Socioethical considerations in behavior therapy research and practice

Clinical and research practices of behavior therapists are identified in which the potential for ethical misapplication, underconcern, or insensitivity may arise. An analysis of ethical concerns associated with the following five phases of behavioral intervention is next developed: problem identification, establishing behavioral objectives, designing behavior change, implementing behavior change, and evaluation and feedback of the behavior change endeavor. The article concludes by examining the practice of behavior modification from a sociolegal perspective, with special emphasis on developments within the patients' rights movement.

Cardiac arrest in the Emergency Medical Service System: guidelines for resuscitation

A two-year study of 198 consecutive patients treated for cardiac arrest in the emergency department at Stanford University Medical Center was undertaken. The relatively poor overall survival rate of 3% and the complexity of deciding how to treat cardiac arrest victims suggest the need for guidelines to assist the emergency physician when resuscitating cardiac arrest patients. From the above study and a survey of the literature, the authors formulated the following guidelines of when resuscitation should be discontinued or not attempted: Cases of apnea and pulselessness known to have exceeded 10 minutes, no response after more than 30 minutes of advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), no ventricular EKG activity after more than 10 minutes of ACLS, and preexisting terminal illness.

Development of drug therapy for children

The National Commission is about to finalize its recommendations with regard to research in children. It is significant that the commission will propose that research in children is necessary and should be supported. Clinical pharmacologic studies in infants and children require encouragement, as well as support, if drugs are to be developed in the future that do not have limited indications for the pediatric-aged patient, due to incomplete pediatric studies. The ethics of conducting pharmacologic investigations in infants and children have been discussed and recommendations have been prepared by the Committee on Drugs of the American Academy of Pediatrics. These discussions and recommendations differ in some significant ways from the most recent draft available from the National Commission.