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Washington Post: Anesthesia awareness worst form of trauma
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations recently called on hospitals to educate physicians about a terrifying but under-recognized phenomena: anesthesia awareness, or a patient’s awakening during surgery. Recent studies show that about one or two of every 1,000 patients receiving general anesthesia become conscious during an operation, reports the November 23 Washington Post. Patients who are under-anesthetized may feel extreme pain, but be unable to alert surgeons because of paralytic drugs used during surgery. “This struck me as the most virulent form of trauma I have ever seen — even worse than rape,” says Bessel A. van der Kolk, a MED psychiatry professor and a post-traumatic stress expert who has studied anesthesia awareness.
Washington Post: America shouldn’t fear Chinese apparel
Chinese clothing won’t flood the U.S. retail market, as many industry leaders fear, when international trade quotas on textiles and apparel are lifted next year, say David Weil, an SMG associate professor of finance and economics, in an op-ed in the November 18 Washington Post cowritten with Fred Abernathy. Weil and Abernathy are principal investigators at the Harvard Center for Textile and Apparel Research. A large proportion of apparel sold in U.S. stores will continue to be imported from nearby countries “primarily because their products arrive quickly,” they write. “The Wal-Mart model that now dominates retailing requires apparel suppliers to replenish products on a weekly basis.” And clothing imported from Mexico, Central America, and Caribbean countries benefit the U.S. economy, say Weil and Abernathy, because much of it is produced using American textiles.
Christian Science Monitor: Dems may quit Congress
With Republicans firmly in control of federal government, many Democratic congressmen, among them Massachusetts 8th District Representative Michael Capuano, are rumored to be eying a gubernatorial run. The Democratic Party, therefore, will be challenged to keep talented people in congress during the next few years, according to the Christian Science Monitor on November 19. “It’s just demoralizing to be a Democrat in the House or Senate now,” says Julian Zelizer, a CAS history professor, in the article. “All the incentives are against staying in, if you are really ambitious.”
MetroWest Daily News: Kinsey started it
Many social conservatives still blame sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, 50 years after his death, for easing society’s inhibitions about discussing sexuality. In fact, we still have a ways to go, even in academia, says Stanley Ducharme, a MED clinical assistant professor of rehabilitation medicine and a therapist at the Center for Sexual Medicine. “I think that even today, you will find in medical schools that there is a reluctance to educate physicians around sexual issues, and that there’s a serious lack of training given to future doctors in terms of how to investigate” sexual health issues, he says in the MetroWest Daily News on November 16. “[I]n the medical field today, there is still an uneasiness among health professionals to get into this area.”
Washington Post: Rather’s fate was sealed by Bush story
Dan Rather has stated that his decision last month to step down as CBS News anchor next March was unrelated to his apparently flawed September 8 story about President Bush’s National Guard service. Few believe it. “Dan Rather did the Texas two-step, one step ahead of the posse,” says COM Associate Dean Tobe Berkovitz, an associate professor of mass communication, advertising, and public relations, in the November 24 Washington Post. “It was inevitable that Viacom and CBS were going to have to get rid of him.”
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December 2004
Boston University
Office of University Relations