Environmental hazards and public health: lessons for the practice of medicine and for public policy.

The separation of occupational and environmental disease from the mainstream of medical practice has deep roots in the culture of the profession. Medical practice centered on individual patient care as nineteenth-century science yielded the therapeutic triumphs of the twentieth century. Social issues seemed remote to medical practitioners as the rewards of scientifically based therapies upstaged the unglamorous aspects of preventive medicine. Public health was left to politicians and bureaucrats. Victorian ambivalence toward the less successful members of society reinforced the isolation of medicine from public policy. As a consequence, physicians are largely ignored in contemporary debates about environmental hazards, to the detriment of both society and the profession.

Sharing the toxic burden in New Jersey.

As toxic pollution spreads throughout New Jersey, the environment induces illness and the fear of illness in an ever-increasing population. The questions to ask physicians and residents of New Jersey are: Who will share the burden? What is the cost of this burden?

Using sociological concepts in the study of Indian medical systems: medical system, role & profession.

Now-a-days there is renewed interest all over the world in the medical systems other than modern medicine, identified as 'alternative' or 'conplementary' medicine. Research on these medical systems of India, as well as of other Asian societies continues to thrive. In this study, efforts has been made to place these systems in a frame work using the tolls of sociology. The research undertaken encompassed more than this, private clinics and the government hospitals of these systems in Hyderabad and miscellaneous, clinics, such as bone setters also.

Cancer prevention and detection. An overview of variables influencing adoption and practice.

This paper presents an overview of factors, attitudes, and beliefs that may influence the adoption of cancer prevention and detection strategies by health-care providers and the public. Health-care practitioners require education about prevention and detection approaches to health care and the social variations in the population that may influence acceptance and adoption of these measures. The need for consistent guidelines among health professional organizations is also stressed.