Health Scandal Research Articles

Assessing the role of conspiracy beliefs in oncological treatment decisions: An experimental approach.

Cancer is an important issue and a model topic for misinformatfion researchers. The present research experimentally investigates the effect of cancer-related conspiracy beliefs and misinformation on oncology treatment intentions in a cancer-free population. In three pre-registered studies (N total = 1020), participants were asked to put themselves in the shoes of a patient recommended for chemotherapy. Study 1 (N = 300) failed to experimentally manipulate cancer-related conspiracy beliefs with exposure to a health scandal not related to cancer. In Study 2 (N = 258), exposure to a pro-conspiracy (vs. anti-conspiracy) content related to cancer treatment was associated with more conspiracy beliefs, less intention to use chemotherapy and more intentions to use unconventional medicines. Exploratory analyses revealed that these effects were conditioned by the credibility of the misinformation. Study 3 (N = 462) replicated these findings using a full experimental design. Exposure (vs. no exposure) to a warning and accuracy prompt, prior to exposure to the pro-conspiracy content, was found to be effective in reducing its credibility and preventing its detrimental effects. These findings corroborate the existence of an effect of conspiracy beliefs on treatment intentions in oncology and also suggest several ways to mitigate them.

The infected blood inquiry: Impact on public perceptions of blood supply risk, safety, and donation attitudes.

The UK's Infected Blood Inquiry (IBI) highlighted a major public health scandal, with at least 30 000 people infected and more than 3000 deaths attributable to infected blood and blood products. This study investigates the impact of the IBI announcement on May 20, 2024, on public perceptions of blood supply risk, safety, and donation intentions in the UK compared to the USA. A 2 (country: UK vs. USA) × 2 (time: pre-, post-IBI announcement) between-within-subject study was conducted with 1635 participants (888 UK, 747 USA). Pre-IBI data were collected from May 3 to 7, 2024, and post-IBI data from May 30 to June 30, 2024. Key measures were perceived infection risk from transfusion, transfusion safety, willingness to donate and encourage others. The impact was assessed using differences-in-differences (DiD) and reliable-change-indices (RCI). UK participants showed a significant but small decrease in perceived safety compared to USA participants, with 1 in 30 UK individuals perceiving a significant reduction in perceived transfusion safety. Decreases in perceived safety were associated with significant decreases in willingness to donate and encouragement of others in the whole sample and in USA participants and significant decreases in willingness to encourage others in UK participants. Older people reported a greater reduction in safety, and non-donors were more likely to be put off donating and not ask others to donate as a result of their perception that safety had been reduced. Overall, perceived safety decreased marginally in the UK general population. Future research should explore the long-term impacts of the IBI.

The globalisation of the chemical industry and the public health scandal of Forever Chemicals.

The globalisation of the chemical industry and the public health scandal of Forever Chemicals.

Tribunals of inquiry as instruments of legitimacy: A ritualization perspective

This paper is an exploratory qualitative study into how tribunals of inquiry act as instruments of legitimacy and hegemony for the State. Focusing on a case study of two consecutive tribunals of inquiry into the biggest health scandal in the history of the Irish State, the paper draws on ritual theory to offer a view of the tribunal as a process of ritualization, a strategic way of acting by the State in times of crisis. Through this process of ritualization, an authoritative, structured and structuring ritualized environment is created with schemes of ritualization imposed on participants directed toward creating ritualized bodies, hoped-for acceptance of the tribunal’s projection of reality and the re-legitimation of the role of the State in undertaking its core functions.

The memory of an outrageous public health scandal

Introduction: Manaus is an isolated city, localized in the hearth of the Amazonas rainforest, with two million inhabitants, a big territorial extension, distant from neighbor cities and next to the shores of Negro and Solimões rivers. The access overland is difficult, which obligates the oxygen tanks be transported by river or air. This created and enormous logistical problem, added to the neglect of the Federal Government with the northern region of the country. Objective: Analyze what are the psychiatric repercussions on the explosion of in the lack of oxygen in Manaus, capital of the Amazonas, Brazil. Methods: Studies were identified using large-circulation international journals. Results: A scandal is happening. This situation is creating a grief community – particular grief became a common and public one – to the memory of an outrageous public health scandal. Therefore, dramatic stories of families of patients and the overwhelmed healthcare professionals shared on the social media and local press brings glimpses of the angst of this chaos. An entire wing of patients died caused by the oxygen depletion. Conclusion: This situation is causing a collective hysteria, taking healthcare workers and families of patients to desperation. Fear appears to be a consequence of the feeling of powerlessness. Anxiety levels are really elevated causing direct side effects to another mental health measures.

