1901 - U.S. President William McKinley Assassinated
From Jennifer Rosenberg,
Your Guide to 20th Century History.
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U.S. President William McKinley Assassinated (1901): On September 6, 1901, U.S. President William McKinley spent the morning visiting Niagara Falls with his wife before returning to the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York in the afternoon to spend a few minutes greeting the public.
By about 3:30 p.m., President McKinley stood inside the Temple of Music building at the Exposition, ready to begin shaking the hands of the public as they streamed into the building. Many had been waiting for hours outside in the heat for their chance to meet the President. Unbeknownst to the President and the many guards who stood nearby, among those waiting outside was 28-year-old anarchist Leon Czolgosz who was planning to kill President McKinley.
At 4 p.m. the doors to the building were opened and the mass of people waiting outside were forced into a single line as they entered the Temple of Music building.
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The line of people thus came up to the president in an organized fashion, with just enough time to whisper a "Nice to meet you, Mr. President," shake President McKinley's hand, and then be forced to continue along the line and out the door again.
President McKinley, the 25th president of the United States, was a popular president who had just started his second term in office and the people seemed clearly glad to get a chance to meet him. However, at 4:07 p.m. Leon Czolgosz had made it into the building and it was his turn to greet the President.
In Czolgosz's right hand, he held a .32 caliber Iver-Johnson revolver, which he had covered by wrapping a handkerchief around the gun and his hand. Although Czolgosz's swaddled hand was noticed before he reached the President, many thought it looked like it covered an injury and not that it was hiding a gun. Also, since the day had been hot, many of the visitors to see the President had been carrying handkerchiefs in their hands so that they could wipe the sweat off their faces.
When Czolgosz reached the President, President McKinley reached out to shake his left hand (thinking Czolgosz's right hand was injured) while Czolgosz brought up his right hand to President McKinley's chest and then fired two shots.
One of the bullets didn't enter the president - some say it bounced off of a button or off the president's sternum and then got tucked into his clothing. The other bullet, however, entered the president's abdomen, tearing through his stomach, pancreas, and kidney. Shocked at being shot, President McKinley began to sag as blood stained his white shirt. He then told those around him, "Be careful how you tell my wife."
Those in line behind Czolgosz and guards in the room all jumped on Czolgosz and started to punch him. Seeing that the mob on Czolgosz might easily and quickly kill him, President McKinley whispered either, "Don't let them hurt him" or "Go easy on him, boys."
President McKinley was then whisked away in an electric ambulance to the hospital at the Exposition. Unfortunately, the hospital was not properly equipped for such a surgery and the very experienced doctor usually on premises was away doing a surgery in another town. Although several doctors were found, the most experienced doctor that could be found was Dr. Matthew Mann, a gynecologist. The surgery began at 5:20 p.m.
During the operation, the doctors searched for the remains of the bullet that had entered the President's abdomen, but were unable to locate it. Worried that continued searching would tax the President's body too much, the doctors decided to discontinue looking for it and to sew up what they could. The surgery was completed a little before 7 p.m.
For several days, President McKinley seemed to be getting better. After the shock of the shooting, the nation was excited to hear some good news. However, what the doctors did not realize was that without drainage, an infection had built up inside the President. By September 13 it was obvious the President was dying. At 2:15 a.m. on September 14, 1901, President William McKinley died of gangrene. That afternoon, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as President of the United States.
After being pummeled right after the shooting, Leon Czolgosz had been arrested and taken to police headquarters before nearly being lynched by the angry crowds that surrounded the Temple of Music. Czolgosz readily admitted that he was the one who had shot the President. In his written confession, Czolgosz stated, "I killed President McKinley because I done my duty. I didn't believe one man should have so much service and another man should have none."
Czolgosz was brought to trial on September 23, 1901. He was quickly found guilty and sentenced to death. On October 29, 1901, Leon Czolgosz was electrocuted.
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Showing posts with label Medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Medicine. Show all posts
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Four-Year-Old Dies of Medicine Overdose, Murder Suspected
Child's overdose death raises questions By DENISE LAVOIE, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 23, 2:58 PM ET
HULL, Mass. - In the final months of Rebecca Riley's life, a school nurse said the little girl was so weak she was like a "floppy doll."
ADVERTISEMENT
The preschool principal had to help Rebecca off the bus because the 4-year-old was shaking so badly.
And a pharmacist complained that Rebecca's mother kept coming up with excuses for why her daughter needed more and more medication.
None of their concerns was enough to save Rebecca.
Rebecca — who had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity and bipolar disorder, or what used to be called manic depression — died Dec. 13 of an overdose of prescribed drugs, and her parents have been arrested on murder charges, accused of intentionally overmedicating their daughter to keep her quiet and out of their hair.
Interviews and a review of court documents by The Associated Press make it clear that many of those who were supposed to protect Rebecca — teachers, social workers, other professionals — suspected something was wrong, but never went quite far enough.
But the tragic case is more than a story about one child. It raises troubling, larger questions about the state of child psychiatry, namely: Can children as young as Rebecca be accurately diagnosed with mental illnesses? Are rambunctious youngsters being medicated for their parents' convenience? And should children so young be prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs meant for adults?
Dispensing drugs to children diagnosed with mood or behavior problems is "the easiest thing to do, but it's not always the best thing to do," said Dr. Jon McClellan, medical director of the Child Study and Treatment Center in Lakewood, Wash. "At some level, I would hope that you'd also be teaching kids ways to control their behavior."
According to the medical examiner, Rebecca died of a combination of Clonidine, a blood pressure medication Rebecca had been prescribed for ADHD; Depakote, an antiseizure and mood-stabilizing drug prescribed for the little girl's bipolar disorder; a cough suppressant; and an antihistamine. The amount of Clonidine alone in Rebecca's system was enough to be fatal, the medical examiner said.
The two brand-name prescription drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in adults only, though doctors can legally prescribe them to youngsters and do so frequently.
Rebecca's parents, Michael and Carolyn Riley, say they were only following doctor's orders. Rebecca, they told police, had been diagnosed when she was just 2 1/2, and Rebecca's psychiatrist prescribed the same potent drugs that had been prescribed for her older brother and sister when she diagnosed them with the same illnesses several years earlier.
