I don't remember a time this game did not exist. I recall kids
playing it in the early 1950's in Calgary, AB. Nor did it ever go away. It
didn't have any hip street name back then nor was it called a game. It was
just "Hey, let's do the thing(s) that made you pass out." It was done for
the cool feeling we would now call a rush.
I wouldn't do it with anyone because I did not trust anyone. When I got
into...
I don't remember a time this game did not exist. I recall kids
playing it in the early 1950's in Calgary, AB. Nor did it ever go away. It
didn't have any hip street name back then nor was it called a game. It was
just "Hey, let's do the thing(s) that made you pass out." It was done for
the cool feeling we would now call a rush.
I wouldn't do it with anyone because I did not trust anyone. When I got
into my early teens, I did do it alone. After one terrifying experience at
about 16 with hanging myself I quit doing it. While the activity started
out for the rush, it turned into a sexual activity when I hit puberty. It
is very addictive and, as we know, children and teenagers cannot yet
experience the reality of their own death. I know adults who play with
breathe control for sexual reasons. I think they are crazy.
From the statistics on one of the sites, it is clear people were doing
this back in the 1930's too. I bet it is painted on the brothel walls in
Pompeii. If you pay attention to young children you can see them spinning
until they fall down. Humans, and many other animals, seek out such
sensations through activities and substances. It appears to be a common
drive and we need to recognize that it is not, per se, an abberation and
approach it that way.
Millions of dollars are spent to find out why people do drugs, hang
themselves for fun, and engage in risky activities like car surfing. We
know why. It is because it is pleasurable, more pleasurable than the
mundane. For people whose day-to-day existence is painful, they get the
fun and the escape. People seek happiness and, in our culture, happiness
is equated with pleasure. In our intense times the goal is intense
pleasure.
One definition of insanity is to keep doing things the same way despite
the fact that it does not work. We have to apply what we are learning
about the human brain and human needs and stop looking for an answer that
is premised on outdated beliefs and values. We need to educate our
children for this world and this time, not some vision of a perfect world
that never existed and will not exist. People will continue to pursue
altered states of consciousness just as cats will seek out catnip, honey
suckle, and mint to get a rush. It is easy to teach ways of achieving such
states with healthy activities. A side benefit is that meditation and
mindfulness practice lead to a more balanced and happy person with less
need or desire to use dangerous ways of coping.
Gordon Smith’s editorial is timely, blurring of the boundaries
between work place safety and the home is a reality in New Zealand.[1] A good
example of this blurring can be found in a story titled “Mill shows it's
safer than houses” in today’s edition of the New Zealand Herald :htt...
As a person who has extensive knowledge and work experience in both
community based injury prevention programmes and work place health and
safety the blurring of the boundary is a fascinating development. In
general, I welcome the blurring as providing an opportunity for improving
the health and safety of all. However, I also have some questions about
the development, which are outlined below.
In New Zealand, there is an increasing trend for larger companies to
engage in off-the-job injury prevention. At the same time, there is a
growing number of community organisations, led by a coordinator, who
facilitate injury prevention activities in their local community.
In both cases, a wide range of activities at various levels of
intervention - from educating the individual to advocating for change in
public policy - is being undertaken to promote injury prevention in
various settings, including the home, at work and at play.
However, there is little communication between community groups and
occupational health and safety (oh&s) practitioners about what each is
doing. This is unfortunate because resources for injury prevention are
scarce. By working more collaboratively, better use would be made of
available resources.
I also believe that workplace and community injury prevention
practitioners are united by a common goal to reduce injuries. Only their
differing training and areas of expertise divide them.
For example, Safekids is funded to focus on child safety, which
limits its ability to assist with programmes aimed at adults. This is
unfortunate, because it may result in 'tunnel vision' or 'patch
protection’; meaning common areas of interest are overlooked.
Falls, for example, are a significant injury issue for everyone:
children, adults and employees. The causes of falls for each group may be
different but the solutions are similar, orientated towards
engineering/environmental modification or behavioural change to reduce
risk. Both types of intervention are appropriate irrespective of fall
situation or age group, hence room for collaboration and shared solutions
exists.
For this to occur, practitioners must have the knowledge and ability
to see and understand the connections that exist across a range of injury
prevention activities, which leads to another observation: the two types
of practitioners tend to have different skill sets and training, which can
be a barrier to communication.
