ln the Netherlands, as in other Western countries, there is a great time lag between the evidence of the carcinogenicity of asbestos (1949) and the launching of first legislation that reduces the occupational exposure (1971) and finally, the complete ban of the production and application of asbestos (1993). So, between 1949 and 1970 there was a serious health risk while effective protective regulations were lacking. This implied a serious ethical dilemma for occupational health professionals: according to their code of ethics, (...) they ought to contribute to a safe and healthy working environment while companies are not strictly obliged to do so. This study explores retrospectively the position of health and safety professionals with regard to asbestos between 1930 and 1990; specifically with respect to the prevention of harmful health effects for exposed workers, which is a central value in their professional ethics. It turns out that the associations of safety and health professionals did not promulgate any position on the prevention of harm due to asbestos. Nor did the uncertainty about the health impact of asbestos obviously cause an ethical dilemma for individual professionals. Professionals were usually involved in discussions on diagnostic methods of asbestos exposure in the human body (X-ray or detection in sputum), the existence of safe limits, the scientific basis of risk assessment and effective prevention strategies. Only a single professional was seeking attention to the severe health risks and advocated for preventive action. (shrink)

(1999). A Longitude Timekeeper by Isaac Thuret with the Balance Spring Invented by Christiaan Huygens. Annals of Science: Vol. 56, No. 4, pp. 379-394.

Presentation times of study words presented in the Deese/Roediger and McDermott (DRM) paradigm varied from 20 to 2000 ms per word in an attempt to replicate the false memory effect following extremely short presentations reported by . Both in a within-subjects design (Experiment 1) and in a between-subjects design (Experiment 2) subjects showed memory for studied words as well as a false memory effect for related critical lures in the 2000-ms condition. However, in the conditions with shorter presentation times (20 (...) ms in Experiment 1; 20 and 40 ms in Experiment 2) no memory for studied words, nor a false memory effect was found. We argue that there is at present no strong evidence supporting the claim for a nonconscious basis of the false memory effect. (shrink)

In 1923, Sir Arthur Keith proposed that many common back problems are due to the stresses caused by our evolutionarily novel form of locomotion, bipedalism. In this article, we introduce an updated version of Keith’s hypothesis with a focus on acquired spinal conditions. We begin by outlining the main ways in which the human spine differs from those of our closest living relatives, the great apes. We then review evidence suggesting there is a link between spinal and vertebral shape on (...) the one hand and acquired spinal conditions on the other. Next, we discuss recent studies that not only indicate that two common acquired spinal conditions—intervertebral disc herniation and spondylolysis—are associated with vertebral shape, but also suggest that the pathology-prone vertebral shapes can be understood in terms of the shift from quadrupedalism to bipedalism in the course of human evolution. Subsequently, we place the aforementioned findings under an umbrella hypothesis, which we call the “Evolutionary Shape Hypothesis.” This hypothesis contends that individuals differ in their propensity to develop different acquired spinal conditions because of differences in vertebral shape that relate to the evolutionary history of our species. We end the article with some possible directions for future research. (shrink)