Jan 14, 2011
Jan 5, 2011
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Selected Anthropology Learned Societies
 Image via Wikipedia |
| Museumof Kent Life (BM) |
National Associations
AAA, American Anthropological Association
http://www.aaanet.org
AAC-LMK, Asociación de Antropología de Castilla y León “Michael Kenny”
http://www.antropologiacastillayleon.org
AAI, The Anthopological Association of Ireland
http://www.anthropologyireland.org/
AISEA The Italian Association for Ethno-Anthropological Sciences
http://www.aisea.it/
AAS, Australian Anthropological Society
http://www.aas.asn.au/
ABA, Associação Brasileira de Antropologia
http://www.abant.org.br
AFA, Association Française des Anthropologue
http://www.afa.msh-paris.fr/
Anthropological Association of Greece
http://www.aee.gr/
APA, Associação Portuguesa de Antropologia
http://www.apantropologia.net
ASA, Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth
http://www.theasa.org/
APRAS, Association pour la Recherche en Anthropologie Sociale
http://web.mae.u-paris10.fr/apras/
ASA, Anthropology Southern Africa
http://www.asnahome.org/
ASAA/NZ, The Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa/ New Zealand
http://asaanz.rsnz.org/
CASCA, Canadian Anthropology Society
http://casca.anthropologica.ca/
CEAS, Colegio de Etnólogos y Antropólogos Sociales AC, Mexico
http://www.ceas.org.mx/
FAAEE, Federación de Asociaciones de Antropología del Estado Español
http://www.ankulegi.org/castellano/asociacion/index.html
Croatian Ethnological Society
http://www.hrvatskoetnoloskodrustvo.hr
Dansk Etnografisk Forening
http://etnografiskforening.dk/
DGV, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde
http://www.dgv-net.de/
JASCA, Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology
http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/jasca/
Kula - Slovene Ethnological and Anthropological Association
http://www.kula.si
Malta Anthropology Society
http://soc.um.edu.mt/anthropology/
Mannfræðifélag Íslands
http://www.akademia.is/mi/
MCSS. Masaryk Czech Sociological Association, Section of Social Anthropology
http://www.ceskasociologicka.org/?en=
PAAA, Pan African Anthropological Association
http://www.upe.ac.za/paaa/
SEG | SSE, Schweizerische Ethnologische Gesellschaft| Société Suisse d'Éthnologie
http://www.seg-sse.ch/de
Slovene Anthropological Society
http://www.drustvo-antropologov.si
SSAG, Svenska Sällskapet för Antropologi och Geografi
http://www.ssag.se
Suomen Antropologinen Seura R.Y. / The Finish Anthropological Society
http://www.antropologinenseura.fi/en/home/
Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze (Polish Etthnological Society)
http://ptl.free.ngo.pl
SANT, Swerdish Antropologo Association
http://sverigesantropologforbund.blogspot.com/
NAF Norsk Antropologisk Forening, Norwegian Antrhopology Association
http://www.antropologi.org/
Other Networks and Associations
AEGIS, Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies
http://aegis-eu.org/
CIRS, International Center for Scientific Research
http://www.cirs-tm.org
ESfO, European Society for Oceanists
http://www.esfo-org.eu/
InASEA, The International Association for Southeast European Anthropology
http://www-gewi.kfunigraz.ac.at/inasea/
Indian Anthropological Association
http://www.indiananthropology.org/
IMA, Instituto Madrileño de Antropología
http://www.ima.org.es/index.html
AFS American Folklore Society
http://www.afsnet.org/
MASN, Moving Anthropolgy Student Network
http://www.movinganthropology.de/
MASN-Poland
http://www.masn.poland.prv.pl
MASN-Austria
http://www.movinganthropology.org/http://www.masn-austria.org
SIEF, International Society for Ethnology and Folklore
http://www.siefhome.org/
Society for the Anthropology of Europe
http://www.h-net.org/~sae/sae/index.html
WCAA, World Council of Anthropological Associations
http://www.wcaanet.org/
Antropologi.info
http://www.antropologi.info/
RAI, The Royal Anthropological Institute
http://www.therai.org.uk/
Guardian - A divided Pakistan buries Salman Taseer and a liberal dream
Liberals have long been a minority force in Pakistan, reviled for importing 'western' ideas and culture; now they are virtually an endangered species
Declan Walsh in Lahore
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 January 2011 21.05 GMT
Article history
Prime minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani at the funeral of assasinated Punjab governor Salman Taseer. Photograph: Ilyas J Dean/Rex Features There was silence in the ancient city of Lahore yesterday as Salman Taseer, a pugnacious son of the soil who made his name by speaking out, was lowered into an early grave.