But Rebecca's teachers, the school nurse and her therapist all told police they never saw behavior in Rebecca that fit her diagnoses, such as aggression, sharp mood swings or hyperactivity.
Prosecutors say the Rileys intentionally tried to quiet their daughter with high doses of Clonidine. Relatives told police the Rileys called Clonidine the "happy medicine" and the "sleep medicine."
Through their attorneys, Michael Riley, 34, and Carolyn Riley, 32, have accused Rebecca's psychiatrist, Dr. Kayoko Kifuji, of over-prescribing medication.
Kifuji did not return calls for comment and declined to be interviewed. But Kifuji has vehemently denied any role in Rebecca's death. She has agreed to a suspension of her license while the state's medical board investigates.
Kifuji told police Rebecca had been her patient since August 2004, when she was 2. She said she based her diagnoses of ADHD and bipolar disorder on the family's mental health history, as described by Carolyn Riley, and Rebecca's behavior, as described by Carolyn and briefly observed by her during office visits.
Kifuji told police she became alarmed in October 2005 when Carolyn Riley told her she had increased Rebecca's nighttime dose of Clonidine from 2 to 2 1/2 tablets, and warned Carolyn the increased dose could kill Rebecca.
But Carolyn told investigators Kifuji told her she could give Rebecca and her sister extra Clonidine at night to help them sleep.
Tufts-New England Medical Center, where Kifuji worked, issued a statement supporting Kifuji, saying her care of Rebecca "was appropriate and within responsible professional standards."
In the months leading up to Rebecca's death, others noticed there was something wrong.
Teachers and staff members at the Johnson Early Childhood Center in Weymouth, about 20 miles south of Boston, say they called Rebecca's mother repeatedly to tell her that Rebecca was "out of it," but her mother said the girl was tired because she wasn't sleeping well.
A neighbor who lived next door to the family in the last month of Rebecca's life said Rebecca and her siblings seemed listless.
"They looked like little robots. They looked very lethargic," Phyllis Lipton said. "I said, `Wow, they don't look right,' but who knew?"
Pharmacists at Walgreens in Weymouth called Kifuji twice to complain that Carolyn Riley was asking for more Clonidine, even though her prescription was not due to be refilled yet, according to state police.
Once, Riley said she had lost a bottle of pills, and another time, she said water had gotten into her prescription bottle and ruined the pills, according to police.
Kifuji authorized refills, but after the second incident, she began prescribing Clonidine in 10-day refills instead of 30-day supplies, investigators said.
On Aug. 16, a prescription for 35 Clonidine tablets — a 10-day supply — was filled at Walgreens, even though the Rileys had obtained a 10-day refill only the day before, investigators said.
Walgreens spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce said: "The scrip was filled as written, as it was prescribed by the doctor, and all the appropriate information on the medications was given to the family."
After Rebecca's death, police found only seven Clonidine tablets in the family's medicine tray; the pharmacist said there should have been 75. All together, prosecutors say, Carolyn Riley got 200 more pills in one year than she should have.
The Rileys' lawyers call them unsophisticated people who did not question their children's doctors.
Both were unemployed; they collected welfare and disabilty benefits and lived in subsidized housing. Michael Riley, who is also awaiting trial on charges of molesting a stepdaughter in 2005, claimed to suffer from bipolar disorder and a rage disorder; his wife told police she suffered from depression and anxiety.
"They are not the sort of people who go on the Internet and look on WebMD. These are the sort of people who, when they go to a doctor, the doctor is God and they do what the doctor says," said John Darrell, Michael's lawyer.
Carolyn's lawyer, Michael Bourbeau, said that because the Rileys' three children were all taking Clonidine, Rebecca's prescription may have come up short at times when her siblings were given some of her pills. And some of the pills may have been lost when they were split in half, he said.
In July, after a therapist filed a complaint with the state Department of Social Services, social workers met with the family's doctors and other medical professionals and were assured that the medications Rebecca was taking were within medical guidelines.
"There were lots of medical eyes on this case and none of them seemed to say there was an issue of over-medication in this case," said Social Services Commissioner Harry Spence, who has come under fire for the agency's handling of the case.
Still, there were lingering concerns. When social workers tried to make a home visit in November, Carolyn "resisted and evaded," Spence said. Weeks later, workers resolved to make a surprise check, but Rebecca died the very next day, before they could visit.
Rebecca was found dead on the floor of her parents' bedroom wearing only a pink pull-up diaper and gold-stud earrings, on top of a pile of clothes, magazines and a stuffed brown bear.
Rebecca's uncle, James McGonnell, and his girlfriend, Kelly Williams, who lived with the Rileys, told police that the Rileys would put their kids to bed as early as 5 p.m. Rebecca, they said, often slept through the day and got up only to eat.
When Michael Riley decided the kids were "acting up," he told Carolyn to give them pills, McGonnell and Williams told police.
According to McGonnell and Williams, Rebecca spent the last days of her life wandering around the house, sick and disoriented. But the Rileys told police they were not alarmed. "It was just a cold," Carolyn repeatedly said during police interviews.
The medical examiner said Rebecca died a slow and painful death. She said the overdose of Clonidine caused her organs to shut down, filling her lungs with fluid and causing congestive heart failure.
Williams told police that the night before she died, Rebecca was pale and seemed "out of it." At one point, the little girl knocked weakly on her parents' bedroom door and softly called for her mommy, but Michael Riley opened the door a crack and yelled at her to go back to her room, Williams said.
Later that night, McGonnell told police, he heard someone struggling to breathe and found Rebecca gurgling as if something was stuck in her throat. McGonnell told police he wiped vomit from his niece's face, then kicked in the door to her parents' room and yelled at the Rileys to take Rebecca to the emergency room.
Instead, Carolyn Riley said, she gave her daughter a half-tablet of Clonidine.
Carolyn's mother, Valerie Berio, said that when she visited the kids the night of Dec. 11, Rebecca seemed congested but not seriously ill. In a photograph Berio said she took that night, Rebecca is smiling slightly as her mother holds a new green velvet dress in front of her.
Berio said that shows that her daughter and son-in-law could not have known how sick Rebecca was.
