Correspondence
Correspondence I /q free man Washington, D.C. To the Editors: In an article on Cuban political prisoners ["Breaking the Silence," February 22, 1985] and later in a letter to the editors, I...
...Or call (717) 675-3862...
...Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ...
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...Correspondence (Continued from page 130) cian (in most cases more finitude than flaw), results in outcomes that are sometimes unavoidably unfortunate...
...The fact is that the present situation, the power of humans to destroy the human race and with it humt~nkind's entire past, present, and future, was unimaginable in the past...
...Rather simply make them give back the money...
...To the Editors: Your commentary on the Anglo/Irish Agreement on Northern Ireland ["Etc.," November 29] was not illuminating...
...Finally, the size of the awards compensating an injured person or family for loss of income-generating potential are quite irrational and thus contribute unnecessarily to the cost crisis Selden describes...
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...Commonweal: 130shaping the ways in which we view the doom to which we have consigned ourselves: as God's will to purify the world or as our ultimate sin against creation...
...For brochure contact: Thomas O'Neill, Institute of Gerontology, College Misedcordia, Dallas, PA 18612...
...Seiden is right again when she notes that the system is more like a lottery than a reliable source of patient protection...
...It couldn't possibly be in the few words you gave it . . . . The Anglo/Irish Agreement will mean as much as the British government in Whitehall allows it to mean, and as the Irish government in Dublin will insist it means...
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...The value of the book is to make us rethink it all...
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...To the Editors: Dena Seiden's "The Malpractice Muddle" [January 17, 1986] is A crisply written, well documented, and insightful piece about a problem not likely to get better in American society until something in popular culture changes...
...Her perception that the rights of those identifiable individuals who have been harmed by the system (negligently or otherwise) must be balanced against the interests of the larger community, is a trenchant one...
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...The end result of the work is to wonder who has been most made in whose image...
...p. 156, Bas...
...If the findings warrant compensation for loss of income, then it ought to be for the jury to say only that, not to do the calculation required to produce that lost income...
...March 31 to April 3. 14 March 1986:159...
...To the Editors: In an article on Cuban political prisoners ["Breaking the Silence," February 22, 1985] and later in a letter to the editors, I told about the arrest of Santos Mirabal at age twelve, who allegedly shot a cow with a government weapon, and suggested readers write to Fidel Castro on his behalf...
...If the mal~actice system caught this damage, itmight be seen to have a more redeeming face...
...All of which are demonstrated in a history of Christian persecutions, the Crusades, the Inquisition, imperialism, and slavery...
...It is the increasing strength of Sinn Fein which caused Britain to make this Agreement with the Irish government...
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...ISBN 0-89571.028-5 Paper, $8.00 Growing Pains in Ministry and Study Guide for Growing Pains in Ministry Sean Sammon "(Growing Pains in Ministry is) a practical, personal, packed volume.., the entire book is an invitation to profitable selfreflection...
...At least half of all of the malpractice-related costs in the health care system represent dollars shunted into the legal system (e.g., court costs, attorneys on both sides), and another, though much smaller fraction, is consumed in administration...
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...One of the author's suggestions is to eliminate payment for "pain and suffering" and only reimburse the victim for actual medical costs...
...Without some sort of correction, we are headed like Gadarene swine, headlong, and without restraint, over the precipice and the inevitable collapse of the system...
...p. 143, Tom Keough...
...p. 148, Margulies...
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...But the reasons behind the statement may not be altogether clear, and even the term, "failings of others," may not be entirely apt...
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...Even in the egregious cases that are the often cited -- the apparently flagrant abuses -- it is very difficult to be certain that the...
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...The inefficiency of the apparatus, even when considered only as a means of compensating people who are victims of misfortune, is starkly emphasized by an analysis of the dollar flow through the system...
