From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: sci.med
Subject: Re: Suicide prevention; what next?
Date: 15 Apr 92 18:12:58 GMT
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department

In article <14354@pitt.UUCP> geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks) writes:
>In article <44802@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:

			....................

|>Notice the strength of this statement.  Merely a degradation of performance
|>would not be enough for us to be willing to take action, but only if there
|>was incompetent performance would we be willing to exert other than 
|>moral pressure.  That his friends and colleagues thought that his 
|>alcoholism should be treated was known to him.

>I don't see how this clarifies anything at all.  An alcoholic who
>is meeting acceptable standards is a far cry from a psychotic
>patient.  They have little to do with each other.  Let me give you
>a real case: a professor of French begins to make accusations that
>other scholars are stealing her work and publishing it.  Examination
>of the cases in questions show that the charges are unfounded.  She
>then begins to believe that certain faculty are out to get her and
>are following her around while she drives and on occassions have
>forced her off the road.  She also believes that they are putting
>substances in her food to poison her and are trying to influence
>her family to turn against her.  Any suggestion that she see a
>psychiatrist is met with hostility, as this is part of the general
>plot.  Should this woman just be allowed to continue to deteriorate
>until she becomes a street person?  Or should she be made to go
>to the psychiatrist?

I admit that I have not known any with this entire set of reported
symptoms, but I have seen them with many.  My opinion is that as long
as she is functioning well enough as a faculty member that a tenure
revocation is not a reasonable action based on performance alone, that
the university should not use any form of force.  Tenure revocation is
extremely rare, for those unfamiliar with the situation.

I would add that if any form of legal force is used, that all costs of
the "treatment" be borne by those individuals who are in favor of such
coercion.  Threatened firing, if strictly justified by actions in the
workplace, is permissible, but those wishing to take legal action should
be required to bear the full responsibility for it, and not foist it off
on society.  Also, the rights of the individual should be very carefully
safeguarded, and that does not mean having the individual represented
by a court-appointed hack not believing in the rights of the individual.

If we are not very careful here, we will get what happend in the former
Soviet Union.  Until recently, in every society, witches have been burned,
or the equivalent action taken against those who do not sufficiently
conform to what those in authority, or even the public, believe.  I have
seen articles in the press claiming that parents who make their children
study are guilty of child abuse, and we have many cases in which the state
has insisted that children go to school instead of learning far more. 
In fact, if you would read misc.legal, you would encounter many cases
in which parents have had their children removed from them, and even
imprisoned, on the basis of the inability on the part of social workers
to admit that they might be wrong.

Freedom, including medical freedom, has considerable costs.  One of these
costs is that of people depriving themselves of care for reasons which
most people will not accept.  So be it.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
{purdue,pur-ee}!pop.stat!hrubin(UUCP)
Newsgroups: sci.med