Rebecca's death has inflamed a long-running debate in psychiatry. Some psychiatrists believe bipolar disorder, which was traditionally diagnosed in adolescence or early adulthood, has become a trendy diagnosis in young children.
"As a clinician, I can tell you it's just very difficult to say whether someone is just throwing tantrums or has bipolar disorder," said Dr. Oscar B. Bukstein, a child psychiatrist and associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
A study of mentally ill children discharged from community hospitals, published in January in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found the proportion of children diagnosed with bipolar disorders jumped from 2.9 percent in 1990 to 15.1 percent in 2000.
A report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2002 estimated that about 7 percent of elementary school-age children — or approximately 1.6 million youngsters ages 6 to 11 — have been diagnosed with ADHD.
The annual number of U.S. children prescribed anti-psychotic drugs jumped fivefold between 1995 and 2002, to an estimated 2.5 million, according to a study published last year by researchers at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville, Tenn.
Some child psychiatrists say bipolar disorder may have been under-diagnosed in children for years, partly because several key symptoms are also symptoms of ADHD, including hyperactivity, distractibility and talkativeness.
Dr. Janet Wozniak, director of the Pediatric Bipolar Disorder Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, said early diagnosis and treatment are critical because the illness can cause social and academic problems, and lead to drug abuse, crime and suicide.
"What's commonly overlooked when considering diagnosing and treating children at such an early age is the risk of not treating and not intervening," Wozniak said.
(Corrects by deleting reference to photo being taken 18 hours earlier.)
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070323/ap_on_re_us/drugged_to_death
Fri Mar 23, 2:58 PM ET
HULL, Mass. - In the final months of Rebecca Riley's life, a school nurse said the little girl was so weak she was like a "floppy doll."
ADVERTISEMENT
The preschool principal had to help Rebecca off the bus because the 4-year-old was shaking so badly.
And a pharmacist complained that Rebecca's mother kept coming up with excuses for why her daughter needed more and more medication.
None of their concerns was enough to save Rebecca.
Rebecca — who had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity and bipolar disorder, or what used to be called manic depression — died Dec. 13 of an overdose of prescribed drugs, and her parents have been arrested on murder charges, accused of intentionally overmedicating their daughter to keep her quiet and out of their hair.
Interviews and a review of court documents by The Associated Press make it clear that many of those who were supposed to protect Rebecca — teachers, social workers, other professionals — suspected something was wrong, but never went quite far enough.
But the tragic case is more than a story about one child. It raises troubling, larger questions about the state of child psychiatry, namely: Can children as young as Rebecca be accurately diagnosed with mental illnesses? Are rambunctious youngsters being medicated for their parents' convenience? And should children so young be prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs meant for adults?
Dispensing drugs to children diagnosed with mood or behavior problems is "the easiest thing to do, but it's not always the best thing to do," said Dr. Jon McClellan, medical director of the Child Study and Treatment Center in Lakewood, Wash. "At some level, I would hope that you'd also be teaching kids ways to control their behavior."
According to the medical examiner, Rebecca died of a combination of Clonidine, a blood pressure medication Rebecca had been prescribed for ADHD; Depakote, an antiseizure and mood-stabilizing drug prescribed for the little girl's bipolar disorder; a cough suppressant; and an antihistamine. The amount of Clonidine alone in Rebecca's system was enough to be fatal, the medical examiner said.
The two brand-name prescription drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in adults only, though doctors can legally prescribe them to youngsters and do so frequently.
Rebecca's parents, Michael and Carolyn Riley, say they were only following doctor's orders. Rebecca, they told police, had been diagnosed when she was just 2 1/2, and Rebecca's psychiatrist prescribed the same potent drugs that had been prescribed for her older brother and sister when she diagnosed them with the same illnesses several years earlier.
But Rebecca's teachers, the school nurse and her therapist all told police they never saw behavior in Rebecca that fit her diagnoses, such as aggression, sharp mood swings or hyperactivity.
Prosecutors say the Rileys intentionally tried to quiet their daughter with high doses of Clonidine. Relatives told police the Rileys called Clonidine the "happy medicine" and the "sleep medicine."
Through their attorneys, Michael Riley, 34, and Carolyn Riley, 32, have accused Rebecca's psychiatrist, Dr. Kayoko Kifuji, of over-prescribing medication.
Kifuji did not return calls for comment and declined to be interviewed. But Kifuji has vehemently denied any role in Rebecca's death. She has agreed to a suspension of her license while the state's medical board investigates.
Kifuji told police Rebecca had been her patient since August 2004, when she was 2. She said she based her diagnoses of ADHD and bipolar disorder on the family's mental health history, as described by Carolyn Riley, and Rebecca's behavior, as described by Carolyn and briefly observed by her during office visits.
Kifuji told police she became alarmed in October 2005 when Carolyn Riley told her she had increased Rebecca's nighttime dose of Clonidine from 2 to 2 1/2 tablets, and warned Carolyn the increased dose could kill Rebecca.
But Carolyn told investigators Kifuji told her she could give Rebecca and her sister extra Clonidine at night to help them sleep.
Tufts-New England Medical Center, where Kifuji worked, issued a statement supporting Kifuji, saying her care of Rebecca "was appropriate and within responsible professional standards."
In the months leading up to Rebecca's death, others noticed there was something wrong.
Teachers and staff members at the Johnson Early Childhood Center in Weymouth, about 20 miles south of Boston, say they called Rebecca's mother repeatedly to tell her that Rebecca was "out of it," but her mother said the girl was tired because she wasn't sleeping well.
A neighbor who lived next door to the family in the last month of Rebecca's life said Rebecca and her siblings seemed listless.
"They looked like little robots. They looked very lethargic," Phyllis Lipton said. "I said, `Wow, they don't look right,' but who knew?"
Pharmacists at Walgreens in Weymouth called Kifuji twice to complain that Carolyn Riley was asking for more Clonidine, even though her prescription was not due to be refilled yet, according to state police.
Once, Riley said she had lost a bottle of pills, and another time, she said water had gotten into her prescription bottle and ruined the pills, according to police.
Kifuji authorized refills, but after the second incident, she began prescribing Clonidine in 10-day refills instead of 30-day supplies, investigators said.
