulating large databases that may reveal genetic variations associated with disease or health risks, even if not intended as part of the study design. These incidental findings create legal, ethical, and financial challenges for researchers. Current federal and international guidelines are not adequate. Plans for dealing with incidental findings need to be established in the study design and reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board.     

The strategic inconsistency of Paretian liberalism

In this paper, the problem of the Paretian liberal is cast as a preference revelation game whose outcome function satisfies Gibbard's libertarian condition and strong Pareto optimality. Strategic consistency requires that the equilibrium of the game agree with the sincere outcome. It is shown that, whether viewed in a cooperative or non-cooperative context, the liberal social choice function is strategically inconsistent. This result suggests that, from a strategic standpoint, a different resolution of the liberal paradox is desirable.     

The impact of the right to refuse treatment in a forensic patient population: six-month review

In December of 1987, the Wisconsin supreme court held that all involuntarily committed mental patients in the state had the right to refuse psychotropic medication unless a court held that they were incompetent to make treatment decisions. The authors studied the effects of this decision in a 165-bed forensic hospital over the first six months after implementation of the decision. They found that 29 percent of patients already on psychotropic medication initially refused further treatment as opposed to 75 percent of newly admitted patients. Of refusers, 32 percent eventually resumed taking medication voluntarily; courts overturned the refusals of all the 51 percent who maintained their refusals, after an average delay of over a month. The length of procedural delays actually increased over the six months of the study as the courts learned of the decision. The authors compare their findings with other reported studies of implementation of right to refuse treatment decisions and discuss differences between the right to refuse treatment for civilly and criminally committed patients.     

Routes and paths of comparison and choice

This paper studies aspects of sequential choice (and elimination) through the ‘routewise’ application of choice. (A choice is a mapping of the subsets of a set X into their respective subsets.) This approach sheds some further light on the ‘path-independence’ of choice, as well as on the logical structure of several rationality criteria for choice, as expressed through the properties of the comparison (or preference relation) revealed by a choice. The results bear particular relevance to the theory of collective choice.