Academies and Institutes

OBJECTIVE: To develop a scientifically sound and clinically relevant evidence-based guideline for the treatment of painful diabetic neuropathy (PDN). METHODS: We performed a systematic review of the literature from 1960 to August 2008 and classified the studies according to the American Academy of Neurology classification of evidence scheme for a therapeutic article, and recommendations were linked to the strength of the evidence.

While aging research has been progressing rapidly recently, the involvement of multiple organs and systems in the aging process has hampered a comprehensive assessment of some of aging's basic features. In response to this problem, the Institute for Aging Research at Einstein did not emerge out of the traditional geriatric programs, but through enhanced collaborations between basic and clinical scientists who had successful careers in the research of a specific organ or system.

This article is about the blending of a mission, vision, and philosophy of care by two systems of health care that are both rich in history and vision. The unique qualities of each hospital are described. The diversified cultures of each organization are discussed in terms of reaching a final decision regarding the joint vision, philosophy of care, and mission of the system that has been redesigned.

This article provides an account of how AndrÈ Hellegers, founder and first Director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, laid medicine open to bioethics. Helleger's approach to bioethics, as to morality generally and also to medicine and biomedical science, involved taking the "wider view" -- a value-filled vision that integrated and gave meaning to what otherwise was disparate, precarious, and conflicting.

Creighton University, a Jesuit institution of higher education, has supported a community health program in the poor and remote areas of the Dominican Republic since 1976. This program is built around multidisciplinary health teams combining undergraduate and graduate students in various health professional schools with practitioners. A permanent center in the Dominican Republic has been established for coordination and training. The program is conceived as providing participants an opportunity to reflect on their own spiritual development.

The CRONICAS Centre of Excellence in Chronic Diseases, based at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, was created in 2009 with support from the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). The vision of CRONICAS is to build a globally recognized center of excellence conducting quality and innovative research and generating high-impact evidence for health. The center's identity is embedded in its core values: generosity, innovation, integrity, and quality.

The brief history of hypnosis in America begins with William James's chapter in his Principles of Psychology that got hypnosis off to a good start as a legitimate part of psychology. In the 20th century, before World War II, the idea of performing scientific investigations of hypnosis took place at Harvard University through William McDougall, at the University of Wisconsin and Yale University under Clark Hull, and, in its clinical aspects particularly, through the personal efforts of Milton H. Erickson.

We present a short historical review on the major institutions and figures who contributed to make Paris a renowned centre of physiology and neurology during the XIXth and the first half of the XXth century. We purposely chose to focus on the period 1800-1950, as 1800 corresponds to the actual beginning of neurosciences, and as 1950 marks their exponential rise. Our presentation is divided into four chapters, matching the main disciplines that have progressed and contributed most to the knowledge we have of the brain sciences: anatomy, physiology, neurology, and psychiatry-psychology.

The ethics of research continue to attract considerable debate, particularly when that research is sponsored by partners from the North and carried out in the South. Ethical research should contribute to social value in the country where research is being carried out, but there is significant debate around how this might be achieved and who is responsible.

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker's thought is centred around the idea of the unity of reality. He tries to express this idea in his interpretation of quantum physics as well as on the background of neoplatonic thinking. Even his interest in Indian philosophies is based on this concept that would overcome the dualism of mind and matter as well as the dualism of subject and object.