Kevin Forbes

Comparative academic performance of medical students in rural and urban clinical settings

Objective  To determine whether the academic performance of medical students learning in rural settings differs from those learning in urban settings.

Danazol in the Treatment of Menorrhagia: The Effect of a 1 Month Induction Dose (200 mg) and 2 Month's Maintenance Therapy (200 mg, 100 mg, 50 mg or placebo)

Summary: This paper highlights the difficulties of recruiting subjects to objective menstrual blood loss (MBL) studies. Such difficulties may explain the relative paucity of such studies in the literature. Eleven women with objectively assessed evidence of menorrhagia were treated for 1 month with an induction dose of 200 mg of danazol (Danocrine). Subsequently the women were randomly assigned to receive 50,100 or 200 mg of danazol or placebo for 2 months of maintenance dosing. Follow‐up with objective assessment of MBL was continued for 3 months after cessation of maintenance dosing.

Eugenics or empowered choice? community issues arising from prenatal testing

The prevention of inherited disabilities is viewed in two contrasting ways – either as enhancing reproductive choice and improving population health, or as discriminating against disabled community members. We argue that modern clinical genetics, including preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), reflects a persistent and defensible desire by the community to prevent disability, rather than as increasing discrimination or threatening to produce a ‘new eugenic’ society. Screening should be presented as a distinct issue for decision‐making about the prevention or acceptance of disability, rather than as a routinely accepted component of antenatal care. The community must improve its understanding of the experiences of those who manage disability, and continue to debate the issues of discrimination, selective genetic prevention and enhancement, reproductive freedom, and eugenics.