Soldiers in fantail turbans snapped to attention; a cluster of stone-faced relatives looked on. A helicopter had carried Taseer's body from the governor's residence, a short distance away: authorities feared another fanatic, like the one who gunned down the Punjab governor 24 hours earlier, would show up.
At the graveside Taseer's three sons, men with black shirts and soft red eyes, flung clumps of rose petals into the grave. One was supported by a friend. A bugle sounded.
As graveyard workers shovelled sticky winter clay onto the coffin, many Pakistanis wondered what was disappearing into the grave with the outspoken politician.
Liberals have long been a minority force in Pakistan, reviled for importing "western" ideas and culture; now they are virtually an endangered species. As Taseer was buried, petals also flew through the sky in Islamabad where a cheering throng congratulated his assassin, a 26-year-old policeman named Mumtaz Qadri, as he was bundled into court. "Death is acceptable for Muhammad's slave," they chanted.
Taseer's crime, in Qadri's eyes, was to advocate reform of Pakistan's blasphemy law. Few other Pakistani politicians dared to speak against the law, which prescribes the death penalty for offenders yet is widely misused. Those who did now live in fear.
Sherry Rehman, a female parliamentarian from Karachi who tabled a parliamentary bill advocating reform of the blasphemy law, has disappeared from public view. Supporters have urged her to flee the country; sources close to her say she is determined to stay. Rehman has not yet requested extra police protection. A source said she "wasn't even sure what it means any more".
Religious parties refused to condemn Taseer's death, implying that he got what he deserved; some described him as a "liberal extremist". But intolerance from the religious right is nothing new in Pakistan; more striking is the lack of leadership from the country's secular forces.
The opposition Pakistan Muslim League–N party was conspicuously absent from the Lahore funeral, perhaps mindful of a decree by Barelvi mullahs that those condoling with Taseer also risked death. But capitulation to the religious right has also infected the ruling Pakistan People's Party, of which Taseer was a staunch member.
Since Taseer's death party supporters have burned tyres and chanted the old slogans: "Jiye Bhutto!" and "If you kill one Bhutto another will rise!" Party leaders painted Taseer's death as part of a "conspiracy". "We need to find out if this is an attempt to destabilise Pakistan," said law minister Babar Awan, announcing the inevitable judicial enquiry.
But the tired rhetoric masked a less palatable truth: that Taseer had been abandoned by his own leadership. After Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman, was sentenced to death under the blasphemy laws on 8 November, Taseer visited her in jail with his wife and daughter to show his support.
Shortly after, an Islamic mob rioted outside the governor's house in Lahore, burning his effigy and calling for his death. On television prominent media commentators joined the chorus of criticism.
Senior figures in his own party turned tail. Awan, the law minister, said there was no question of reforming the blasphemy law. "As long as I am law minister no one should think of finishing this law," he said on 26 November. Another minister confirmed that position one week ago.
The U-turn was the product of a huge miscalculation. At the start of the Aasia Bibi affair on 8 November, President Asif Ali Zardari suggested he might pardon the Christian woman if she was convicted. But he stalled, apparently hoping to extract political mileage from the affair.
Then on 29 November the Lahore high court, which had a history of antagonism with Zardari, issued an order forbidding him from issuing a pardon. The issue became a political football, a struggle between the government, the courts and the mullahs. Zardari was powerless to act.
And the Punjab governor was left swinging in a lonely wind.
In his last television interview, on 1 January, Taseer said it had been his "personal decision" to support Aasia Bibi. "I went to see her with my wife and daughter. Some have supported me; other are against me […] but if I do not stand by my conscience, then who will?"
The answer, he knew, was simple: not many. Taseer's liberal politics were controversial in Pakistan's media, which is increasingly dominated by rightwing commentators. He ridiculed his enemies with messages on Twitter, a medium that he relished for its ability to deliver brisk, barbed jabs.
In December even Meher Bokhari – a leading female journalist who had once been ridiculed as a "CIA agent" after attending a US embassy party — asked Taseer if he wasn't following a "pro-western agenda" by supporting the Christian woman. Taseer retorted that he didn't know what she was talking about.
For many, the debacle shows how the heroes of yesteryear have fallen in Pakistan. In 2007 brave journalists, judges and lawyers came together to help oust the military leader President Pervez Musharraf from power. Today the judiciary has become enmeshed in controversy, the media offers an unfiltered platform to extremists, and the lawyers movement has been badly divided.