On Aug. 16, a prescription for 35 Clonidine tablets — a 10-day supply — was filled at Walgreens, even though the Rileys had obtained a 10-day refill only the day before, investigators said.
Walgreens spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce said: "The scrip was filled as written, as it was prescribed by the doctor, and all the appropriate information on the medications was given to the family."
After Rebecca's death, police found only seven Clonidine tablets in the family's medicine tray; the pharmacist said there should have been 75. All together, prosecutors say, Carolyn Riley got 200 more pills in one year than she should have.
The Rileys' lawyers call them unsophisticated people who did not question their children's doctors.
Both were unemployed; they collected welfare and disabilty benefits and lived in subsidized housing. Michael Riley, who is also awaiting trial on charges of molesting a stepdaughter in 2005, claimed to suffer from bipolar disorder and a rage disorder; his wife told police she suffered from depression and anxiety.
"They are not the sort of people who go on the Internet and look on WebMD. These are the sort of people who, when they go to a doctor, the doctor is God and they do what the doctor says," said John Darrell, Michael's lawyer.
Carolyn's lawyer, Michael Bourbeau, said that because the Rileys' three children were all taking Clonidine, Rebecca's prescription may have come up short at times when her siblings were given some of her pills. And some of the pills may have been lost when they were split in half, he said.
In July, after a therapist filed a complaint with the state Department of Social Services, social workers met with the family's doctors and other medical professionals and were assured that the medications Rebecca was taking were within medical guidelines.
"There were lots of medical eyes on this case and none of them seemed to say there was an issue of over-medication in this case," said Social Services Commissioner Harry Spence, who has come under fire for the agency's handling of the case.
Still, there were lingering concerns. When social workers tried to make a home visit in November, Carolyn "resisted and evaded," Spence said. Weeks later, workers resolved to make a surprise check, but Rebecca died the very next day, before they could visit.
Rebecca was found dead on the floor of her parents' bedroom wearing only a pink pull-up diaper and gold-stud earrings, on top of a pile of clothes, magazines and a stuffed brown bear.
Rebecca's uncle, James McGonnell, and his girlfriend, Kelly Williams, who lived with the Rileys, told police that the Rileys would put their kids to bed as early as 5 p.m. Rebecca, they said, often slept through the day and got up only to eat.
When Michael Riley decided the kids were "acting up," he told Carolyn to give them pills, McGonnell and Williams told police.
According to McGonnell and Williams, Rebecca spent the last days of her life wandering around the house, sick and disoriented. But the Rileys told police they were not alarmed. "It was just a cold," Carolyn repeatedly said during police interviews.
The medical examiner said Rebecca died a slow and painful death. She said the overdose of Clonidine caused her organs to shut down, filling her lungs with fluid and causing congestive heart failure.
Williams told police that the night before she died, Rebecca was pale and seemed "out of it." At one point, the little girl knocked weakly on her parents' bedroom door and softly called for her mommy, but Michael Riley opened the door a crack and yelled at her to go back to her room, Williams said.
Later that night, McGonnell told police, he heard someone struggling to breathe and found Rebecca gurgling as if something was stuck in her throat. McGonnell told police he wiped vomit from his niece's face, then kicked in the door to her parents' room and yelled at the Rileys to take Rebecca to the emergency room.
Instead, Carolyn Riley said, she gave her daughter a half-tablet of Clonidine.
Carolyn's mother, Valerie Berio, said that when she visited the kids the night of Dec. 11, Rebecca seemed congested but not seriously ill. In a photograph Berio said she took that night, Rebecca is smiling slightly as her mother holds a new green velvet dress in front of her.
Berio said that shows that her daughter and son-in-law could not have known how sick Rebecca was.
Rebecca's death has inflamed a long-running debate in psychiatry. Some psychiatrists believe bipolar disorder, which was traditionally diagnosed in adolescence or early adulthood, has become a trendy diagnosis in young children.
"As a clinician, I can tell you it's just very difficult to say whether someone is just throwing tantrums or has bipolar disorder," said Dr. Oscar B. Bukstein, a child psychiatrist and associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
A study of mentally ill children discharged from community hospitals, published in January in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found the proportion of children diagnosed with bipolar disorders jumped from 2.9 percent in 1990 to 15.1 percent in 2000.
A report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2002 estimated that about 7 percent of elementary school-age children — or approximately 1.6 million youngsters ages 6 to 11 — have been diagnosed with ADHD.
The annual number of U.S. children prescribed anti-psychotic drugs jumped fivefold between 1995 and 2002, to an estimated 2.5 million, according to a study published last year by researchers at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville, Tenn.
Some child psychiatrists say bipolar disorder may have been under-diagnosed in children for years, partly because several key symptoms are also symptoms of ADHD, including hyperactivity, distractibility and talkativeness.
Dr. Janet Wozniak, director of the Pediatric Bipolar Disorder Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, said early diagnosis and treatment are critical because the illness can cause social and academic problems, and lead to drug abuse, crime and suicide.
"What's commonly overlooked when considering diagnosing and treating children at such an early age is the risk of not treating and not intervening," Wozniak said.
(Corrects by deleting reference to photo being taken 18 hours earlier.)
Email Story IM Story Printable View (What happened to the "Discuss" option?) RECOMMEND THIS STORY
Recommend It:
Average (675 votes)
» Recommended Stories
Full Coverage: Mental Health
News Stories
Phone-Based Therapy Eases Long-Term Depression HealthDay via Yahoo! News, Mar 23 Internal Body Clock Linked to Mania in Mice LiveScience.com via Yahoo! News, Mar 19 Mental, Physical Torture Inflict Similar Pain HealthDay via Yahoo! News, Mar 17 Tragedy follows landmark court win at The Los Angeles Times (reg. req'd), Mar 16 Feature Articles
The ten top ways to beat stress at The Independent (UK), Feb 20 Not Just Any Old Butterflies at The Washington Post (reg. req'd), Jan 13 Opinion & Editorials
Fairness for Mental Health at The New York Times (reg. req'd), Mar 24 Mental Health Reform, Please at The Washington Post (reg. req'd), Oct 29
U.S. News
Officers blamed for Tillman case errors AP Ga. woman guilty of murdering boyfriend AP New heart stents pass key tests AP N.M. tornadoes destroy homes AP Skeletal remains of 8 people found Fla. AP Most Viewed - U.S.