Occupational health and safety practitioners generally have
engineering, nursing or occupational health backgrounds and have knowledge
of oh&s management systems. In contrast, community practitioners tend
to have backgrounds in health promotion, education or road safety and have
knowledge of models of community development. Both groups bring a unique
perspective and knowledge to the injury prevention puzzle; we should learn
from each other.
How will this cooperation happen? If a company wanted to promote
driver safety to its employees, instead of developing an in-house
programme, it may be more cost effective for the company to use community
injury prevention practitioners to deliver an agreed programme as part of
a wider community initiative.
In a similar way, if a community practitioner wanted to undertake a safe
lifting programme, by cooperating with their oh&s colleagues, it may
be that a targeted initiative could be delivered that would be more
effective than a more generic approach, because it could be supported and
followed up by companies participating in the initiative.
In both cases, a synergy could be achieved for preventing injuries,
and each could learn from the other through the exchange of skills,
knowledge and abilities. Potentially, good evaluations using controlled
environments could also be undertaken to assess the efficacy of an
intervention.
However, I have some questions about the transferring of workplace
injury prevention into the non-work environment. The first concern has to
do with privacy.
The transferring of company attention of worker health and safety
into the home environment can be seen as invasion of the employee’s
privacy. What right does a company have to interfere in what a person does
off the job? This sort of argument is commonly heard from opponents to
compulsory workplace drug testing. The counter argument from companies is
that injuries off the job are causing them significant money in terms of
lost-time. Lost time in terms of poor performance at work because of a
back injury suffered playing rugby on the weekend, or workers taking extra
sick leave because the worker has to be at home to assist an injured
family member.
A more important concern I have is whether corporate philosophies and
timeframes are actually compatible with community modes of operation. Two
examples:
1) I question whether many companies are comfortable with
the long timeframes, typically two to three years, and the process of
consultation often required to effectively work with communities.
2) A sceptical person may also question the motive behind a company’s
proposed involvement with the community: is the company genuinely
interested in improving the health and safety of its workers and families?
Or is it a marketing ploy to help improve its image in the community while
new and potentially harmful production facilities are introduced into the
community and community support is required in order to smooth its
introduction?
Another issue concerns whether a company might be increasing its
exposure to legal liability by undertaking injury prevention initiatives
outside of its field of expertise. This may occur as the result of the the
OHS manager undertaking the delivery of an injury prevention programme
aimed at the home or sport environment that is inappropriate in content
and delivery for such settings. In the NZ legal environment, such a
concern is not a significant issue because of our accident compensation
system, however I suggest that it could be a real issue in a different
legal environment such as the United States of America.
My final concern has to do with the traditional dominance of the
psychological model of injury causation in workplace safety, which “blames
the victim” and leads to the propagation of Behaviour Based Systems as the
preferred method of injury prevention. Such an approach, I would argue, is
incompatible with most public health models of health promotion and injury
prevention, such as the Spectrum of Injury Prevention model, which informs
the work of Safekids NZ. This is not to deny that there aren’t good
workplace models of injury prevention, in particular those informed by
‘systems models’, which are compatible with similar models in public
health.
In summary, the blurring of the workplace safety activity boundary is
a fact of life in New Zealand. It is a development that I believe that has
potential to improve the health and safety of many New Zealanders, and to
advance the knowledge base of all those involved in injury prevention.
However I also have some questions about the blurring taking place. For
example, company involvement promoting non-work related safety could be
seen as unwarranted interference in the private lives of people. Injury
prevention practitioners situated in businesses and in communities
typically have different disciplinary backgrounds, which may hinder
communications. And, business motives and methods of operation aren’t
necessarily compatible with community processes and public health models
of injury prevention.
Reference
(1) GS Smith. Injury prevention: blurring the distinctions between home and work. Inj Prev 2003; 9: 3-5
We acknowledge that we did not control for all of the differences in
road geometry and building typologies because there are no ideal matched
streets (Re: Cooper). However, alternative research designs also have
limitation and feasibility issues. For before and after study designs,
some of the Montreal cycle tracks are 20 years old, before injury
surveillance and traffic counting data systems were available. Limiting to...
