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Results for “Americans Against Human Suffering”

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At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1992

Human T-lymphotropic virus type I-associated myelopathy in patients with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

We describe two cases of serologically confirmed human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I)-associated myelopathy involving North American men coinfected by the human immunodeficiency virus type 1. Our first patient suffered from a gradually progressive spastic paraparesis for 10 years prior to presenting with Kaposi's sarcoma, while our second patient developed subacutely progressive spastic paraparesis in the setting of full-blown acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Autopsy examination of the spinal cords from these two cases revealed widespread axonal loss and demyelination principally involving the lateral columns of case no. 1 and the lateral and anterior columns of case no. 2. Vascular sclerosis and hyalinization were prominent in both cases, but in neither was there a conspicuous inflammatory component. In case no. 2, HTLV-I mRNA was not detected by in situ hybridization, but HTLV-I proviral DNA sequences were detected in this case by polymerase chain reaction. Neither case exhibited multinucleated cell (human immunodeficiency virus type 1) myelitis, vacuolar myelopathy, or evidence of HTLV-II infection by polymerase chain reaction assay.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed2001

End-of-life care: a public health crisis and an opportunity for managed care.

American society is failing to provide humane care for people who are dying. Unnecessary physical suffering continues even in our most prestigious institutions, and the enormous burden on family caregivers remains unrecognized. The cost of health services and burdensome regulations remain major barriers to improving the quality of care. Healthcare planners and policy makers are gradually awakening to the realities of an increasingly older population and a looming labor shortage of qualified paid caregivers. Several features of palliative care render it attractive within managed care. Evidence is emerging that palliative care, focused on meticulous prospective care planning and coordination, delivers high quality and cost-effective end-of-life care. Innovative demonstration projects around the country are exploring models for integrating palliative care within the routine operational processes and protocols of health systems and are providing examples of feasible "best practices" crucial for raising public expectations and framing possible solutions for policymakers and planners. Ultimately, it will be a marketing asset for a managed care organization to be known as a center of excellence in palliative care, and in some markets it will be a necessity. The goals of managed care and palliative care are already well aligned, joint efforts among clinicians, provider institutions, insurers, and employee health benefit managers can address the needs and preferences of dying patients and families, while increasing public trust in managed care.

Aged↗
PubMed2000

Intolerable human suffering and the role of the ancestor: literary criticism as a means of analysis.

Intolerable human suffering and the role of the ancestor: literary criticism as a means of analysis This essay explores the experience of intolerable human suffering in Toni Cade Bambara's novel, The Salt Eaters. The method of analysis is literary criticism, a technique that shares many of the same goals as other types of inquiry. It employs close reading to illuminate the novel's meaning(s), thereby revealing information about the nature of intolerable human suffering. Morrison's characteristics of black art is the literary and cultural framework that guides the analysis of Bambara's novel. The paradigm has broad application for nursing. The purpose of this analysis was to describe the role of the ancestral system as a predictor of the trajectory of suffering. The results extend Morrison's paradigm and her notion of ancestor to include traditions and other non-corporeal factors that are essential for well-being and survival. The protagonist in Bambara's novel, Velma Henry, is the patient and exemplar who does not succumb to intolerable suffering because of its cumulative weight, but because she has lost touch with the traditions of her people, an essential component of her ancestral system. The ancestral system is a rich and complex network of individuals, groups, customs and beliefs that are instructive, protective and benevolent. Ancestors are also timeless and provide wisdom, but when the ancestral system is weak or absent, the trajectory of suffering is not favourable. Nurses must learn to recognize intolerable human suffering, to identify the patient's ancestral system, and to work within that system to keep suffering patients from harm.

Black or African American↗
PubMed2004

Verb subcategorization frequencies: American English corpus data, methodological studies, and cross-corpus comparisons.

Verb subcategorization frequencies (verb biases) have been widely studied in psycholinguistics and play an important role in human sentence processing. Yet available resources on subcategorization frequencies suffer from limited coverage, limited ecological validity, and divergent coding criteria. Prior estimates of verb transitivity, for example, vary widely with corpus size, coverage, and coding criteria This article provides norming data for 281 verbs of interest to psycholinguistic research, sampled from a corpus of American English, along with a detailed coding manual. We examine the effect on transitivity bias of various coding decisions and methods of computing verb biases.

Humans↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Health disparity and the nurse advocate: reaching out to alleviate suffering.