Harvard club promotes abstinence AP Jeb Bush honored by U. of Florida alumni AP Pet owners double checking cabinets AP Skeletal remains of 8 people found Fla. AP Ga. woman guilty of murdering boyfriend AP
U.S. News Video
High water swamps Indiana county CNN - 1 hour, 21 minutes ago Miami officer in jail, accused of rape AP - 2 hours, 33 minutes ago Quick thinking teens avert bus disaster AP - 2 hours, 49 minutes ago Vet advice for pet owners CNN - Sat Mar 24, 2:36 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070323/ap_on_re_us/drugged_to_death
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Forgetting What's Normal--Forgetting
Forgetting: What’s normal?
(This article was first printed in the Harvard Health Publications Special Health Report “Improving Memory: Understanding and Preventing Age-Related Memory Loss”. For more information or to order, please go to http://health.harvard.edu/IM.)
It’s normal to forget some things, and it’s normal to become somewhat more forgetful as you age, but it’s not normal to forget too much. The question is, how much is too much? Regardless of age, some people’s memories are better than others — just as some people are better at math or more physically coordinated. How can you tell whether your memory lapses are within the scope of normal aging or are a symptom of something more serious?
Neuroscientists and physicians have not fully answered that question, but they have identified some key differences between normal memory lapses and those that occur with more serious cognitive deficits, such as dementia.
Seven types of normal memory problems
Regardless of age, healthy people can experience memory loss or memory distortion. In a book, Daniel Schacter, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, describes seven common “sins” of memory, discussed below. Some of these memory flaws become more pronounced with age, but — unless they are extreme and persistent — they are not considered indicators of Alzheimer’s or other memory-impairing illnesses.
Transience
This is the tendency to forget facts or events over time. You are most likely to forget information soon after you learn it; as time passes, the likelihood of forgetting decreases. However, memory has a use-it-or-lose-it quality: Memories that are called up and used frequently are least likely to be forgotten. Although transience might seem like a sign of memory weakness, brain scientists regard it as beneficial because it clears the brain of unused memories, making way for newer, more useful ones. In this sense, transience is akin to cleaning the junk out of your closets or clearing the temporary files from your computer’s hard drive.
Although everyone experiences transience of memory, it is extreme and debilitating in people with particular kinds of brain damage. For instance, people with amnesia from damage to the hippocampus and related structures have normal short-term memory, but they are unable to form new long-term memories (see “Amnesia”). They forget information soon after they learn it.
Absentmindedness
This type of forgetting occurs when you don’t pay close enough attention. You forget where you just put your pen because you didn’t focus on where you put it in the first place. You were thinking of something else (or, perhaps, nothing in particular), so your brain didn’t encode the information securely. Absentmindedness also involves forgetting to do something at a prescribed time, like taking your medicine or keeping an appointment. In this case, the problem is that you didn’t focus on things that can serve as cues to remind you to do something — like putting your vitamin pills at your place at the table so you’ll remember to take one when you eat breakfast.
For example, if the doctor told you to take your medicine at bedtime and you forgot to do so, it could be that you didn’t pay close enough attention to the key word: bedtime. If you had, chances are that certain details of your bedtime routine (like brushing your teeth or watching a particular show on TV) would have served as cues to remind you to take your medicine.
Blocking
Someone asks you a question and the answer is right on the tip of your tongue — you know that you know it, but you just can’t think of it. This tip-of-the-tongue experience is perhaps the most familiar example of blocking, the temporary inability to retrieve a memory. Blocking doesn’t occur because you weren’t paying attention or because the memory you’re looking for has faded from your brain. On the contrary, blocking occurs when a memory is properly stored in your brain, but something is keeping you from finding it.
In many cases, the memory block is a memory similar to the one you’re looking for but one that you retrieve instead. This other memory is so intrusive that you can’t think of the memory you want. A common example is if you call your older daughter by your younger daughter’s name, or vice versa. Scientists call blocking memories “ugly stepsisters” because they’re domineering, like the stepsisters in Cinderella. Scientists have used ugly stepsisters experimentally to block memories. In one such experiment, people were asked to pick out the definitions of uncommon words from a selection of possible definitions. When definitions that were similar in sound or in meaning were given along with the accurate definition, more people had memory blocks than when unrelated ones were given.
Brain-imaging studies suggest how blocking might work in the brain. When a person is retrieving a memory, some regions of the brain become more active and others become less active. Scientists interpret this finding to mean that the active regions actually inhibit the other regions. When the right regions are activated, the inhibition of other regions can work in your favor by keeping your brain from calling up irrelevant information. But when you call up an ugly stepsister by mistake, the brain regions that encode it may suppress the regions needed to retrieve the memory you really want.
Scientists think that memory blocks become more common with age and that they account for the trouble older people have remembering other people’s names. But it remains unclear whether tip-of-the-tongue experiences are more common than other age-related memory problems. Nor have researchers determined whether memory blocks are simply caused by the overall slowing of memory retrieval that occurs with age. In any case, there’s encouraging news about blocking. Research shows that people are able to retrieve about half of the blocked memories within just a minute.
Misattribution
Consider the following scenario: You’re asked who “John Smith” is, and you remember quite clearly not only who he is, but also what he’s done lately that’s been in the news. Then you’re asked where you learned these details. You think for a moment and reply that it was on the evening TV news. However, there was no report about John Smith on TV. Instead, you got your information from the friend you had lunch with yesterday.
Right memory, wrong source — that’s one example of misattribution. Misattribution occurs when you remember something accurately in part, but misattribute some detail, like the time, place, or person involved. Another kind of misattribution occurs when you believe a thought you had was totally original when, in fact, it came from something you had previously read or heard but had forgotten about. This sort of misattribution explains cases of unintentional plagiarism, in which a writer passes off some information as original when he or she actually read it somewhere before.
Misattribution happens to everyone. Usually it’s harmless, but it can have profound consequences, particularly in the criminal justice system. In some cases, misattribution on the part of eyewitnesses is responsible for the arrest and conviction of individuals for crimes they didn’t commit.