Ayaz Amir, a progressive commentator, noted yesterday: "The religious parties will always do what they do. You can't blame them. It is up the other sections of Pakistani society to stop the rot and reverse the tide. But it's the political parties and the army should have done it. And they did nothing."
Pakistan's military and civilian leaders face many grave challenges, not least the still-burning Taliban insurgency in the north-west. But for embattled liberals, the death of Taseer exposed something ugly in their wider society, much as the shoulder-shrugging reaction to the massacre of minority Ahmadis in a Lahore mosque last May did.
Lahore is the capital of Punjab, the large and wealthy province that is the boiling cauldron of Pakistan's ideological battle. Punjab is the breeding ground of extremists nurtured by the pro-Islamist policies of Pakistan's army, which has used militants to fight Indian soldiers in Kashmir. According to US assessments in the recent WikiLeaks cables, it still does.
Two years ago extremists attacked the police training centre outside Lahore that is home to the Punjab Elite force, the province's best-trained police commandos. This week a member of that same force – Qadri – was responsible for killing Taseer.
Taseer's death has focused that ideological fight around blasphemy. The law originated under British colonial rule in the 19th century but only acquired notoriety in the 1980s when the dictator Zia ul Haq decreed that blasphemy was punishable by death (a provision that Islamic scholars say has little theological foundation). The law is also of questionable civil law value: it contradicts fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution.
It is a crime where no proof is required. The religious slander allegedly uttered by Aasia Bibi, for instance, has never been repeated by her accusers – to do so would be to blaspheme again. As a result, she has been convicted on the say-so of her neighbours, with whom she was having an argument in a field.
If Bibi's conviction is upheld she will be hanged, the first woman in Pakistan's history to be executed for blasphemy. If freed, she will have to flee Pakistan immediately.
Senior supporters say that Canada has made a tentative offer of asylum. But in the present climate in Pakistan it seems unlikely that Bibi will be set free. Senior human rights campaigners told the Guardian they feared she could be killed by zealots in jail or on the steps of the court, as has happened in other blasphemy cases.
The question now is who will speak up for her. For liberals, Taseer's death is a sign that their political space, already highly constrained, is becoming impossibly small.
"If Pakistan and Pakistanis do not try to excise the cancer within, the future of this country is very bleak," read an editorial in Dawn yesterday.
The face of Mumtaz Qadri, smiling beatifically as he was led away by police after killing Taseer, perhaps dreaming of his rewards in heaven, has become the image of Pakistan's national agony. Qadri claims to act in the name of Islam, the reason that Pakistan was founded.
Yesterday on Twitter, the medium beloved of Salman Taseer, liberal Pakistanis bemoaned the disappearance of "Jinnah's Pakistan" – the tolerant, pluralistic country envisioned by its founder, the lawyer Muhammad ali Jinnah, in 1947. Others tried to remember if it had ever existed.
And in the streets outside Pakistan's silent majority – the ordinary, moderate people who do not favour extremism or violence, and only want their society to thrive – were saying nothing. But in Pakistan, that is no longer good enough. Silence kills.
A very human view
Salman Taseer was one of Pakistan's most prolific and popular tweeters, on everything from politics to cricket, revealing a very human view of the country's troubles. Here are some of his more recent tweets:
3 January: So Facebook the social networking site started by a 26 year old has been valued at $50bn Same as our foreign debt! Something 2 think about?
31 December: Peace prosperity & happiness for new year ( 1 1 11 ) i'm full of optimism
31 December: I was under huge pressure sure 2 cow down b4 rightest pressure on blasphemy. Refused. Even if I'm the last man standing
26 December: Religous right trying 2 pressurise from the street their support of blasphemy laws. Point is it must be decided in Parlaiment not on the road
24 December: Covered in the righteous cloak of religon and even a puny dwarf imagines himself a monster . Important to face. And call their bluff
24 December: My observation on minorities: A man/nation is judged by how they support those weaker than them not how they lean on those stronger
19 December: So Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame has been chosen 4 Time Magazine man of the Year. Hmm . Guess I'll have to wait till next year