We acknowledge that we did not control for all of the differences in
road geometry and building typologies because there are no ideal matched
streets (Re: Cooper). However, alternative research designs also have
limitation and feasibility issues. For before and after study designs,
some of the Montreal cycle tracks are 20 years old, before injury
surveillance and traffic counting data systems were available. Limiting to
cycle tracks that were developed after these data were available would
limit us to a much smaller number of cycle tracks, thus reducing the
statistical power. Utilizing a multivariate analysis to account for other
factors such as road geometry, buildings types, pedestrians, trees, etc.
would answer a different research question - about the possible
independent effect of each factor - and would require many more cycle
tracks or another unit of analysis (ex. intersections). Therefore,
bicycling on cycle tracks was compared to bicycling on streets without
cycle tracks. To select the alternative reference streets without cycle
tracks, a few parallel reference streets were considered for each street
with a cycle track, The parallel street was then selected because it had,
as much as possible, the same cross streets. Recognizing no perfect
reference street existed, we also compared relative danger from vehicular
traffic by obtaining the injuries to motor vehicle occupants (EMR data).
Given these limitations, none of the 6 pairs were found to have a
statistically significant higher risk of injury on the cycle tracks. Thus,
not one of the comparisons in this research conducted in Montreal
supported the old hypothesis that bicycling on cycle tracks posed greater
risk than bicycling in the road. In fact the opposite was true as
bicycling on the cycle tracks posed less risk.
Ivers makes some important omissions in her Cochrane Corner article
[1] where
she reports the recent Cochrane review of bicycle helmet legislation. The
author’s main conclusion was that the evidence ‘suggests a protective
effect of
bicycle helmet legislation against head injury amongst cyclists.’ Ivers
might also
have mentioned the authors qualifying comments that the evidence is
‘limited in
qual...
Ivers makes some important omissions in her Cochrane Corner article
[1] where
she reports the recent Cochrane review of bicycle helmet legislation. The
author’s main conclusion was that the evidence ‘suggests a protective
effect of
bicycle helmet legislation against head injury amongst cyclists.’ Ivers
might also
have mentioned the authors qualifying comments that the evidence is
‘limited in
quality and quantity’, that the reviews’ findings apply only to paediatric
populations and the statement:
‘There was either restricted or no evidence to provide sound
scientific support
for either side of the bicycle helmet legislation debate.’
That the Cochrane review was unable to demonstrate clear benefits
from helmet
laws is the headline Ivers neglected to mention. A more balanced review
would
have.
While the authors findings [1] illustrate that the Checkpoints Program is
an effective tool in the parental restriction of teen driving, one must
not overlook the fact that that there is no difference between the safety
of novice drivers in the intervention group versus the control group. As
the authors report, the levels of tickets and crashes are the same at
months four and nine for both groups, raisin...
While the authors findings [1] illustrate that the Checkpoints Program is
an effective tool in the parental restriction of teen driving, one must
not overlook the fact that that there is no difference between the safety
of novice drivers in the intervention group versus the control group. As
the authors report, the levels of tickets and crashes are the same at
months four and nine for both groups, raising questions as to the purpose
of increased parental restrictions on driving.
I commend the authors in finding an effective method to increase
parent-teen communication and understanding: such dialogue is always a
desireable goal, particularly in a matter with such gravity as driving.
Despite this positive indication, however, the advocacy of increased
controls when such limitations prove insignificant in improving road
safety is questionable.
Reference
(1) BG Simons-Morton, JL Hartos, KH Beck. Persistence of effects of a brief intervention on parental restrictions of teen driving privileges. Inj Prev 2003;9:142-146.
I would challenge anyone using their bare hands to move or remove the
trigger lock on my gun once properly installed and locked in place. That
is, short of cutting it off with a hacksaw or using a hammer and chisel.
Lumping all trigger locks in to one category and then making the statement
that trigger locks are not a safe storage method is absolutely asinine.
When it comes to the quality of trigger l...
I would challenge anyone using their bare hands to move or remove the
trigger lock on my gun once properly installed and locked in place. That
is, short of cutting it off with a hacksaw or using a hammer and chisel.
Lumping all trigger locks in to one category and then making the statement
that trigger locks are not a safe storage method is absolutely asinine.
When it comes to the quality of trigger locks, it's just like anything
else. You get what you pay for. We, as gun owners shudder at the thought
of any kind of government gun control. I am sure that most if not all
gun enthusiasts feel threatened and are dead set against the government
making gun locks mandatory. So, in this case, what is the smart thing
for the gun enthusiasts to do? They bring in to question a gun lock
safety issue. Why would the government want you to use something that is
not 100% safe? So, they plant the seed in the minds of the people that
gun locks are not safe. I suggest that you do a little research and start
by going to the following site:
http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=47
I do not believe that you can ever be too safe in the handling or the
storage of a firearm. When my firearm is not in use, I remove the clip,
clear the chamber and a good quality trigger lock is installed before
storing it in a locked steel cabinet. The ammunition is locked in a
separate drawer.
