The effectiveness of licensing

Suggesting that licensing may not only fail to accomplish its intended purpose, but may be counterproductive, the author asserts that licensing may not improve the quality of professional services, that licensing boards fail to discipline unethical or incompetent practitioners, and that actions taken against the unlicensed are more often aimed at eliminating competition, not incompetence. In addition, licensing laws may have negative side effects, including an increase in the cost of professional services, the creation of shortages and maldistributions in supply, ineffective use of paraprofessionals, and impediments to needed reforms in education, training, and services. He concludes that equally effective alternatives may be available that are less expensive and have less negative impact, and advocates a system of registration for all practitioners, as well as making other suggestions to improve the overall functioning of licensing boards. Finally, because of political realities, the author proposes a compromise between his ideal model and the current system.     

Further evaluation of immunocytochemical staining in the diagnosis of early myocardial ischaemic/hypoxic damage

The pattern of immunocytochemical staining with antibodies to caeruloplasmin, myosin, myoglobin and C-reactive protein seen in myocardium taken from deaths with macroscopic evidence of myocardial infarction and/or significant coronary artery atherosclerosis and from deaths with neither of these lesions has been correlated with H&E, PTAH and HBFP staining of myocardium and circumstances of each death indicative of antemortem hypoxia and/or ischaemia. Loss of staining with these antibodies correlated well with fuchsinorrhagia and both techniques are more sensitive than H&E and PTAH staining in the detection of early ischaemic/hypoxic damage to myocardium. However, their sensitivity is such that they appear to detect agonal changes and, therefore, cannot be used for specific diagnosis of early myocardial infarction.     

Is technology transfer more than a “mechanical” process?

Editorial Advisory Board     

The shielding capacity of the standard military flak jacket against ballistic injury to the kidney

An animal model was designed to evaluate the ability of the standard military flak jacket to protect the kidneys from direct ballistic trauma. Yorkshire swine were anesthetized and their flanks were protected by flak jackets. Ballistic insults ranging from a low-velocity handgun to a high-velocity rifle were evaluated. The results demonstrate that a flak jacket provides adequate protection against low- and mid-velocity projectiles since none of the animals from this group had evidence of internal trauma and because only minor superficial surgical attention would have been required. Survivability in each case was considered to be excellent. The flak jacket failed to provide any protection against several types of high-velocity bullets. These weapons caused severe internal injury to the genitourinary system as well as to other major organ systems. Survival would have been unlikely.     

THE OPERATIONAL USE OF AN EXPERIENCE TABLE

One objective of the Parole Decision-Making project was the develop ment of experience tables for operational use by the U.S. Board of Parole to aid in individual case deckion-making. This report describes the interaction of parole board members and project staff in the development of an experience table acceptablc to the parole board for operational use. In addition, it describes the development of a research design to test the impact of the presentation of the experience table upon paroling decisions, the implementation of this design, and the initiol evaluation of results.