19 December: What is the qualification 4 issueing a fatwa? A beard? Title Maulana? Owning a madrassa?
Jan 4, 2011
IIAS | ICAS Publications Series
ISBN: 978 90 8964 164 9
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Publication year: 2010
Pages 296
Price € 44,50
ISBN: 978 981 4279 07 9
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
Publication year: 2010
Pages 299
Price S$59.90/US$49.90
ISBN: 978 90 8964 092 5
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Publication year: 2010
Pages 176
Price € 37,50
ISBN: 978 908 964 249 3
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Publication year: 2010
Pages 168
Price € 27,50
ISBN: 978 90 8964 245 5
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Publication year: 2010
Pages 180
Price € 27,50
ISBN: 978 981 230 940 2
Publisher: ISEAS/IIAS
Publication year: 2010
Pages 211
Price USD $39.90
ISBN: 978 90 5356 794 4
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Publication year: 2010
Pages 312
Price € 44,50
ISBN: 978 90 8964 165 6
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Publication year: 2010
Pages 272
Price € 42,00
ISBN: 978 90 8964 054 3
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Publication year: 2010
Pages 264
Price € 42,00
ISBN: 978 90 8964 088 8
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Publication year: 2010
Pages 296
Price € 42,00
Jan 3, 2011
Best Websites to Track Popular and Viral Videos Online
1. First-Hand: Most Popular on Youtube, Viddler, etc
Every major video sharing site has its own trending video section. The 7 coolest ones are:- Viddler: Most Popular Today: The list can be sorted by “Most Viewed”, “Most Favorited” and “Most Discussed”
- YouTube Charts: apart from the ability to set the period of time (popular today / this week / this month / all time), it also lets you sort the list by multiple criteria: “Most discussed”, “Most liked”, “Most Subscribed”, “Most viewed HD videos”, “Most Favorited” and, obviously “Most Viewed”
- Yahoo Popular Today – Yahoo has also “Popular by Category” section
- Most Popular Videos on Photobucket (sadly, you can’t set the time frame here);
- Funny or Die: Most Viewed: You can filter videos by channel and sort by “Most Buzz” (not sure what this one includes), “Most Viewed”, “Most Favorited”, “Highest Rated”:
- Metacafe – most popular: can be sorted by views and ratings and filtered by time frame: popular this week o this month
- DailyMotion: Most Viewed Videos: the videos can be filtered by channel, time frame (today, this month, this week), and by video type (featured videos, HD videos, official content, creative content):
2. Viral Video Aggregators
Aggregators use multiple sources (like those listed above) to present you with daily (and sometimes hourly) collections of popular videos at a number of platforms.Here are a few examples:
1. Viral Video Chart: the tool monitors “most contagious” videos on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Blogosphere. For each video you can click though to “stats” section where you can see the number of Tweets (as long as the list of most influential ones), Facebook shares and blog posts.
PopScreen measures online videos from over 10,000 sources, including YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo and DailyMotion as well as content networks like FunnyOrDie and Cracked.
3. Regular Viral Video round-ups
Some people love browsing video sharing sites and find best videos on his own, others prefer to go through ready-made manually-compiled round-ups. I for one can do both the ways. The two video round-ups I tend to monitor:- Viral Video Roundups by Reelseo;
- Viral Videos (with some focus on movies and TV) by Movie Viral
5 Good Books about Muslim Cultures and America
After 9/11, many books were published about America's
relationship with the Muslim world. Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are in
the news daily, and it is clear that there is a lot most of us do not
know about the history, culture and religion of these countries.
Fortunately, there is a way to learn more about Islam, and Islamic
countries' relationships with America, without reading dry, political
books. These books on Islam and America are informative, but read like
good novels.
'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini
Riverhead
The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini is a gripping, page-turning fiction novel about a
boy in Afghanistan who moves to America in the 1980s and how a haunting
incident from his childhood draws him back to the country as an adult
despite the dangers of the Taliban. This is a must read! The Kite Runner is great for learning about Afghanistan.
- Read a complete review of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- The Kite Runner Book Club Discussion Questions
'A Thousand Splendid Suns' by Khaled Hosseini
Riverhead
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is superbly written, has a page-turning story, and will help you learn more about Afghanistan. In his follow up novel to The Kite Runner,
Hosseini has once again created a heartbreaking masterpiece that
connects readers with life in Afghanistan over the past several decades
and highlights the common hopes, dreams and struggles that make us
human.
- Read a complete review of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
- A Thousand Splendid Suns Book Club Discussion Questions
'Three Cups of Tea' by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
Penguin
Three Cups of Tea
is the true story of Greg Mortenson's adventures building schools in
remote Northern Pakistan. It is an inspirational nonfiction book and a
great way to learn more about Islam. Three Cups of Tea is great for learning about Pakistan.
- Read a complete review of Three Cups of Tea
- Three Cups of Tea Book Club Discussion Questions
'Reading Lolita in Tehran' by Azar Nafisi
Random House
Reading Lolita in Tehran
by Azar Nafisi is the true story of an underground women's book club in
Iran. Part literary criticism, part history of the Islamic Revolution, Reading Lolita in Tehran
will especially appeal to book clubs and readers who will understand
comparisons between the novels the women read and the situation in Iran.