...ROBERT PHILLIP's Personal Accounts: New & Selected Poems, will be published by Ontario Review Press in March, JOAN D. CHITTISTER, O.S.B., has written and lectured on the peace pastoral and chaired a national taskforce on peacemaking in 1984, from apathy to apathy, from blind trust to blind rage, from benign militarism to malignant militarism...
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...Kanfman challenges the notion that the theological task is to hand on and hand down, basically unedited, the tradition as it has been interpreted in the past...
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...To the Editors: As a trial lawyer who has spent many years defending medical malpractice cases, I applaud Dena Seiden for fairly and objectively addressing the current medical malpractice dilemma in this country ["The Malpractice Muddle," January 17...
...To the Editors: Dena Seiden ["The Malpractice Muddle," January 17] follows the pattern of many ethicists by placing the responsibility on the victim of the malpractice...
...President Union Theological Seminary The costs of pain Trenton, N.J...
...We in God's or God in ours...
...Noel Keller, RSM, Institute on Sacred Scripture, College Misericordia, Dallas, PA 18612...
...Mary's College, Morega, CA 94575, June 16-20...
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...This heterogeneity, when combined with the necessarily limited ability of the physi(Continued on page 158) I Commonweal is indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, Index of American Periodical Verse, Book Review Digest and Book Review Index...
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...If it is mere British tokenism, it will result in further radicalization of the minority in the North who increasingly have been voting for Sinn Fein...
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...Probably as litfie as one-third of what is paid into the system, possibly even less, ever inures to the benefit of the damaged or injured person, I do not pretend for a moment that the legal profession has conspired to produce this result, but the sobering reality that its members are principal beneficiaries of the system does, at least, raise questions of conflict of interest and objectivity when attorneys speak in behalf of the current arrangement...
...The tort system that has traditionally disposed of such litigation, is in all but total disarray...
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...Seiden says, our old knowledge "that life is tragic and humankind flawed...
...Unfortunately, too many physicians and ethicists like Seiden fail to realize that humanity involves accepting responsibility and consequences...
...I do not wish for a moment to suggest that the profession is above blame or criticism...
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...In a technically shaped culture that prides itself on having left the onceroutine truths of religion behind, we are embarrassed when the power and pertinence of those old truths reassert themselves...
...Doctors contribute to this false security that underlies the costly litigiousness surrounding malpractice...
...Medicine has sociopaths like every other walk of life, though in medicine they are not selling the Brooklyn Bridge...
...Biblical Institute 21 st Biblical Institute, Trinity College, Burlington, VT 05401, June 15-20, 1986...
...Now, after almost twenty years in prison, Santos Mirabal has been released and is living quietly in Havana with his father...
...Surely those who are guilty of a grievous offense, civil or criminal, must take re...
...Robert L Kinast Catholic University of America All who want to understand transitions in personal living and the Church can use Growing Pains in Ministry and the new Study Guide for Growing Pains in Ministry to enrich their individual growth...
...p. 157, Gary Huck...
...Most of the truly negligent and incompetent practitioners are channing and persuasive charlatans, whose patients are Classified RATES: 75r a word, one time...
...But we all do, whenever we credit ourselves with the power to perform miracles and license ourselves to forget that we are creatures...
...The article serves to communicate this need to the public...
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...Moreover, given its adversary nature, it is incapable of balancing competing interests...
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...Reconstruction and deconstruction, he insists, is the real task of contemporary theology...
...That threat, plus that of further alienating the Irish government and people, will probably cause the British to see that the proposals of the Irish government in the Conference are implemented...
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...KENNETH S. SZEPESY Distributive burden Johnson City, Tenn...
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...To the Editors: A few points might be added to Dena Seiden's excellent treatment of the malpractice problem ["The Malpractice Muddle," January 17...
...Seiden emphasizes that "penalizing the full community financially, and affecting both its access to care and the quality of its care, in order to deal with the tragedies of some individuals and the failings of others, is neither equitable nor just...
...It is as true, also, in cases with good outcomes, hut here there is no incentive to ferret out ostensible lapses...