Compensation Funds, Trials and the Meaning of Claims: The Example of Asbestos-Related Illness Compensation in France

In France, occupational exposure related to asbestos has been responsible for nearly 200,000 deaths, leading to a massive scandal in the 1990s. In this article, I report the results of a qualitative empirical study, based on 50 interviews with victims, of how those affected by asbestos exposure interacted with two types of compensation mechanism: a compensation fund – a public administrative system subsidized by employers’ taxes – and the courts. Several scholars have asserted that, given that the employers are not judged to be guilty in this instance, compensation through such funds does not carry any moral meaning. In contrast to these arguments, I show that victims attribute a diversity of normative meanings to these mechanisms. The analysis highlights, in particular, how three factors affect the ability of victims to attribute normative meanings to compensation processes: the career paths of the victims; the trust of victims in their employer; and the type of legal intermediaries they meet – namely, doctors or victims’ associations. The article encourages scholars to analyze the role of these legal intermediaries in order to understand how victims make sense of a particularly complex public health scandal.

Icarus Falls: The Coal Health Scandal

The disciplinary processes governing lawyers have been a defining feature of self-regulation. In many jurisdictions, such processes are being re-shaped to conform to best practice in business regulation. The environment of practice for lawyers continues, however, to be quite different from that of other sectors. A major consideration is the fact that the practice environment is shaped by professionally focused rules and processes, as interpreted and enacted by the main actors: practitioners, organisations and regulators. The performance of these actors helps to determine the strength of the profession compared with other stakeholders, including government. Reform agendas reflect a profession’s record on regulatory issues. Periods of crisis or moral panics sometimes lead to reform that is reactive rather than strategic. This paper considers the impact of a major professional scandal. It examines how the key players interacted and how the ethical environment of practice might have affected an individual’s propensity for transgression. It also considers how the perceived lessons of the crisis influenced reform in England and Wales.

Icarus Falls: The Coal Health Scandal

I have noticed how many of my colleagues find these guys' behaviour reprihensible [sic]. However, they are happy to suck up to organisations that have indiscriminately ripped people off left right and centre, our banks primarily. Is there a sniff of swine envy in the air[?]1

Information sur la sécurité des soins : le cas des infections nosocomiales

Nosocomial infections are a reality that has long been known to healthcare professionals. The fight against this scourge became a central component of health safety policy in France and in Quebec fairly recently. However, it only acquired paramount importance when the effectiveness of existing systems began to be publicly questioned by the media. Through their particular way of presenting a set of dramatic situations faced by patients who contract a nosocomial infection, the media have contributed to the emergence of a new health scandal. The general structure of the nosocomial infection control systems stemming from debates appears to be quite similar in France and in Quebec; however, the development and effectiveness of these systems are not the same. Moreover, striking discrepancies exist between procedures for compensating patients affected by nosocomial infections. Beyond differences in the professional world, the hypothesis defended in this article is that this contrast can be explained, on the one hand, by the way the collective organization of nosocomial infection control has been constructed and, on the other hand, by the way victims’ associations have been able to interact with professionals and the administration since, in France, their proactive involvement has benefited from a more favourable social, professional and political environment. Abstract

Moving towards consumer involvement in maternity services in the north‐east of Ireland

AbstractThis article uses a case‐study approach to focus on developments in maternity services in the north‐east of Ireland where there is occurring a planned move towards active consumer involvement. In a country with a poor record of consumer involvement, this is a very welcome and innovative development. The Health Service in Ireland is in crisis, characterized by a very prolonged and difficult restructuring, extreme difficulties in recruiting and retraining staff, lack of resources, long waiting times in accident and emergency units with the media reporting daily counts of those left lying on trolleys for extended periods. The north‐east of the country has been affected by the closure of two maternity units in Monaghan and Dundalk. The region has been rocked in recent years by a major health scandal with a long‐serving obstetrician being struck off the medical register for carrying out an excessive number of caesarean hysterectomies. Out of this, there is emerging an innovative woman‐centred maternity service in the north‐east of the country. This article evaluates these developments with a particular focus on consumer involvement.