This article reviews current research in health disparity in the delivery of care to African Americans. These studies provide powerful evidence that, even when controlling for differences related to access, insurance, and socioeconomic status, our healthcare system is deeply racist. While it is difficult to estimate the cost of racial bias in healthcare delivery, this article advances the notion that human suffering is the most significant consequence of racial disparity. Solutions include a renewed commitment to increasing cultural knowledge, a concerted effort to recognizing and studying racism, and creating a role for the community nurse advocate in correcting disparity.

Black or African American↗
PubMed2006

Quantitation of atenolol, metoprolol, and propranolol in postmortem human fluid and tissue specimens via LC/APCI-MS.

Hypertension is a growing medical concern in the United States. With the number of Americans suffering from hypertension increasing, the use of antihypertensives such as beta-blockers is increasing as well. In fact, three beta-blockers - atenolol, metoprolol and propranolol - were among the 200 most prescribed medications in the United States in 2003. Pilots that successfully manage their hypertension can remain certified to fly. The Federal Aviation Administration currently designates approximately 8% of active pilots as "hypertensive with medication". The Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) performs toxicological evaluation on victims of fatal aviation accidents. At CAMI beta-blockers are analyzed using gas chromatography with mass spectrometric detection. We have, however, recently developed a liquid chromatography with mass spectrometric detection (LC/MS) method for the simultaneous quantitation of three commonly prescribed beta-blockers, atenolol, metoprolol and propranolol. One advantage of our LC/MS method is the specificity provided by an ion trap MS. Utilizing an ion trap MS, we were able to conduct MS/MS and MS/MS/MS on each analyte. This method also eliminates the time-consuming and costly derivitization step necessary during GC/MS analysis. Additionally, by utilizing this novel method, any concerns about beta-blocker metabolite and/or sample matrix interference are eliminated. The limits of detection for this method ranged from 0.39 to 0.78 ng/mL and the linear dynamic range was generally 1.6-3200 ng/mL. The extraction efficiencies for each analyte ranged from 58% to 82%. This method was successfully applied to postmortem fluid and tissue specimens obtained from victims of three separate aviation accidents.

Adrenergic beta-Antagonists↗
PubMed2001

Bear mauling: a descriptive review.

OBJECTIVE: Provide a descriptive review of bear and human interactions in the United States. STUDY DESIGN: Descriptive review. RESULTS: The bear population in the United States includes the grizzly bear, the polar bear, and the black bear, including the glacier phase or blue bear. As the human population grew and remote or wilderness access improved, the bear population suffered both in total numbers and safe habitat. Conservation efforts, such as hunting restrictions and habitat enhancement, have helped to increase the total numbers of bears on the North American continent. The chance of a human encountering a bear increases as the remote bear territory diminishes. Bear incidents are widely publicized, though few serious incidents occur. The authors have direct knowledge of these bear-human encounters in Alaska. Serious human injuries from black bears, or maulings, including fatalities are uncommon. Grizzly bears when trapped or stimulated may be very dangerous. The polar bear sees everything that moves or has color, as potential food, and therefore, will attack seemingly unprovoked. CONCLUSIONS: The chance of a human encountering a bear increases as the remote bear territory diminishes. Bear incidents are widely publicized, though few serious incidents occur.

Animals↗
PubMed1998

Gulf War syndrome--a model for the complexity of biological and environmental interaction with human health.

Since the end of the Gulf War, tens of thousands of American, Canadian and British soldiers who participated in that war have claimed to be suffering from a variety of incapacitating symptoms which are generally termed as Gulf War Syndrome (GWS). The symptoms are multiple but mainly consist of excessive tiredness, muscle and joint pain, loss of balance, sensory symptoms, neurobehavioural manifestations, diarrhoea, bladder dysfunction, sweating disturbances, and respiratory, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal and skin manifestations. These veterans have been exposed to a variety of damaging or potentially damaging risk factors including environmental adversities, pesticides such as organophosphate chemicals, skin insect repellents, medical agents such as pyridostigmine bromide (NAPS), possible low-levels of chemical warfare agents, multiple vaccinations in combinations, depleted uranium, and other factors. A large number of basic research findings, clinical epidemiological studies, and case control studies are reviewed to try and link them together to produce a coherent picture and to demonstrate the complexity of the interaction of biological systems, environmental and genetic factors, combinations of drugs and toxins with human health. The findings of these studies so far have demonstrated that many of the previous assumptions made about the 'safety' of certain drugs and toxic substances or vaccines must be radically reviewed. Many of the findings have far reaching implications not only in terms of explanation of what might have gone wrong during the Gulf War, but also have wider implications for many occupational groups who are exposed daily to some of these risk factors. More open-mindedness and much less prejudice are required concerning the basic biology of interactions of the above factors and their effects on cell functions and wider intelligent research is urgently required with high priority. This review highlights the importance of intelligent research for answers for a new phenomenon, and demonstrates the necessity for a combination of this approach with high quality epidemiological research. The reader will notice an emerging clear picture that the majority (if not all) of these advances have been achieved from studies funded by independent or charity organizations rather than by the responsible authorities who are supposed and are duty bound to take on this task.