...Ninth Annual Workshop for those working in programs for the aging in religious communities...
...Kill a Commie for Christ" and "Armageddon Politics" fuel the political rhetoric of this country and engorge the "defense" budget beyond all sane argument...
...How can we cope with this necessary emotion...
...God must be rethought, Kaufman concludes, in ecological terms, as an ultimate point of reference, as the substratum of life, not as ruling parent or warring Lord...
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...True, they are "caused," but in the same way that the outcome of a coin flip is caused: the causes are so manifold, and their interactions so complex, that in the practical order those outcomes are largely uncontrollable...
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...Jesus on the cross, Kaufman notes, is in tension with the medieval image of Jesus on the throne...
...To do less is to swing from pole to pole, from "God our Father will not let such a thing happen to us" to "GOd, the just judge, wills the destruction of this evil world," DENNIS P. McCANN is co-author, with Charles R. Strain, of Polity and Praxis: A Program for American Practical Theology...
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...Also of import, is the fact that the economic base of the medical profession, alone, is too limited to long withstand the assaults that are increasingly being mounted against it...
...Study Guide $3.95 Prayer Martin C. Helldorfer This beautiful book explores the many meanings and forms of prayer...
...An adversarial, fault-finding mechanism distorts the reality that many -- perhaps most -- of the bad outcomes that occur in health care transactions are simply probabilistic...
...If they are not, there is little hope of a peaceful solution to the Irish issue...
...The facts are that we deal with an inexact science, wielded by practitioners who, even when good and conscientious, are not -- cannot be -- uniformly virtuosic...
...Economically, the burden is ill distributed...
...Paul...
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...It is thus a chancy business, this encounter which most of us, at one time or another in our lives, must make with the health care system...
...It is illogical to put caps on the awards to plaintiffs . . . . Most people understand and accept the humanity of physicians...
...p. 144,145, & 147, Rita Corbin...
...ited negligence was the cause of the bad outcome...
...Among the concepts to be reconstructed in this day, Kaufman contends, are our various images of God and the criteria for choosing between them...
...The facts are that a life-time income, adjusted to grow with inflation, can be guaranteed from relatively modest trust funds, constructed according to standard actuarial principles, applying precisely the same approaches that are used with our annuities and retirement funds...
...DONALD W. SHRIVER, JR...
...Following that logic the criminal courts should not incarcerate convicted robbers...
...Brother Helldorfer shows how changes in our lives affect our experience of God and bring us to a new understanding of prayer in difficult times...
...Sacred Scripture 19th Annual Institute on Sacred Scripture August 3-8, 1986...
...This father God, this king of kings and lord of hosts, is a God of War...
...Topics include fear of aging, healthy fear of God, and fear of intimacy...
...Write: Sister Midam Ward...
...Commonweal: 158grateful to them for whatever outcome, bad as well as good...
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...JOHN BRANIGAN Help for Your Spiritual Life and Ministry PRAYER Fear Marie Kraus, editor Although we try to avoid fear, it is an integral part of our lives...
...ROBERT P. HEANEY I~ength of agreement Staten Island, N.Y...
...p. 136, Valerry...
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...Genetic heterogeneity of the human population leads to myriads of idiosyncratic reactions to drugs, diseases, and medical interventions, most of them trivial, but some not...
...They come about, I suspect, because of the incompetence of ordinary people (typical juries) to deal with complex technological financial matters, coupled with the contingent fee system which creates an incentive for the attorney to maximize the award...
...Russia becomes "the focus of all evil" in presidential speech and people raise their children to slaughter and be slaughtered "for God and country...
...In most bad outcomes it is possible, on hindsight, to find something that might have been done differently, and to find someone who would be willing to say that doing so would have made a difference...
...A worldview based on a concept of a God who uses people to fight the great struggle between good and evil legitimates national policies which poison the earth and threaten its peoples...
Vol. 113 • March 1986 • No. 5
