Casteism in a medical college: A reminiscence.

The Indian Medical Association has expressed doubts about whether casteism exists in the medical profession. I would like to report what I witnessed as a medical student at the Government Medical College (GMC), Nagpur, where I studied from 1982 to 1987. There was much to be proud of in this college which was, and is, dear to me; but what I relate here is a part of its dark underbelly that I had no idea even existed before that. It is a college whose alumni include several eminent practitioners who might reflect on whether such practices existed in the years before I joined.

Historical perspective on physical employment standards.

BACKGROUND: When one thinks of jobs with physical employment standards, the first thoughts typically center around firefighting, law enforcement, and military jobs. However, there are 100s of arduous jobs that exist in the public and private sectors that range from moderately demanding to strenuous. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 28% of the workforce in the United States performs physically demanding jobs that involve construction, machinery installation and repair, public safety, and other professions. OBJECTIVE: This paper provides a historical perspective of physical employment standards for hiring workers into these arduous jobs, how we arrived at our current knowledge base, and the challenges faced today when determining and implementing physical employment standards. METHOD: This narrative review draws on evidence from 62 published sources. RESULTS: This paper focuses on the need for a multidisciplinary approach to identifying job requirements, the professions (e.g., medical, psychology, physiology) that underpin the methodologies, and the knowledge used by current researchers. Descriptions of test and cut score development, legal issues, and challenges for the future also are highlighted.

Perspectives on the Meaning of "Disability".

The meaning of "disability" has shifted with changes in public policy. Half a century ago, Congress was convinced that narrow determinations of disability are easy for physicians to make. But with the advent of universal civil rights protection against disability discrimination in the US, deciding whether particular individuals are disabled became increasingly contentious, until Congress intervened. What should now be addressed in each case is not whether the functionally compromised person is severely disabled enough to exercise a right, but whether mitigating interventions and reasonable accommodations can together achieve equitable access for that person.

Unfathomable Journey: The Context of Dr. Otto Walter's Departure from Australia.

Fifty years ago, erstwhile eminent Jewish physician Dr Otto Walter abandoned life in Australia to return to Austria, leaving his crestfallen young grandson, Garry, to wonder why he had gone. In this paper, the author explores the possible reasons for his grandfather's departure, weaving in aspects of Otto's extraordinary life, including the flight from Vienna after Kristallnacht (the German Reich's coordinated night of attacks on Jewish property), and the struggles to stay one step ahead of the Nazis in Europe. Otto was to settle in the British Mandate for Palestine (later Israel), before coming to Australia in 1949 on the Cyrenia­serving as ship's doctor for Jewish refugees. In Australia, the consummate medical skills that had proven life-saving for Otto's family, were not formally recognised, marking the end of a distinguished career.

Construyendo al futuro ser social: intervenciones médicas y pedagógicas en la infancia anormal. Santiago de Chile, 1920-1943 / Buildings the future "Social Being": medical and educational interventions in abnormal children. Santiago de Chile, 1920-1943

El presente trabajo busca estudiar la relación entre el Estado y la anormalidad en Santiago de Chile a través de una categoría específica como fue la infancia anormal, que tanto en el plano discursivo como institucional, tomó mayor definición y organización desde inicios de la década de 1920 hasta mediados de los años 40. Más allá de los cambios en los criterios estatales que tomaron lugar, se puede apreciar la pervivencia de lógicas preventivas y de control junto a otras protectoras y asistenciales visibles en la legislación y las instituciones creadas. Se destaca el papel de la medicina y la pedagogía en este ámbito, y en particular el papel de la última en la generación de una ciudadanía asimilable a los proyectos industriales y de nación de la época (AU)

This paper seeks to explore the relationship between the State and abnormality in Santiago of Chile through a specific category as it was the abnormal childhood, both in the discursive and institutional levels, took greater definition and organization since the beginning of the decade of 1920 until the mid-1940s. Apart from changes in the State criteria that took place, you can see the survival of preventive logic and control along with other protective and assistance on legislation and the institutions created. Highlights the role of medicine and pedagogy in this area, and in particular the role of this last in the generation of an assimilablecitizenship to the industrial and nation projects (AU)

Historical trauma and substance use among Native Hawaiian college students.

OBJECTIVES: To test the relationships among historical trauma, perceived discrimination, and substance use (cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use) among Native Hawaiians. METHODS: Cross sectional self-report data were collected online from 128 Native Hawaiian community college students (M age = 27.5; SD = 9.5; 65% Women). Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. RESULTS: Historical trauma had 2 paths to substance use: an indirect path to higher substance use through higher perceived discrimination and a direct path to lower substance use. CONCLUSIONS: Thoughts, knowledge, or experience associated with historical trauma may enhance substance use behavior via increased perceived discrimination and may also be protective against substance use, possibly via increased pride in one's cultural heritage. This research has implications for historical trauma, discrimination, and substance use research concerning Native Hawaiians.

Only your calamity: the beginnings of activism by and for people with AIDS.

The invention of AIDS activism came soon after the AIDS epidemic emerged in gay communities in the United States in the early 1980s. AIDS activism by and for people with AIDS, distinct from gay activism responding to the threat of AIDS on the behalf of the whole community, started as a way of resisting the phenomenon of social death. Social death, in which people are considered "as good as dead" and denied roles in community life, posed a unique threat to people with AIDS. An organized political response to AIDS began among gay men with AIDS in San Francisco, California, and New York, New York, formalized in a foundational document later called the Denver Principles. The ideas and language of these first people with AIDS influenced later AIDS activism movements. They also help to illustrate the importance of considering an epidemic from the point of view of people with the disease.

