If We Build It … Will They Come? – Establishing a Cancer Genetics Services Clinic for an Underserved Predominantly Latina Cohort

Background: Cancer genetic counseling and testing is a standard of care option for appropriate families and can identify individuals at increased risk prior to diagnosis, when prevention or detection strategies are most effective. Despite documented efficacy of cancer risk reduction in high-risk individuals, underserved and minority individuals have a disproportionate cancer burden and limited access to genetic counseling. Methods: A needs assessment survey documented gaps in knowledge and interest in prevention. Satellite clinics were established at two indigent healthcare systems. Cancer genetics CME lectures were conducted and referral guidelines disseminated to clinicians who referred patients for counseling. Results: An increase in clinician knowledge was demonstrated post-CME and reflected by quality referrals. Eighty-eight percent of patients kept their appointments. In the predominantly Latina⁶ (n=77) clinic population, 71.4% were affected with cancer, and 17 mutation positive families were identified. Preliminary data shows a positive impact on patients' motivation and behavior. The majority has expressed satisfaction and reduction in anxiety. Conclusions: This study demonstrates feasibility and acceptability of cancer genetics services in this population, suggesting the potential to reduce cancer morbidity in underserved, high-risk families.“Latino” is the most common census term for individuals of Spanish, Mexican, Central and South American, Cuban, or Puerto Rican descent, referring to ethnicity, and is generally considered a more ethnically/culturally based term for individuals of the aforementioned groups. As this cohort is female the feminine noun “Latina” is used     

The theory of thinking and the capacity to mentalize: a comparison of Fonagy's and Bion's models

This paper presents a comparison of two psychoanalytic models of how human beings learn to use their mental capacities to know meaningfully about the world. The first, Fonagy's model of mentalization, is concerned with the development of a self capable of reflecting upon its own and others' mental states, based on feelings, thoughts, intentions, and desires. The other, Bion's model of thinking, is about the way thoughts are dealt with by babies, facilitating the construction of a thinking apparatus within a framework of primitive ways of communication between mother and baby. The theories are compared along three axes: (a) an axis of the theoretical and philosophical backgrounds of the models; (b) an axis of the kind of evidence that supports them; and (c) the third axis of the technical implications of the ideas of each model. It is concluded that, although the models belong to different theoretical and epistemological traditions and are supported by different sorts of evidence, they may be located along the same developmental line using an intersubjective framework that maintains tension between the intersubjective and the intrapsychic domains of the mind.     

The role of variability in the property listing task

It is generally believed that concepts can be characterized by their properties (or features). When investigating concepts encoded in language, researchers often ask subjects to produce lists of properties that describe them (i.e., the Property Listing Task, PLT). These lists are accumulated to produce Conceptual Property Norms (CPNs). CPNs contain frequency distributions of properties for individual concepts. It is widely believed that these distributions represent the underlying semantic structure of those concepts. Here, instead of focusing on the underlying semantic structure, we aim at characterizing the PLT. An often disregarded aspect of the PLT is that individuals show intersubject variability (i.e., they produce only partially overlapping lists). In our study we use a mathematical analysis of this intersubject variability to guide our inquiry. To this end, we resort to a set of publicly available norms that contain information about the specific properties that were informed at the individual subject level. Our results suggest that when an individual is performing the PLT, he or she generates a list of properties that is a mixture of general and distinctive properties, such that there is a non-linear tendency to produce more general than distinctive properties. Furthermore, the low generality properties are precisely those that tend not to be repeated across lists, accounting in this manner for part of the intersubject variability. In consequence, any manipulation that may affect the mixture of general and distinctive properties in lists is bound to change intersubject variability. We discuss why these results are important for researchers using the PLT.     

The Gettier Intuition from South America to Asia

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail...