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Biomedical subjects

E Weinstein

Publications and source records attributed to E Weinstein.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Torture: psychiatric sequelae and phenomenology.

Torture has been defined by the United Nations (declaration of December 9, 1975) as "every act by which a public functionary (or another person at his instigation) intentionally inflicts on another person serious pain or suffering, ...physical or mental, with the object of obtaining information or of punishing him...or of intimidating that person or others." In Chile, from the 1973 military coup d'Etat up to the 1988 plebiscite, torture was practiced in a systematic way, as a method of interrogation and as a means of intimidation of detainees and, indirectly, of the population at large. In the beginning, torture was applied in military station units and in police stations, in the facilities of sport fields and prisoners' camps; but above all, in clandestine detention centers and prisons belonging to the secret police (Amnesty International 1977, 1983; CODEPU 1984, 1985, 1986; Lira and Weinstein 1987; Muñoz 1986; Rodríguez de Ruiz-Tagle 1978). In spite of the bloodshed of the 1973 coup d'Etat, the phenomenon of torture came as a total surprise for the detainees, who had very often voluntarily surrendered themselves to the new authorities, and who, given the civil traditions of the country, expected treatment in accordance with a society subject to the law. The military government regularly denied having undertaken the practice of torture. According to Lira and Weinstein (20), this denial of such an extreme experience or horror made it even more difficult to overcome the trauma and fostered the development of chronic psychiatric pathology.

Adult

Dental disease in the differential diagnosis of fever of unknown origin.

A patient with a one-year history of fever of unknown origin is presented. Extensive work-up failed to reveal the source of the fever. Treatment of periodontal infection resulted in complete cure, suggesting a cause-effect relationship. A possible role of Interleukin 1 (IL-1), universal pyrogen, in periodontal disease is suggested.

Adult

The development of adolescent sexual intimacy: implications for counseling.

This paper proposes a perspective for understanding the development of adolescent sexual intimacy. A "transitional stage" is described in which adolescents, driven by a variety of developmental needs influenced by external forces such as peers and family, experiment with sexual behaviors. The completion of the transitional stage results in the adolescent's ability to achieve "relational" sexual intimacy, which is also described. The problems and implications for counseling associated with the biophysiological and family dynamic influences on the development of adolescent sexual intimacy are discussed.

Adolescent

The effect of stimulus significance on relatively sustained (tonic-like) and relatively transient (phasic-like) aspects of electrodermal, heart rate, and eyeblink response.

To examine the influence of stimulus significance on more sustained as well as transient aspects of electrodermal, cardiac (HR), and eyeblink response, a 21-sec tone was sounded in one ear or the other. A click occurred during many tones, and a light followed offset by 9 sec. Four groups were studied: one pressed a pedal immediately on hearing any click; another only on click during tone in a specified ear; a third also responded only to the specified ear, but withheld press until the light; a fourth listened without any response. Results confirmed the important role of stimulus significance in each system whether between- or within-subject comparisons were made. Sustained responses were seen only when a significant signal was sought, involving in each case sustained HR deceleration, slowed blink rate, and heightened electrodermal level. Transient response to click and light also appeared only when there were significant signals. Response to tone-onset gave more ambiguous results. ANOVAs of response magnitude suggested that onset of nonsignificant tones might have elicited ORs, while binomial tests indicated these were not elicited with better than random frequency anywhere but on those trials occurring more frequently at the experiment's onset. Interpretations consistent with both the significance hypothesis and with a distinction between automatic and voluntary ORs can be made only here. Motor response had no effect on electrodermal or eyeblink response, and on HR was associated only with increased acceleration 1-2 sec after pedal-press. Studies using small motor responses to establish stimulus significance are therefore not likely to be substantially biased by the response itself.

Acoustic Stimulation

Radiation therapy in bulky seminoma.

Between 1969 and 1980, 17 patients with bulky retroperitoneal seminoma and 1 patient with bulky mediastinal seminoma were treated with radiation therapy. One patient had resection of gross retroperitoneal disease, and 1 patient had resection of gross mediastinal disease. Fifteen patients received adjuvant irradiation to the mediastinum and paraclavicular lymph nodes, and 1 patient received adjuvant chemotherapy. At last follow-up, 17 of 18 patients (94%) remain free of disease. No patient has sustained treatment-related morbidity or mortality.

Dysgerminoma

Nonoliguric acute renal failure.

The course of nonoliguric acute renal failure (ARF) in 11 patients was analyzed. The possible etiology of the renal failure was multiple in all cases and did not differ from that seen in oliguric acute tubular necrosis (ATN). Other than the urine volume, which ranged from 510 to 2,325 ml/day, there was no major clinical or biochemical difference between these cases of nonliguric ARF and those described for oliguric ATN. Creatinine clearance, however, was higher than anticipated in oliguric ATN and ranged from 2.8 to 15.0 ml/min. There was a direct relationship between creatinine clearance and daily urine volume. The essential difference between oliguric and nonoliguric renal failure appears to be the lesser degree of renal damage in the nonoliguric form.

Acute Kidney Injury

De novo Kaposi's sarcoma in renal transplantation. Case report and brief review.

This report describes a de novo development of Kaposi's sarcoma in a Puerto-Rician man 9 months after a cadaveric renal transplant. Progression of the disease was observed despite local irradiation, while the patient remained immunosuppressed with prednisone and azathioprine. This was accompanied by depressed immunologic tests. Discontinuation of azathioprine and addition of chemotherapy (bleomycin and vincristine), while continuing prednisone to maintain functional survival of renal allograft, has led in this patient to regression of extensive cutaneous and suspected pulmonary Kaposi's sarcoma lesions. The possible importance of a depressed immunosurveillance mechanism and activation of latent oncogenic virus by the presence of an allograft in the de novo appearance of Kaposi's sarcoma in transplant recipients is briefly discussed.

Antibody Formation

. . . And some men have leadership thrust upon them.

Viewing leadership behavior as a joint function of situational factors, individual predispositions, and followers' responsive behavior, this study used 64 subjects, half of them high and half of them low in measured leadership self-concept. Half had a high and half a low stake in a group task. Each subject was twice appointed leader of a three-man group, once exposed to "followers" (experimenter's condederates,) altercasting him to lead, once to followers alter-casting him to follow. Multivariate analyses of variance showed effects of followers' behavior on profiles of a subject's behavior (when subjects were pushed to lead they led, when pushed to follow they increased socioemotional activity) and perceptions of followers. These effects were specified by leadership self-concept (little difference between groups when confronting pushy followers, more when confronting passive ones), prompting an interpretation in terms of role incongruity.

Group Processes