The older the memory, the more likely it is to suffer misattribution. One study documented how misattribution crept into people’s recollections of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Immediately after the Challenger tragedy, researchers at Emory University asked students to write down what they were doing when they heard the news. A year later, the researchers asked the same students to write down their memories of the event again. These later descriptions were riddled with misattributions. But misattributions can be startlingly strong. When told of the discrepancies, the students had trouble believing that their memories were inaccurate. Indeed, three years later, when the students were once again asked to recall the Challenger explosion, their recollections were closer to their second accounts.
As with several other kinds of memory lapses, misattribution becomes more common with age. Age matters in at least two ways. First, as you age, you absorb fewer details when acquiring information because you have somewhat more trouble concentrating. Second, as you grow older, your memories grow older as well. And old memories are especially prone to misattribution.
Suggestibility
Imagine that you saw someone fleeing from a car as its antitheft alarm was blaring. You didn’t get a good look at the thief, but another person on the street insisted that it was a man wearing a green plaid jacket. Later, when the police show you photos of possible suspects, you’re confused until you see a man dressed in green plaid. Then you point to him.
Suggestibility refers to false memories that you develop because someone or something gives you some key information at the same time that you’re trying to retrieve a memory. Although little is known about exactly how suggestibility occurs in the brain, the suggestion fools your mind into thinking it’s a real memory. Suggestibility is the culprit in memories that adults have of incidents from their childhood that never really happened (see “Are recovered memories real?”).
In several studies, people have been induced to recall false events from their childhood after a researcher planted ideas in their minds. In one study, college students’ parents were asked to complete a questionnaire that asked whether certain events happened to the students. Then the students themselves were asked whether they recalled several events — some of which had actually happened (according to the parents’ responses) and some of which hadn’t. At first, 80%–90% of the students accurately recalled the events that had and hadn’t happened to them. But in later interviews, if a researcher suggested that a false event had actually happened to them when they were children, 20%–40% of the students described some memory of it.
No one knows whether people become more vulnerable to suggestibility as they age, but studies have demonstrated that many children experience it when asked to recollect alleged incidents of sexual abuse. Several studies with preschoolers indicate that suggestive questioning by the police or other adults can lead children to assert that certain events occurred when in fact they didn’t.
Bias
One of the biggest myths about memory is that it works like a camera, recording what you learn with complete accuracy. But even the sharpest memory isn’t a flawless snapshot of reality. In your memory, reality is filtered by your personal biases — experiences, beliefs, prior knowledge, and even your mood at the moment. Your biases affect your memories when they’re being encoded in your brain. And your mood and other biases at the moment when you retrieve a memory can influence what information you actually call up.
Bias can affect all sorts of memories, but among the most interesting examples are people’s recollections of their romantic relationships. In one study, couples who were dating were asked to evaluate themselves, their partners, and their relationships initially and then two months later. During the second session, participants were asked to recall what they had said initially. The people whose feelings for their partners and their relationships had become more negative recalled their initial evaluations as more negative than they really were. On the other hand, people whose feelings for their partners and their relationships had become more loving recalled their initial evaluations as more positive than they really were. Although everyone’s attitudes and preconceived notions bias their memories, there’s been virtually no research on the brain mechanisms behind memory bias or whether they become more common with age.
Persistence
Most people worry about forgetting things. But in some cases people wish they could forget, but can’t. The persistence of memories about traumatic events, negative feelings, and chronic fears is another form of memory problem. Some of these memories accurately reflect horrifying events, while others may be negative distortions of reality.
Two groups of people are especially prone to having persistent, upsetting memories. One group is individuals with depression. Research has shown that depressed people are given to ruminating over unpleasant events in their lives or mistakes that they believe they have made. Dwelling on such negatives also fuels a vicious cycle of increasing depression. The other group with persistent, unwanted memories includes people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is a condition that can result from many different sorts of traumatic events — for example, sexual abuse or wartime experiences. Flashbacks, which are persistent, intrusive memories of the traumatic event, are a core feature of PTSD.
Research has shown that persistent memories depend on the activation of those parts of the brain that respond to fear, anxiety, and emotionally charged information. Brain-imaging studies have shown that when people with PTSD recall a persistent, intrusive memory, there is activity in the amygdala as well as in other regions associated with the experience of fear and anxiety. Many people learn to control persistent memories through therapy that involves guided imagery, or visualization. With this technique, a therapist helps the patient learn gradually to envision the traumatic incident without intense fear, eventually lessening PTSD symptoms.
Are recovered memories real?
Recovered memories are vivid, emotionally powerful recollections of events or occurrences from the distant past that a person has not thought of in years. The use of such memories — in particular, as evidence of past child abuse, incest, or other traumatic events — has engendered considerable controversy.
Critics of recovered-memory therapy point out that memory is not a literal register of experience. What we remember — and how we remember it — is influenced by our personalities, as well as our beliefs, hopes, and needs. New experiences interfere with old memories and cause them to distort or decay, and we may fill in the gaps, merge the memories of several events, or confuse what we had imagined or heard about with what we actually witnessed or experienced. Critics charge that recovered memories often reflect the power of suggestion during psychotherapy sessions and that the therapist, an authority figure, plays the key role in encouraging such false memories to emerge. Similarly, when the memory of distant events is a vital aspect of a criminal investigation, police, social workers, and other officials can intentionally or unintentionally influence what a person remembers.
Champions of recovered memory, on the other hand, insist that the more unusual and disturbing the memory, the less likely it is to be false. If anything, they say, people tend to doubt recovered memories of child abuse longer than they should. Advocates say that most recovered memories are spontaneous and are not generated as the result of a therapist’s intervention, although they may be revealed in that context because the therapist creates a safe environment in which to disclose them.
Both sides in this dispute have tried to support their positions with evidence from neurology and cognitive neuroscience, including animal experiments, brain scans, neuropsychological tests, and the examination of brain-damaged patients. But the majority of mental health professionals take a position between the two extremes.