Reading Lolita in Tehran is great for learning about Iran.
'Terrorist' by John Updike
Knopf
Terrorist by John Updike is a novel about an 18-year-old boy in NJ who is recruited to take part in a terrorist attack. In Terrorist, Updike imagines how an Islamic fundamentalist sees America. Terrorist is great for thinking about Islamic fundamentalism.
- Read a complete review of Terrorist by John Updike
- Terrorist Book Club Discussion Questions
Doctors who prescribe oft-abused drugs face scrutiny
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeBy Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 1, 2011; 9:41 PM
Twice, the patient, a man in his mid-30s, said he lost his prescriptions for Valium and Percocet. Once, he said he was in a car accident that scattered his pills on the road. Another time, he said the medicine he was first prescribed was no good, so he "returned the pills." Another time, his wife called and said their house had been "searched by authorities" and the medicine had gone missing.
Each time, no matter the story, Peter S. Trent or Hampton J. Jackson Jr., doctors at the same orthopedic practice in Oxon Hill, refilled the prescription, according to the Maryland Board of Physicians. Over the course of 21/2 years, the doctors gave the patient 275 prescriptions, mostly for Percocet, a powerful, highly addictive painkiller.
Sometimes they wrote the patient more than one prescription for the drug on the same day. In a single month, they wrote him 11 prescriptions for Percocet, totaling 734 pills.
Jackson and Trent - who maintain that they did nothing wrong - are among a small group of doctors who were the top prescribers of tightly regulated drugs in their state Medicaid programs, according to a Washington Post analysis of state data.
Last year, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) asked state regulators to provide lists of the top 10 Medicaid prescribers of eight drugs - some of which have high street value because of their popularity among abusers - in an effort to identify doctors who might be overprescribing pricey medicines at taxpayer expense.
The data he collected - which do not include prescriptions written outside of Medicaid - show that some doctors prescribe far more of the drugs than most of their peers. Grassley said the findings do not necessarily suggest "any illegal or wrongful behavior," because doctors on the lists may have a certain expertise or patient population that justifies their prescribing patterns.
But the findings "may also suggest overutilization or even health-care fraud," Grassley said. In one case, he noted, a Florida doctor wrote nearly 97,000 prescriptions for mental-health drugs over a 21-month period.
After receiving Grassley's data, The Post requested the same information from the District, Maryland and Virginia for other drugs - such as Percocet, Vicodin and Ritalin - that are prone to abuse.
The Post's analysis found not only that certain doctors routinely prescribe some medications far more than their peers, but also that some of them have a long history of sanctions by professional disciplinary boards for unethical and unprofessional behavior, including overprescribing medications to patients who may have been using them to get high instead of well.
The state boards that oversee medical misconduct say overprescribing is a huge problem that they take very seriously.
The top priority is to do "whatever you think is necessary to protect the public," said William Harp, executive director of the Virginia Board of Medicine. "I want us to be very objective and very fair to these doctors and the citizens they treat."
Regulators say they are caught between trying to keep doctors from prescribing drugs unnecessarily and satisfying doctors who say heavy-handed investigations discourage them from prescribing medication that patients need.
"We get heat from both sides," said C. Irving Pinder Jr., executive director of the Maryland Board of Physicians. "Pain-management doctors say we're taking them out of business, but we're only getting those that obviously cross the line."
Meanwhile, illicit use of prescription medicine has become the nation's "fastest-growing drug problem," according to R. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Between 1999 and 2005, unintentional deaths from prescription drug overdose more than doubled, to more than 22,000, according to a study funded by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, making such overdoses the second-leading cause of unintentional death, after automobile accidents.
Part of the problem, Kerlikowske said, is that people do not see the drugs as dangerous, because they are legal and have a legitimate use. Many doctors are prescribing more of these highly addictive drugs without fully understanding how hooked people can become, he said.
Doctors "don't get very much, if any, training in dependence, in addiction, in pain management," he said.
The drugs driving the problem are opioid analgesics, which among teenagers are more popular than marijuana, according to a federal study from 2006. These drugs have been flowing out of retail pharmacies at a burgeoning rate. Prescriptions for two of the most common opioids, hydrocodone and oxycodone, jumped from 44 million in 1991 to 179 million in 2009, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
"I don't think anyone believes that pain has increased that substantially in the country," Kerlikowske said.