The political battle for repeal: personal reflections from the frontlines.

This article chronicles the story of the author's role as a U.S. Congressman in the effort to repeal the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Through a first-hand narrative, it discusses highs and lows in the fight, from President Obama's commitment in his State of the Union Address to lift the ban to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' plea for Congress to delay a vote, and shares his personal feelings upon achieving victory.

The President's pleasant surprise: how LGBT advocates ended Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

This study assesses the role of LGBT advocates in repealing the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in the U.S. Congress. It draws on the author's direct involvement with that effort as well as personal interviews and media evidence to consider the contributions of the Obama Administration, members of Congress, the media, and individuals and pressure groups in the repeal process. It argues that repeal succeeded not because of the effective implementation of a White House plan but because the pressure of LGBT advocates ultimately shattered several key obstacles including inadequate messaging and dysfunction and inertia among both politicians and interest groups in Washington. The article offers insight into the role of public pressure in forwarding social change.

The politics of paranoia.

For almost 20 years, gay rights advocates and defenders of military anti-gay discrimination engaged in a phony debate about whether allowing open service would undermine unit cohesion. To be sure, a preponderance of evidence showed that open service would not undermine cohesion, and the repeal of don't ask, don't tell (DADT) required advocates to prevail on that point in the court of public opinion. But concerns about cohesion were never the basis of opposition to open service. Rather, opposition was a modern incarnation of the politics of paranoia, a dangerous tradition in American history. Acknowledging that DADT had nothing to do with cohesion and that military leaders allowed the armed forces to be implicated in the politics of paranoia could facilitate disabling paranoia as the basis for other political projects such as anti-immigrant xenophobia. For a video on DADT and paranoia, search for "Donnelly Belkin DADT" on YoutTube.

OutServe: an underground network stands up.

From the perspective of an insider, this article explains how an underground network of actively-serving lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) military members was formed, and able to engage in the fight against the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. By providing the means to connect with one another within the constraints of the law, OutServe enabled the voices of gay and lesbian active military personnel to be heard. This new visibility informed the political debate surrounding the policy and played a role in the final days of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

The rise of repeal: policy entrepreneurship and Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

We report on policy entrepreneurship by Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) and how its legislative strategies used mini-windows of opportunity to shift Capitol Hill perspectives of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) from political plutonium to an emerging issue requiring a second look. Four phases in the legislative history of DADT are identified: radioactive, contested, emerging, and viable. In all, this article argues that SLDN's entrepreneurship focused on contesting congressional sensibilities to wait or defer on repeal, maintained that every discharge was damaging and transitioned toward a post-repeal mind set. Finally, we illustrate the importance of these transitions by comparing SLDN's 2004 estimated vote count for the introduction of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act with the final 2010 voting results on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act.

From exclusion to acceptance: a case history of homosexuality in the U.S. Court of Military Appeals.

Policing the legality and normalcy of service members' sexual lives was a contentious process for military courts throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s that resulted in the inconsistent enforcement of the homosexual exclusion policy. Military personnel of all ranks and occupations harbored a variety of attitudes and beliefs about homosexuality that challenged the legitimacy and uniformity of the military's legal assault on sexual deviance. Over half of the active duty personnel originally accused of homosexual tendencies received either sentence reductions or sentence reversals as a result of this highly contested process by which official military policy was translated into practice via courts-martial. Paradoxically, the very policies that discriminated against alleged homosexual service members generated legal avenues through which gays and lesbians exercised their rights to due process, and, ultimately, their rights as American citizens embodied in the repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. Rather than being an ideologically homophobic monolith, the Cold War American military rocked with contestation over an exclusion policy that attempted--unsuccessfully--to eliminate all gay and lesbian service members.

The Comprehensive Review Working Group and Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal at the Department of Defense.

In February 2010, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen established the Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG) to conduct a comprehensive review of the issues associated with a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT). Over the next 10 months, the CRWG undertook one of the most extensive studies of a personnel issue in the history of the U.S. military. This article describes the work and the findings of the CRWG (on which the author served) in the context of the activities within the Department of Defense (DoD) following President Obama's call for DADT repeal in his January 2010 State of the Union Address and leading up to the passage of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act in December 2010. It argues that the CRWG served a number of important functions in the DADT repeal process, particularly that it a) provided a rigorous, fact-based assessment of the impacts of repeal from which DoD senior leaders and Congress could base their views; b) developed a road map for a smooth and orderly implementation of repeal; and c) opened a conversation among military service members about what repeal would really mean to them. In doing so, the CRWG contributed to what has been a largely incident-free and successful transition to a post-DADT military.

Formalizing the ban: my experience in the Reagan Administration.

The repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) is a success story. As of September 20, 2011, one of the most egregious cases of modern day government-sanctioned discrimination has been overturned. But my (Lawrence Korb) involvement with military policy toward gays and lesbians began early in our country's journey toward open service--18 years before the creation of DADT and 30 years before the Obama Administration successfully opened the armed forces to gay and lesbian service members. In 1981, I joined the Pentagon shortly after the Carter administration announced a new Pentagon policy stating that "homosexuality is incompatible with military service" (U.S. Naval Institute [USNI], 2011). As Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations, and Logistics, the responsibility of writing the directive to implement this ban fell to my office. In this article, I detail my recollections from this period in American military history: the codification of the gay ban in U.S. Department of Defense policy.