Chemical Warfare Agents↗
PubMed1990

Tewa children who have epilepsy: a health care dilemma.

This paper explores the part ethnicity may play in utilization of available western health care methods by Tewa families who have a child with epilepsy. Suggestions are made for appropriate responses by non-Indian health care providers to Tewa patients with epilepsy and their families. Findings indicate that, on the surface, Tewa families behave much like other Americans generally in utilization of western health care services. However, the Tewa are extremely reluctant to discuss with non-Indian health care providers traditional healing practices that may be used simultaneously. Such reluctance is well-documented in literature on the Tewa Pueblos and is substantiated in the present research. Suggestions are made for health care providers who wish to be "culturally aware" about the appropriateness of routinely asking a patient about his or her perception of the traditional etiology of the disease. The roles of the family and the western health care system are challenged. The response of Tewa extended families to children who have epilepsy is complex and not necessarily supportive. Often considered the primary health care provider for Native Americans, the Indian Health Service is based on an acute care model and lacks the ability to serve chronically disabled American Indian children. Finally, the paper argues that epilepsy is varied enough to complicate the development of a single model of chronic illness that is appropriate for those who suffer from the disability.

Child↗
PubMed2003

Continual smoking of mentholated cigarettes may mask the early warning symptoms of respiratory disease.

BACKGROUND: Continual use of cold preparations including those containing menthol for relief from congestion, cough, or difficulty in breathing can mask the early warning symptoms of respiratory dysfunction. These products usually carry a warning label on the packaging that indicates that they are not for continuous use and may mask the early warning symptoms of a more serious condition. Menthol can be delivered in many dosage forms including the smoke of a mentholated cigarette. METHODS: Literature searches were done for the NLM databases (e.g., MEDLINE from 1966, TOXLINE, OLDMEDLINE (1958-1965), CANCERLIT), plus tobacco industry documents and hardcopy indices. The evidence was evaluated with application to mentholated cigarette smoking. RESULTS: A logical progression is presented to attempt to demonstrate that the continuous smoking of mentholated cigarettes may also mask the early warning symptoms of respiratory distress. The early warning symptoms caused by chronic irritation of the respiratory tract may be reduced in severity when the menthol found in a mentholated cigarette is continually delivered to the tract. CONCLUSION: This masking of the symptoms of an underlying respiratory disease can lead to delays in seeking medical attention resulting in a poor prognosis, additional suffering, and eventual death.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1991

American culture and euthanasia. The changing definition of a "good death".

Divisions run deep in contemporary America over the issue of assisted suicide or mercy killing. The active, directly intended, and freely chosen self-destruction that was once unspeakable has become speakable. A recent best-seller providing "how-to" information on suicide; Initiative 119 in Washington State, which would allow "aid-in-dying"; and other publications and polls indicate that the proponents of mercy killing may have won over American culture, or at least established a dominant foothold. One of the chief criticisms of policies that permit mercy killing and assisted suicide is that they inevitably encourage suicide among those who are neither terminally ill nor suffering from physical pain. American culture is extreme in its desire to eliminate suffering. In a culture that can no longer depend on religious insights into human suffering, all kinds of preemptive strikes against suffering seem inevitable. The success of proponents of euthanasia is an indirect indictment of a healthcare system that fails to provide good palliative care and support. In our curative and rescue-oriented healthcare system, management of pain is not a priority. And our society also undervalues caring in its most basic sense. It is not so much death as the absence of caring and the denial of reality that may be the enemy. The desire to control pain has always been valid, but not the desire to press control so far as to directly cause death itself. Death by lethal injection is best understood as a tyranny of technological control.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Attitude to Death↗
PubMed1982

The New York City fire epidemic as a toxic phenomenon.

Reductions in the fire service in New York City from 1972 to 1976 appear to have caused a disproportionate increase in fire-fighter work load through several unexpected mechanisms of fire contagion. In turn, the work load increase has itself had a disproportionate physiologic impact: A classic dose-response relation has been observed between a composite measure of per capita structural fire work load and the percentage of the fire-fighting work force retiring under conditions of disability. After 1974, the increase in work load seems to have caused entry to the 'linear' portion of the dose-response curve. Implications of this synergism are explored for both New York City and other American urban areas now suffering 'fiscal crises' or planning fire service reductions.

Disability Evaluation↗