The lists of doctors who write the most prescriptions include some who have gotten in trouble before for overprescribing and some who have been sanctioned by state medical boards for other offenses, including borrowing large sums of money from a patient, giving narcotics to a patient even after being warned that the patient was selling those drugs, and mistakenly prescribing a lethal dose of an antidepressant to an 11-year-old boy, who collapsed on a school trip to an amusement park and died. Patients in and out
Hampton Jackson - who also practices in the District - prescribed far more OxyContin and Roxicodone (two brand names for the narcotic painkiller oxycodone) than did the city's next most prolific Medicaid provider. He wrote 63 prescriptions in 2008 and 191 in 2009; the runner-up on the list wrote 27 in 2008 and 64 in 2009. But Jackson said his totals were relatively small given the number of patients he treats. He also said he rigorously monitors patients on heavy drugs for signs of abuse.
On an average day, he said, he sees 30 to 50 patients. On an extremely busy day, he said, he can see as many as 90 in nine hours. That caseload - 10 patients an hour - is possible, he said, because many are routine follow-ups and "because I have a big staff."
Jackson said many patients who are in pain are undermedicated. Doctors, fearing disciplinary actions from medical boards, are not prescribing the drugs people need, he said.
Even though he is on probation and his privileges at George Washington University Hospital have been revoked since 2004, Jackson said he will continue to practice medicine as he deems best. If that means treating people who require strong drugs, so be it.
"A lot of people say, 'I'm not getting in trouble with the board' and 'Get them out of my office.' That's not true to my oath and my desire to help my patients," he said. "I have all these patients because doctors won't treat them."
In 2004, the Maryland board sanctioned Jackson and Peter Trent, saying that they did not heed signs of a patient's abuse problem and failed to ensure that he was "not diverting these medications for non-therapeutic purposes or was stockpiling the medications for personal use."
Although the wording of the sanction sounded tough, it really was little more than "a slap on the wrist," Jackson said in an interview. The punishment did not prohibit him from seeing patients or prescribing medicine.
In fact, records show that in 2009, while Jackson's license was under probation, he was among Maryland's top prescribers of Roxicodone and of Vicodin, a painkiller that combines hydrocodone and acetaminophen. In addition, Jackson and Trent were first and second in the District, respectively, in the number of Percocet prescriptions written in the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, 2010. During that period, Jackson wrote 684 Percocet prescriptions and Trent wrote 223.
Both Jackson and Trent, who is no longer on probation, said in interviews that they did nothing wrong and were victims of an overly aggressive board.
"They were headhunting," Jackson said. "They were looking to show the public they were cracking down on drugs."
Asked to comment on his appearance on the District's most-prescribed list, Trent said, "They ought to give me an award." He said the number is not high given that he sees 100 patients a week.
Both doctors said that they use many techniques to treat patients but that medicine is often a key component. "If there's no other reasonable way to control the symptoms, then we are forced to use medications like OxyContin," Jackson said.
As for the patient for whom they wrote 275 prescriptions, both doctors said that they were working in different locations at the time and that neither knew the other was prescribing the same medication.
The patient "would come to me, then the next day he would go to the office in Silver Spring, and we wouldn't have the records in Silver Spring, so neither one of us knew he was getting medication from us simultaneously," Jackson said.
That case has led to a change in the doctors' practice. "We've tightened up," Trent said. "The answer now is no if they say they lost their prescription." 'Egregious' violations
Montgomery County police in 2000 found a woman fading in and out of consciousness in a house so squalid it would soon be condemned as unfit for human habitation. At the hospital, the patient, who had attempted suicide before, was found to be full of booze and the same type of medications that had been prescribed by Joel Cohen, who, as it turned out, was her fiance.
For more than a year, Cohen, then a psychiatrist in Bethesda, had been prescribing the woman medications such as hydrocodone and the anti-anxiety drug diazepam but failed to keep records, according to the Maryland Board of Physicians, which placed him on probation in 2001.
In February 2006, that probation was lifted. Five months later, Cohen was sanctioned again after what the board called a "dangerous failure to meet the standard of care" with a second patient, for whom he prescribed "large amounts of medications" despite her history of alcohol and prescription drug abuse. Cohen did this, according to the board, even while he "was aware that the patient was abusing prescription medications," including the stimulant Ritalin.
In 2008, according to the D.C. Board of Medicine, Cohen was the District's top prescriber under Medicaid of three antipsychotic medications: Seroquel, Abilify and Geodon.
In the 2006 sanction, the Maryland board said Cohen had committed "egregious boundary violations" with the patient, a victim of spousal abuse who had developed borderline personality disorder. He gave gifts to her children, allowed her to take his children on vacation and gave her real estate advice. He also let the patient, whom he had been treating for 21 years, shower at his office and prescribed Ritalin for her son without evaluating him.
