Certificate of need: the Massachusetts experience.

Certificate of Need legislation is one of several regulatory programs designed to control the allocation of health care delivery resources. This paper examines the Massachusetts experience with Certificate of Need, focusing on two major administrative law controversies--the extent of the regulatory agency's power to participate actively in the planning process, and the scope of review of agency decisions permitted under a non-judicial appeals mechanism. The study concludes that any Certificate of Need program may be strengthened by accurately defining the roles of the participants and by providing for safeguards within the system itself.     

Child abuse and conviction of sexual crimes

A survey of 112 postreleased convicted felons was conducted concerning ways they were punished as children. A self-reported history of child-abusive punishment was compared with prison histories and police records. A significant relationship between self-reported abusive punishment and the sexual offender was found. Punishment data on a random sample of 376 noninstitutionalized Oregon male adults were compared to the felons. The latter group reported significantly higher rate of abusive childhood experiences than did the comparison group.     

Development of a Protein‐based Human Identification Capability from a Single Hair

Shed human hair (lacking root nuclear DNA) frequently contributes important information to forensic investigations involving human identification. Detection of genetic variation observed in amino acid sequences of hair proteins provides a new suite of identity markers that augment microscopic hair analysis and mitochondrial DNA sequencing. In this study, a new method that completely dissolves single hairs using a combination of heat, ultrasonication, and surfactants was developed. Dissolved proteins were digested and genetically variant peptide (GVP) profiles were obtained for single hairs (25 mm) via high‐resolution nanoflow liquid chromatography‐based mass spectrometry and a novel exome‐driven bioinformatic approach. Overall, 6519 unique peptides were identified and a total of 57 GVPs were confirmed. Random match probabilities ranged between 2.6 × 10^?2 and 6.0 × 10^?9. The new bioinformatic strategy and ability to analyze GVPs in forensically relevant samples sizes demonstrate applicability of this approach to distinguish individuals in forensic contexts.     

MANDATORY VISITATION

The term visitation rights connotes that noncutodial parents have the discretion, not the responsibility, to visit their children. This article examines the assertion that visitation rights should instead be viewed as an obligation owed by noncustodial parents to their children. Excluding circumstances in which visitation would be injurious to a child, the expectation of visitation should be enforced by the courts.     

Exorcising excision: medico-legal issues arising from male and female genital surgery in Australia

Genital surgery is one of the most controversial and contested practices, yet it is frequently described and referred to with little or no attention to cultural and social context. This article examines the practice, performed on both men and women, and the extent to which it clashes with issues of consent and capacity, as well as multicultural concepts of toleration for minority group practices. It then questions why female genital surgery, unlike male genital surgery, is legally prohibited in Australia. It argues that such legal gender bias stems from a liberal conception of "tolerance" and the limits of consent in Australia, placing female genital surgery in an "unacceptable" category and male genital surgery in an "acceptable" category.