I personally would like to see any in depth study that has been done
involving gun locks and the injury or death of children.
The following was taken from an article dated January 4, 1999 and can
be read in it's entirety at
http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/InTheNews.aspx?ID=1027
"Notwithstanding this remarkable record of safety, gun control
advocates had urged that locks - such as trigger locks - be provided for
guns by firearm manufacturers (rather than through existing retail
channels). When the firearms manufacturers agreed to do so, the same
advocates declared that the very locks which they had proposed were
suddenly insufficient and that "smart gun" technology was now required. We
believe that these proposals are not motivated by safety (they do not call
for locks on shotguns or rifles, for example, even though these weapons
are as frequently involved in accidents as handguns), but by the desire to
make private ownership of handguns more difficult. The merits of that
objective would provide the subject for a separate discussion, but
irrespective of its political purpose, the call for "smart gun" technology
suffers from technical and conceptual errors that could cost lives. The
idea of a "smart gun" has appeal to the unwary and has been promoted by
gun control advocates who have no technical understanding of firearms
design nor, apparently, of the risks inherent in their proposals. Beretta
trusts that politicians and voters who consider this issue carefully and
objectively will agree that such devices should not be required in
handguns."
Hemenway (1) describes three beliefs which may jeopardize injury-
avoidance: optimistic ("it will never happen to me"), fatalistic
("accidents happen") and materialistic ("you probably deserved it"). Such
a scheme parallels well-known trait theories regarding the individual's
general personality (2); given the value of those endeavours,Hemenway's
scheme deserves serious consideration.
Hemenway (1) describes three beliefs which may jeopardize injury-
avoidance: optimistic ("it will never happen to me"), fatalistic
("accidents happen") and materialistic ("you probably deserved it"). Such
a scheme parallels well-known trait theories regarding the individual's
general personality (2); given the value of those endeavours,Hemenway's
scheme deserves serious consideration.
Nonetheless, it may be incomplete. In this note, I argue for the
inclusion of values that I label as societal - that is, they are best
understood in terms of major societal groups. Evidence supporting this
proposal resides in a comparison of road-travel and rail-travel; this
suggests that society expects higher standards of safety for rail than for
road. Two examples follow:
A. SAFETY AND VEHICLE DESIGN: Traditionally, Britain's railway
carriages were equipped with slam-doors, which could be opened by
passengers even when the train was moving. During the mid-2000s, such
stock - even if relatively new - was mostly replaced by carriages using
less reliable sliding-doors under electronic control of guard and driver.
The saving in injuries and deaths has almost certainly been miniscule: I
see no evidence against this assertion in Britain's transport data (3).
Society deemed that the relevant legislation should be enacted, despite
the heavy costs involved.
Cost can have different implications on the road: SUVs - large and
powerful four-wheel-drive automobiles - are more dangerous than smaller,
cheaper-to-buy and cheaper-to-run automobiles (4). One might suppose that
governments would seek to reduce the prevalence of SUVs, since the choice
of SUV ownership appears to be little more than an issue of perceived
prestige.
B. ATTENTION TO THE TASK: Society has long expected that train
drivers pay undivided attention to their job. Indeed, the use of a "dead-
man's-handle" or its modern developments entails the train automatically
coming to a stand if the driver diverts attention (5).
In contrast, values concerning the road imply that drivers can safely
carry out other tasks during driving. A notably transparent example
concerns the common media device of televising an inverview while the
interviewee is driving. This presents an extraordinarily inept message to
the motoring community. Inattention on the road is supposedly discouraged,
although specific legislation is limited. The banning of mobile-phone use
is a rare case, but its effectiveness must be seriously doubted (6).
CONCLUSION: Hemenway offers a useful scheme for investigating injury
prevention. I argue here that - at least regarding travel - the problems
are not simply to be understood by reference to the individual's beliefs.
The problems are also societal. The two examples above indicate greater
threat on road than on rail. There are other examples that can be
developed: the use of psychoactive drugs (7,8) and failure to observe
speed-limits (9). Paradoxically, the latter may have been exacerbated by
the legally-required use of seatbelts (10).