Cohen admitted to the board that he had "mishandled the patient's case in many ways and had underestimated his own difficulties," according to the board's final order in the case.
In that second sanction, the board said Cohen's actions "were not a one-time, short-term lapse of judgment with one patient, but rather a longstanding, documented pattern of unethical behavior dating back to 1977."
Cohen's license in Maryland has expired, but he continues to practice at Community Connections, a clinic on Capitol Hill.
In a brief interview, he said he sees as many as 16 patients a day, many of whom are homeless and do not have insurance.
"I work with severely mentally ill people," he said. "I really don't want to go into all of this. This is a very tough place to work here. We have very sick people. I think that's enough said." Clear signs of misuse
One patient's fiancee asked the doctor to please stop prescribing so many medications. The patient was an alcoholic with a history of abusing narcotics and sedatives. Once, he overdosed, and now he was in a detox clinic. Still, the doctor did not stop prescribing, according to Maryland's Board of Physicians.
In fact, over the course of a decade, Daniel M. Howell, a family-care doctor in Waldorf, prescribed more drugs, in increasing doses, even when there were clear signs that the patient was abusing his medicine, the board found.
In 2008, Howell was among Maryland's top prescribers under Medicaid of OxyContin, Xanax and Percocet.
In an interview, Howell said he "followed national pain-management guidelines in the sense that we did random urine testing on anyone that we had any suspicion about." In one year, he said, his practice dropped 50 to 100 patients for abusing prescriptions.
Howell started seeing the alcoholic patient for "possible broken ribs" in 1994. By the next year, a CVS pharmacist called Howell to report that the patient had been getting multiple refills for several narcotics from different doctors in the area. But when the patient complained of kidney stones soon thereafter, Howell prescribed Percocet.
Initially, he prescribed 20 to 30 pills at a time, the board found. By 1997, it was 40, then 60. By 2000, he was prescribing the patient 100 pills every two weeks. Then Howell doubled the strength of the pills from 5 milligrams to 10. Once, he prescribed Percocet because the patient had a "headache - frontal." At one point, Howell prescribed 300 pills within 10 days, along with 90 tablets of OxyContin, to the same patient, an amount the board called "well above the safe limit." By 2003, the patient was taking eight to 14 Percocets a day.
In 2008, the board placed Howell on probation, requiring him to take a course on prescribing controlled substances. But he was allowed to continue seeing patients and writing prescriptions. A year later, he was charged again. This time, the pharmacies - and other doctors - were complaining.
"Three concerned area pharmacists," as they called themselves in a letter to the board, said Howell was prescribing excessive narcotics to patients who "appear to have questionable and/or documented history of overuse of pain medication."
A few months later, an emergency room doctor at St. Mary's Hospital in Southern Maryland complained that Howell's overprescribing was causing overdoses. One patient had ended up in the ER but then returned to Howell's office, where he "received another very large prescription for Percocet and Xanax," the board said. The patient was found unresponsive again and was taken to the ER a second time.
"I want you to note that none of the patients I was accused of mistreating in this fashion died," Howell told The Post. "The ER takes care of the moment. But what happens the next day, when they're shaking and sweating and sometimes having hallucinations? And there isn't any acute-withdrawal center in Southern Maryland. Do you let them go into acute withdrawal, which could lead them to street meds, which are less safe than a controlled commercial product?"
In October 2009, the board suspended Howell's license but immediately knocked the suspension down to probation on the condition that he not treat patients for chronic pain. The board also limited the amount of drugs Howell could prescribe and required that another doctor supervise him.
Howell said he has been fired from the practice where he worked because many top insurance companies dropped him after the sanctions. He said he hoped to return to practicing medicine soon.
"I just want to get back to serving people," he said. Hoarding medications
The Virginia Board of Medicine came down hard on Verna M. Lewis, a physical-medicine and rehabilitation doctor in Roanoke. Her license was suspended after she was convicted in 1999 of filing false tax returns and influencing a grand jury witness.
In 2002, the board found that she was taking unused medicine from the hospital where she worked and using it in her private practice. She also told patients to return unused prescriptions to her and then had her staff take patients' names off those bottles so she could reissue the medications to other patients, even though, as the board said, she had no authority to do so.
State police and health investigators searched her office and found hundreds of doses of drugs, including OxyContin, with no patient or pharmacy names on the labels. The board also said she removed from her office two patients' files that had been subpoenaed.
Lewis applied to have her license reinstated twice, and both times she was denied. Then, in 2004, after she completed 108 hours of continuing medical education, her license was restored with several conditions, including having to pass an exam given by the national Federation of State Medical Boards.