Although there is no established consensus, the following advice may be useful. There are many degrees and several kinds of forgetting. Memories can contain varying elements of truth, partial truth, or distortion, and different individuals have different capacities for remembering and forgetting. A true memory (recovered or persistent) cannot be distinguished from a false one on the basis of internal evidence alone. Instead, people must tolerate some uncertainty. More research is needed on the prevalence of false memories and delayed recall. Eventually, as research clarifies the subtle nuances of how normal memory works, scientists may gain a better understanding of the interplay between knowledge and emotion in the recollection of traumatic experiences and may reach a consensus on the usefulness and reliability of recovered memories.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Forgetting_Whats_normal.htm
(This article was first printed in the Harvard Health Publications Special Health Report “Improving Memory: Understanding and Preventing Age-Related Memory Loss”. For more information or to order, please go to http://health.harvard.edu/IM.)
It’s normal to forget some things, and it’s normal to become somewhat more forgetful as you age, but it’s not normal to forget too much. The question is, how much is too much? Regardless of age, some people’s memories are better than others — just as some people are better at math or more physically coordinated. How can you tell whether your memory lapses are within the scope of normal aging or are a symptom of something more serious?
Neuroscientists and physicians have not fully answered that question, but they have identified some key differences between normal memory lapses and those that occur with more serious cognitive deficits, such as dementia.
Seven types of normal memory problems
Regardless of age, healthy people can experience memory loss or memory distortion. In a book, Daniel Schacter, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, describes seven common “sins” of memory, discussed below. Some of these memory flaws become more pronounced with age, but — unless they are extreme and persistent — they are not considered indicators of Alzheimer’s or other memory-impairing illnesses.
Transience
This is the tendency to forget facts or events over time. You are most likely to forget information soon after you learn it; as time passes, the likelihood of forgetting decreases. However, memory has a use-it-or-lose-it quality: Memories that are called up and used frequently are least likely to be forgotten. Although transience might seem like a sign of memory weakness, brain scientists regard it as beneficial because it clears the brain of unused memories, making way for newer, more useful ones. In this sense, transience is akin to cleaning the junk out of your closets or clearing the temporary files from your computer’s hard drive.
Although everyone experiences transience of memory, it is extreme and debilitating in people with particular kinds of brain damage. For instance, people with amnesia from damage to the hippocampus and related structures have normal short-term memory, but they are unable to form new long-term memories (see “Amnesia”). They forget information soon after they learn it.
Absentmindedness
This type of forgetting occurs when you don’t pay close enough attention. You forget where you just put your pen because you didn’t focus on where you put it in the first place. You were thinking of something else (or, perhaps, nothing in particular), so your brain didn’t encode the information securely. Absentmindedness also involves forgetting to do something at a prescribed time, like taking your medicine or keeping an appointment. In this case, the problem is that you didn’t focus on things that can serve as cues to remind you to do something — like putting your vitamin pills at your place at the table so you’ll remember to take one when you eat breakfast.
For example, if the doctor told you to take your medicine at bedtime and you forgot to do so, it could be that you didn’t pay close enough attention to the key word: bedtime. If you had, chances are that certain details of your bedtime routine (like brushing your teeth or watching a particular show on TV) would have served as cues to remind you to take your medicine.
Blocking
Someone asks you a question and the answer is right on the tip of your tongue — you know that you know it, but you just can’t think of it. This tip-of-the-tongue experience is perhaps the most familiar example of blocking, the temporary inability to retrieve a memory. Blocking doesn’t occur because you weren’t paying attention or because the memory you’re looking for has faded from your brain. On the contrary, blocking occurs when a memory is properly stored in your brain, but something is keeping you from finding it.
In many cases, the memory block is a memory similar to the one you’re looking for but one that you retrieve instead. This other memory is so intrusive that you can’t think of the memory you want. A common example is if you call your older daughter by your younger daughter’s name, or vice versa. Scientists call blocking memories “ugly stepsisters” because they’re domineering, like the stepsisters in Cinderella. Scientists have used ugly stepsisters experimentally to block memories. In one such experiment, people were asked to pick out the definitions of uncommon words from a selection of possible definitions. When definitions that were similar in sound or in meaning were given along with the accurate definition, more people had memory blocks than when unrelated ones were given.
Brain-imaging studies suggest how blocking might work in the brain. When a person is retrieving a memory, some regions of the brain become more active and others become less active. Scientists interpret this finding to mean that the active regions actually inhibit the other regions. When the right regions are activated, the inhibition of other regions can work in your favor by keeping your brain from calling up irrelevant information. But when you call up an ugly stepsister by mistake, the brain regions that encode it may suppress the regions needed to retrieve the memory you really want.
Scientists think that memory blocks become more common with age and that they account for the trouble older people have remembering other people’s names. But it remains unclear whether tip-of-the-tongue experiences are more common than other age-related memory problems. Nor have researchers determined whether memory blocks are simply caused by the overall slowing of memory retrieval that occurs with age. In any case, there’s encouraging news about blocking. Research shows that people are able to retrieve about half of the blocked memories within just a minute.
Misattribution
Consider the following scenario: You’re asked who “John Smith” is, and you remember quite clearly not only who he is, but also what he’s done lately that’s been in the news. Then you’re asked where you learned these details. You think for a moment and reply that it was on the evening TV news. However, there was no report about John Smith on TV. Instead, you got your information from the friend you had lunch with yesterday.
Right memory, wrong source — that’s one example of misattribution. Misattribution occurs when you remember something accurately in part, but misattribute some detail, like the time, place, or person involved. Another kind of misattribution occurs when you believe a thought you had was totally original when, in fact, it came from something you had previously read or heard but had forgotten about. This sort of misattribution explains cases of unintentional plagiarism, in which a writer passes off some information as original when he or she actually read it somewhere before.
Misattribution happens to everyone. Usually it’s harmless, but it can have profound consequences, particularly in the criminal justice system. In some cases, misattribution on the part of eyewitnesses is responsible for the arrest and conviction of individuals for crimes they didn’t commit.
The older the memory, the more likely it is to suffer misattribution. One study documented how misattribution crept into people’s recollections of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Immediately after the Challenger tragedy, researchers at Emory University asked students to write down what they were doing when they heard the news. A year later, the researchers asked the same students to write down their memories of the event again. These later descriptions were riddled with misattributions. But misattributions can be startlingly strong. When told of the discrepancies, the students had trouble believing that their memories were inaccurate. Indeed, three years later, when the students were once again asked to recall the Challenger explosion, their recollections were closer to their second accounts.