The imbalance in societal values is consistent with casualty
statistics (3). Until society is prepared to recognise and implement the
lessons from rail-travel, an important conduit for injury prevention in
road-travel will remain under-exploited.
REFERENCES
1. Hemenway D. Three common beliefs that are impdiments to injury
prevention. Inj Prev 2012;
00:1-4. doi:10.1136/injuryprev-2012-040507
2. Hewstone M, Fincham F, Foster J. Psychology. 2005. Leicester UK:
BPS.
3. Department for Transport 2011. Transport statistics GB: 2010
Annual report. London: TSO.
4. Simms S, O'Neill D. Sports utility vehicles and older pedestrians.
BMJ 2005;331:787-8.
5. Harris M. Dead man's handle. In Simmons J, Biddle G (eds). The
Oxford campanion to British railway history. 2002. Oxford:OUP (p 125).
6. McEvoy SP, Stevenson MR, McCartt AT, Woodward M, Haworth C,
Palmara P, Cercarelli R. Role of mobile phones in motor vehicle crashes
resulting in hospital attendance: a case-crossover study. BMJ 2005;331:428
-430.
7. Perkins A. Red Queen: the authorized biography of Barbara Castle.
2003. London: Macmillan.
8. Hall W. Driving while under the influence of cannabis. BMJ
2012;344:e595 doi: 10.1136/bmj.e595.
Thompsons and Rivara have published a number of articles in
scientific journals. Most, if not all of these purport to show that cycle
helmets are extraordinarily effective, against whole-population robust
research. Many of them have been peer reviewed and found to be worthless
e.g. their claim that cycle helmets prevented 85% of injuries and deaths,
based on the fact that helmeted cyclists riding in pa...
Thompsons and Rivara have published a number of articles in
scientific journals. Most, if not all of these purport to show that cycle
helmets are extraordinarily effective, against whole-population robust
research. Many of them have been peer reviewed and found to be worthless
e.g. their claim that cycle helmets prevented 85% of injuries and deaths,
based on the fact that helmeted cyclists riding in parks suffered fewer
injuries/deaths than unhelmeted cyclists riding on busy roads.
Their bias in the matter of cycle helmets is well proved, and their
scientific detachment has been shown to be non-existent - they start from
the premise that cycle helmets must be effective and work back.
Why does any journal with pretensions to scientific validity publish them?
Re: Comparing apples with apples? Abusive Head Trauma, Drowning and LSVROs (response to Kaltner, Kenardy, Le Brocque & Page, 2012), by Watt, Franklin, Wallis, Griffin, Leggat and Kimble (2012)
Developing the epidemiological literature base on the occurrence of all forms of childhood injury is essential to the development and promotion of injury prevention efforts. As is rightfully highlighted by Watt, Franklin, Wall...
Re: Comparing apples with apples? Abusive Head Trauma, Drowning and LSVROs (response to Kaltner, Kenardy, Le Brocque & Page, 2012), by Watt, Franklin, Wallis, Griffin, Leggat and Kimble (2012)
Developing the epidemiological literature base on the occurrence of all forms of childhood injury is essential to the development and promotion of injury prevention efforts. As is rightfully highlighted by Watt, Franklin, Wallis, Griffin, Leggat and Kimble (2012), limitations in the availability of easily accessible child injury data exist in Queensland. Within Kaltner, Kenardy, Le Brocque & Page's (2012) paper, published figures on rates of alternate forms of childhood injury were utilised to contextualise the occurrence of Abusive Head Trauma (AHT). Their selection was based on the most recent figures available to the authors following extensive literature searches; as is discussed by Watt et al., more comparable and recent figures are not accessible in the public sphere.
With the cessation of funding to the Queensland Trauma Registry, the availability of up-to-date, reliable injury data within Queensland is limited. This presents a further challenge to all injury researchers in the state, alongside the hurdle of approvals necessary to access Queensland Health data as overviewed by Watt et al. (2012). In undertaking the important work of research and prevention for all forms of childhood injury, high level support-including financial commitment- for the development and maintenance of reliable and accessible injury databases is necessary.
London Ambulance Service's own data suggests that, of 8000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year, 400 survive, with a response time of 8
minutes. The Scottish data reported by Pell et al.[1] suggest that a 3-minute reduction in response could improve that figure by
about 25% (say, 8% per minute) but that increasing the response time to 15
minutes lowers the survival rate by only 25% (less than 4%...