After she took the test, according to the Virginia medical board, Lewis faxed the officials a document purporting to prove that she had scored the minimum passing grade of 75. But when the federation faxed in her official score the next day, it showed that she had failed with a score of 74.
Lewis did not return calls seeking comment. She told the board that it had not found any "actual patient harm" and that she extensively studied pain management and had never been sued for malpractice.
Harp, the medical board's director, refused to address specific cases but said, "We take prescribing complaints very seriously."
In 2006, the board reinstated Lewis's license but ordered an unannounced inspection of her practice and records and required her to log the controlled substances she prescribed.
The year after that, she was granted a "full and unrestricted license." The letter reinstating her ends, "The board wishes you well in your future endeavors."
The year after that, in 2008, Lewis was among Virginia's top prescribers of OxyContin and Roxicodone under Medicaid.
Staff researchers Magda Jean-Louis and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
A Critical Silence
Image via WikipediaJACKSON DIEHL
Monday, January 3, 2011; A15
In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly last September Barack Obama suggested that his administration's notoriously weak defense of human rights around the world would be invigorated. "We will call out those who suppress ideas and serve as a voice for those who are voiceless," he said. He went on to urge other democracies: "Don't stand idly by, don't be silent, when dissidents elsewhere are imprisoned and protestors are beaten."
Just over two months later, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Bahrain, an important Persian Gulf ally that hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet. The emirate was in the midst of a major crackdown on its opposition. Two dozen dissidents, including intellectuals, clerics and a prominent blogger, had been rounded up, charged under anti-terrorism laws and allegedly tortured. A human rights group that had received U.S. funding was taken over by the government. Human Rights Watch had concluded that "what we are seeing in Bahrain these days is a return to full-blown authoritarianism."
Clinton's response? Extravagant and virtually unqualified praise for Bahrain's ruling al-Khalifa family. "I am very impressed by the progress that Bahrain is making on all fronts - economically, politically, socially," she declared as she opened a town hall meeting. Her paeans to Bahrain's "commitment to democracy" continued until a member of parliament managed to gain access to the microphone and asked for a response to the fact that "many people are arrested, lawyers and human rights activists."
Clinton's condescending reply was a pure apology for the regime. "It's easy to be focused internally and see the glass as half empty. I see the glass as half full," she said. "Yes, I mean people are arrested and people should have due process . . . but on the other hand the election was widely validated. . . . So you have to look at the entire picture."
So much for a fresh start on human rights. Clinton's Bahrain visit reflected what seems to be an intractable piece of the Obama administration's character: a deeply ingrained resistance to the notion that the United States should publicly shame authoritarian regimes or stand up for the dissidents they persecute.
Yes, Obama made a public statement the day an empty chair represented Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo at the Nobel peace prize ceremony, and both he and Clinton issued statements last week when Russia's best-known political prisoner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was convicted on blatantly trumped-up charges. But in all sorts of less prominent places and cases, the U.S. voice remains positively timid - or not heard at all.
After Egypt's terrible elections in November, in which ballot boxes were blatantly stuffed and the opposition brutally suppressed, the administration's commentary was limited to bland statements issued by "the office of the press secretary" at State and the spokesman of the National Security Council. Three weeks earlier, at a widely watched joint press conference in Washington with Egypt's foreign minister, Clinton made no mention of the elections, the crackdown or anything else related to human rights.
In Latin America, friends of the United States marvel at its passivity as Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega systematically crush civil society organizations and independent media. "I don't see a clear policy," Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez - a good example of the sort of dissident Obama promised to defend - told me.
When the administration touts its record it often focuses on the declarations it has engineered by multilateral forums, such as the U.N. Human Rights Council. The ideology behind this is that the United States is better off working through such bodies than acting on its own. The problem is that, in practice, this is not true. Set aside for the moment the fact that the U.N. council is dominated by human rights abusers who devote most of the agenda to condemnations of Israel. Who has heard what the council said about, say, the recent events in Belarus? The obvious answer: far fewer people than would have noticed if the same critique came from Obama or Clinton.
Back to Bahrain for a moment. The "entire picture" Clinton referred to is that virtually no one, outside the Bahraini royal family and the State Department, shared her judgment that the parliamentary election was "free and fair." The dissidents are still on trial; their defense lawyers resigned en masse last month because of the court's refusal to consider any of their motions.
Recently, Human Rights Watch spoke up again on behalf of Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, who has been repeatedly harassed by security forces, prevented from traveling and called a terrorist by the state news agency.
Has the Obama administration spoken up for this relatively obscure and "voiceless" dissident? Of course not.
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