Articles

TASA ID: 16893

As technology improves in the health care world, more types of medical and surgical interventions are taking place in venues other than the operating room. Stand-alone surgical suites, endoscopy suites, interventional radiology, and dental procedures are just some examples of patient care environments that are an operating room alternative.

TASA ID: 9505

This article was originally published on https://www.forensicpsychiatrynow.com/date-rape-drugs, posted May 15, 2018. 

Drug‑Facilitated Sexual Assault (DFSA) is the use of drugs and/or alcohol by a sexual predator to render a victim incapacitated and unable to fight back against a sexual assault. A side effect of many “Date Rape” or “Club Drugs” is also anterograde amnesia, the inability to recall what happened while drugged, increasing a predator’s belief he will “get away with it.”  Those odds are shifting, but attorneys, Courts, and potential victims are better served if they understand some of the drugs used and their impact on mind and body. 
 
DFSA is more easily prosecuted if reported while the drug is still in the victim’s system and thus testable by a toxicology screen. Each drug has a different deterioration time for detection. Luckily, law enforcement protocols now better respond with urgency to obtain a blood test when a DFSA is reported.  The Drug-Induced Rape Prevention and Punishment Act of 1996 provides for more severe sentencing. Public awareness, particularly after the recent Bill Cosby trial, has made potential victims warier of at least the most obvious DFSA attempts.

TASA ID:

Did you know that knowing the IQ score of the defendant you are representing can actually be of great benefit? When arguing that IQ is a significant cause of crime, researchers cite studies to indicate that criminal populations usually have an average IQ of approximately 92 which is eight points below the mean. The relationship between IQ and criminality is particularly distinct within a small portion of the population, primarily younger men, who are responsible for committing a disproportionate amount of crime while higher intelligence acts as protection against lapsing into criminal activity for people who are otherwise at risk.

TASA ID: 13340

Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP) is currently providing input to the U.S. Dept. of HHS to preserve the 2016 CDC Opioid Prescribing Guideline which is under some threat from the influence of the opioid pharmaceutical industry and some members of the pain community. This could also have positive implications for future legal cases for victims of opioid over-prescribing, especially in regard to the continued profit-driven malfeasance of these two sectors which have been largely responsible for the creation of the opioid epidemic. Will have more to say about this over the next few months.

TASA ID: 13340

This article originally appeared in The Rheumatologist, 2008 - https://www.the-rheumatologist.org/article/perils-of-pain-meds/ and has been granted permission to be republished on The TASA Group website.

Over the last decade, an expansion in the use of opioids has been advocated by certain pain specialists as well as pharmaceutical companies. In my opinion, this has occurred in the absence of valid data that support the claims that opioids can effectively and safely be extended beyond cancer to most patients with chronic non-cancer pain with a low risk of addiction. Such claims have subsequently been found to be inaccurate, and the original
statement about the low rate of addiction to a common oxycodone sustained-release formulation has been shown to be false (as recently admitted by pharmaceutical company executives as a result of a Federal indictment).