Dispatches: mental health scandal channel 4 october 9, 2006

Dispatches: mental health scandal channel 4 october 9, 2006

Experiences of Patients Hospitalized During the Texas Mental Health Scandal

The impact of psychiatric hospitalization on children and adolescents hospitalized during the Texas mental health scandal. Content analysis of archival data and in-depth interviews. Subjects (N = 19) voiced complaints about the stigma resulting from the hospitalization as well as lack of individual care, violations of personal boundaries, ineffectual outcomes, permanent disruption to family relations, separation from family, trauma of seeing others restrained, and being restrained themselves. Unnecessary psychiatric hospitalization has long-term ramifications for children and adolescents in terms of self-view, family, and social relationships.

The Health Scandal: Your Health in Crisis

The Health Scandal: Your Health in Crisis

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article Essential Obstetrics and Gynaecology by E. Malcolm Symonds. Premenstrual Syndrome by P. M. Shaughn O'Brien. The Health Scandal by Vernon Coleman. Transvaginal Sonography edited by Ilan E. Timor‐Tritsch & Shraga Rottem. Parasitic Infections in Pregnancy and the Newborn edited by Caroline Macleod.

The Health Scandal The Health Scandal Coleman V Published by Sidgwick & Jack- son 246pp £12.95 0-283-99509-2 [Formula: see text

Vernon Coleman's book should contain a health warning. Reading it is likely to effect the blood pressure adversely, because it bluntly challenges most of the sacred cows nurtured by the medical profession and, in so doing, many personally held beliefs. It is possible to discount what is written as so much hot air, but Coleman is a well-known persuasive writer whose arguments, based on research and experience, are sound.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book received in this article: An Introduction to Fetal Physiology by Frederick C. Battaglia & Giaccomo Meschia. Endometriosis edited by Emery A. Wilson. Alan R. Liss. Quantitative Obstetrical Ultrasonography edited by Russell L. Deter, Ronald B. Harrist, Jason C. Birnholz & Frank P. Hadlock. Labor and Delivery: Impact on Offspring by E. A. Friedman & R. K. Neff. Fetal Physiological Measurements edited by Peter Rolfe. Neonatal Physiological Measurements edited by Peter Rolfe. Atlas of Fetal Sectional Anatomy with Ultrasound and Magnetic Resonance Imaging G. Isaacson, M. C. Mintz & E. S. Crelin. Immunoregulation and Fetal Survival edited by T. J. Gill, III, T. G. Wegmann with E. NisbetBrown. Neurological Disorders of Pregnancy edited by Phillip J. Goldstein. Books received some of which may be reviewed at a later date Perinatal Practice Volume 5. Fetal and Neonatal Growth edited by Forrester Cockburn. Functional Disorders of the Menstrual Cycle edited by M. G. Brush & E. M. Goudsmit. The Health Scandal by Vernon Coleman. Pelvic Surgery: A Multidisciplinary Approach edited by John H. Isaacs & Mitchel P. Byrne. Decision Making in Infertility edited by A. H. DeCherney, M. L. Polan, R. D. Lee & S. P. Boyers. Progress in Operative Gynaecology by S. K. Chaudhuri. Actualitiés Gynécologiques 18ème Série edited by Pierre‐Albert Netter & Andre Gorins.

Health Scandal

Health Scandal

The American Health Scandal

This expose of the deplorable state of medical care in the United States is a tedious and naive effort by a free-lance journalist to create a potboiler with information long familiar to the educated reader. Mr. Tunley's stated purpose is to provide the public with an objective assessment of prevailing conditions, but his manner of presentation—through interviews, anecdotes, selected statistics, and eyewitness accounts—produces a highly selected and distorted picture. Poor nursing homes and mental hospitals, high infant mortality, shortages of specialized medical facilities and physicians, uneven quality of hospitals, insufficient insurance protection, high costs, and inefficiency are his main revelations. Principal blame for these deficiencies is laid to the monolithic AMA, the world's most hated union, which strives only to protect fee-for-service medicine and has successfully blocked progressive legislation by intimidating the federal government as well as the individual physician. The second part of the book is far more interesting