London Ambulance Service's own data suggests that, of 8000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year, 400 survive, with a response time of 8
minutes. The Scottish data reported by Pell et al.[1] suggest that a 3-minute reduction in response could improve that figure by
about 25% (say, 8% per minute) but that increasing the response time to 15
minutes lowers the survival rate by only 25% (less than 4% per minute).
These figures are less than the 10% per minute claimed by the
Chairman of London Ambulance Services.
The claim that humps cause 500 cardiac arrest deaths a year in London
thus seems somewhat hyperbolic. A 4% drop in the number of
survivors per minute saved is fewer than 20 people, not 500. Even the
hypothetical reduction of response time from 8 to 7 minutes by removing
all speed control devices would, on this reported data, lead only to a
further 30-40 people surviving. The corresponding effects on pedestrian
casualties and neighbourhood degradation by traffic would far outweigh
this gain.
It seems too simple to blame speed control measures for LAS problems
with response times. A far greater issue, from an outsider's observation,
is the level of arterial road congestion in London. This must cause far
more delay than measures that constrain speeds on access streets.
Reference
(1) Pell JP, Sirel JM, Marsden AK, Ford I, Cobbe SM. Effect of reducing ambulance response times on deaths from out of hospital cardiac arrest: cohort study. BMJ Jun 2001; 322:1385-1388.
Dear Editor
I don't remember a time this game did not exist. I recall kids playing it in the early 1950's in Calgary, AB. Nor did it ever go away. It didn't have any hip street name back then nor was it called a game. It was just "Hey, let's do the thing(s) that made you pass out." It was done for the cool feeling we would now call a rush. I wouldn't do it with anyone because I did not trust anyone. When I got into...
Dear Editor
Gordon Smith’s editorial is timely, blurring of the boundaries between work place safety and the home is a reality in New Zealand.[1] A good example of this blurring can be found in a story titled “Mill shows it's safer than houses” in today’s edition of the New Zealand Herald :htt...
We acknowledge that we did not control for all of the differences in road geometry and building typologies because there are no ideal matched streets (Re: Cooper). However, alternative research designs also have limitation and feasibility issues. For before and after study designs, some of the Montreal cycle tracks are 20 years old, before injury surveillance and traffic counting data systems were available. Limiting to...
Dear Editor
Ivers makes some important omissions in her Cochrane Corner article [1] where she reports the recent Cochrane review of bicycle helmet legislation. The author’s main conclusion was that the evidence ‘suggests a protective effect of bicycle helmet legislation against head injury amongst cyclists.’ Ivers might also have mentioned the authors qualifying comments that the evidence is ‘limited in qual...
Dear Editor
While the authors findings [1] illustrate that the Checkpoints Program is an effective tool in the parental restriction of teen driving, one must not overlook the fact that that there is no difference between the safety of novice drivers in the intervention group versus the control group. As the authors report, the levels of tickets and crashes are the same at months four and nine for both groups, raisin...
Dear Editor
I would challenge anyone using their bare hands to move or remove the trigger lock on my gun once properly installed and locked in place. That is, short of cutting it off with a hacksaw or using a hammer and chisel. Lumping all trigger locks in to one category and then making the statement that trigger locks are not a safe storage method is absolutely asinine. When it comes to the quality of trigger l...
Hemenway (1) describes three beliefs which may jeopardize injury- avoidance: optimistic ("it will never happen to me"), fatalistic ("accidents happen") and materialistic ("you probably deserved it"). Such a scheme parallels well-known trait theories regarding the individual's general personality (2); given the value of those endeavours,Hemenway's scheme deserves serious consideration.
Nonetheless, it may be inco...
Dear Editor
Thompsons and Rivara have published a number of articles in scientific journals. Most, if not all of these purport to show that cycle helmets are extraordinarily effective, against whole-population robust research. Many of them have been peer reviewed and found to be worthless e.g. their claim that cycle helmets prevented 85% of injuries and deaths, based on the fact that helmeted cyclists riding in pa...
Developing the epidemiological literature base on the occurrence of all forms of childhood injury is essential to the development and promotion of injury prevention efforts. As is rightfully highlighted by Watt, Franklin, Wall...
Dear Editor
London Ambulance Service's own data suggests that, of 8000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year, 400 survive, with a response time of 8 minutes. The Scottish data reported by Pell et al.[1] suggest that a 3-minute reduction in response could improve that figure by about 25% (say, 8% per minute) but that increasing the response time to 15 minutes lowers the survival rate by only 25% (less than 4%...
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