As with several other kinds of memory lapses, misattribution becomes more common with age. Age matters in at least two ways. First, as you age, you absorb fewer details when acquiring information because you have somewhat more trouble concentrating. Second, as you grow older, your memories grow older as well. And old memories are especially prone to misattribution.
Suggestibility
Imagine that you saw someone fleeing from a car as its antitheft alarm was blaring. You didn’t get a good look at the thief, but another person on the street insisted that it was a man wearing a green plaid jacket. Later, when the police show you photos of possible suspects, you’re confused until you see a man dressed in green plaid. Then you point to him.
Suggestibility refers to false memories that you develop because someone or something gives you some key information at the same time that you’re trying to retrieve a memory. Although little is known about exactly how suggestibility occurs in the brain, the suggestion fools your mind into thinking it’s a real memory. Suggestibility is the culprit in memories that adults have of incidents from their childhood that never really happened (see “Are recovered memories real?”).
In several studies, people have been induced to recall false events from their childhood after a researcher planted ideas in their minds. In one study, college students’ parents were asked to complete a questionnaire that asked whether certain events happened to the students. Then the students themselves were asked whether they recalled several events — some of which had actually happened (according to the parents’ responses) and some of which hadn’t. At first, 80%–90% of the students accurately recalled the events that had and hadn’t happened to them. But in later interviews, if a researcher suggested that a false event had actually happened to them when they were children, 20%–40% of the students described some memory of it.
No one knows whether people become more vulnerable to suggestibility as they age, but studies have demonstrated that many children experience it when asked to recollect alleged incidents of sexual abuse. Several studies with preschoolers indicate that suggestive questioning by the police or other adults can lead children to assert that certain events occurred when in fact they didn’t.
Bias
One of the biggest myths about memory is that it works like a camera, recording what you learn with complete accuracy. But even the sharpest memory isn’t a flawless snapshot of reality. In your memory, reality is filtered by your personal biases — experiences, beliefs, prior knowledge, and even your mood at the moment. Your biases affect your memories when they’re being encoded in your brain. And your mood and other biases at the moment when you retrieve a memory can influence what information you actually call up.
Bias can affect all sorts of memories, but among the most interesting examples are people’s recollections of their romantic relationships. In one study, couples who were dating were asked to evaluate themselves, their partners, and their relationships initially and then two months later. During the second session, participants were asked to recall what they had said initially. The people whose feelings for their partners and their relationships had become more negative recalled their initial evaluations as more negative than they really were. On the other hand, people whose feelings for their partners and their relationships had become more loving recalled their initial evaluations as more positive than they really were. Although everyone’s attitudes and preconceived notions bias their memories, there’s been virtually no research on the brain mechanisms behind memory bias or whether they become more common with age.
Persistence
Most people worry about forgetting things. But in some cases people wish they could forget, but can’t. The persistence of memories about traumatic events, negative feelings, and chronic fears is another form of memory problem. Some of these memories accurately reflect horrifying events, while others may be negative distortions of reality.
Two groups of people are especially prone to having persistent, upsetting memories. One group is individuals with depression. Research has shown that depressed people are given to ruminating over unpleasant events in their lives or mistakes that they believe they have made. Dwelling on such negatives also fuels a vicious cycle of increasing depression. The other group with persistent, unwanted memories includes people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is a condition that can result from many different sorts of traumatic events — for example, sexual abuse or wartime experiences. Flashbacks, which are persistent, intrusive memories of the traumatic event, are a core feature of PTSD.
Research has shown that persistent memories depend on the activation of those parts of the brain that respond to fear, anxiety, and emotionally charged information. Brain-imaging studies have shown that when people with PTSD recall a persistent, intrusive memory, there is activity in the amygdala as well as in other regions associated with the experience of fear and anxiety. Many people learn to control persistent memories through therapy that involves guided imagery, or visualization. With this technique, a therapist helps the patient learn gradually to envision the traumatic incident without intense fear, eventually lessening PTSD symptoms.
Are recovered memories real?
Recovered memories are vivid, emotionally powerful recollections of events or occurrences from the distant past that a person has not thought of in years. The use of such memories — in particular, as evidence of past child abuse, incest, or other traumatic events — has engendered considerable controversy.
Critics of recovered-memory therapy point out that memory is not a literal register of experience. What we remember — and how we remember it — is influenced by our personalities, as well as our beliefs, hopes, and needs. New experiences interfere with old memories and cause them to distort or decay, and we may fill in the gaps, merge the memories of several events, or confuse what we had imagined or heard about with what we actually witnessed or experienced. Critics charge that recovered memories often reflect the power of suggestion during psychotherapy sessions and that the therapist, an authority figure, plays the key role in encouraging such false memories to emerge. Similarly, when the memory of distant events is a vital aspect of a criminal investigation, police, social workers, and other officials can intentionally or unintentionally influence what a person remembers.
Champions of recovered memory, on the other hand, insist that the more unusual and disturbing the memory, the less likely it is to be false. If anything, they say, people tend to doubt recovered memories of child abuse longer than they should. Advocates say that most recovered memories are spontaneous and are not generated as the result of a therapist’s intervention, although they may be revealed in that context because the therapist creates a safe environment in which to disclose them.
Both sides in this dispute have tried to support their positions with evidence from neurology and cognitive neuroscience, including animal experiments, brain scans, neuropsychological tests, and the examination of brain-damaged patients. But the majority of mental health professionals take a position between the two extremes.
Although there is no established consensus, the following advice may be useful. There are many degrees and several kinds of forgetting. Memories can contain varying elements of truth, partial truth, or distortion, and different individuals have different capacities for remembering and forgetting. A true memory (recovered or persistent) cannot be distinguished from a false one on the basis of internal evidence alone. Instead, people must tolerate some uncertainty. More research is needed on the prevalence of false memories and delayed recall. Eventually, as research clarifies the subtle nuances of how normal memory works, scientists may gain a better understanding of the interplay between knowledge and emotion in the recollection of traumatic experiences and may reach a consensus on the usefulness and reliability of recovered memories.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Forgetting_Whats_normal.htm
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