Child Abuse: Exception to the Anti-Marital Facts Privilege

United States v. Allery, 526 F.2d 1362 (8th Cir. 1975). The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in a case of first impression among the federal courts, considered whether the federally recognized anti-marital facts privilege which bars the adverse testimony of one spouse against the other should be applied where the defendant is charged with a crime against the child of either spouse. By its holding in United States v. Allery, the court broadened the established exception to the anti-marital facts privilege, which federal courts had previously limited to offenses committed against the person or property of the testifying spouse. The appellant had been charged with the rape and incest of his twelve-year-old daughter and was convicted of the lesser charge of attempted rape in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 11531 and § 12-30-01 of the North Dakota Century Code. He appealed his conviction on two grounds, his major contention being that by permitting his wife to testify against him the trial court had violated the common law anti-marital facts privilege, which one spouse could invoke to bar the other spouse’s adverse testimony. The latter was one of three types of rules which the common law applied to the testimony of husband and wife

Privacy: Does Freedom of the Press Allow for Protection of a Rape Victim\u27s Identity

A Comment on Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 95 S.Ct. 1029 (1975). Rape is a crime in which a greater social stigma is often attached to the victim than to the perpetrator. A robbery victim is rarely made to feel that he asked for it, but a rape victim frequently is. In implicit recognition of the chilling effect this situation has on reports and prosecutions of rape offenses, the legislatures of Georgia\u27 and of several other states\u27 have enacted statutes prohibiting media disclosure of a rape victim\u27s name or identity. That the identity of a rape victim is in our society a conventionally designated area of privacy is witnessed by the fact that many newspapers, if not most, voluntarily refrain from divulging this information. In Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn3 the constitutionality of the Georgia statute which made it a misdemeanor to disclose a rape victim\u27s name was successfully challenged by Cox Broadcasting Corporation. In an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States held that for a state to impose criminal or civil sanctions upon the media for the dissemination of truthful information obtained from public records violated the first amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and of press. The Court declined to decide the broader question whether truthful publications may ever be subjected to civil or criminal liability consistently with the first and fourteenth amendments, or … whether the States may ever define and protect an area of privacy free from unwanted publicity. 4 Thus, the decision apparently leaves intact the common law tort of invasion of privacy, but fails to articulate when, if ever, criminal or civil liability may attach for the publication of accurate information which intrudes upon an individual\u27s privacy. This Comment proposes to consider whether it may ever be constitutionally permissible for a state to prohibit the revelation of damaging personal information obtained from public records and whether the holding in Cox necessarily blocks all avenues of judicial relief to a rape victim who has suffered measurable harm as a result of media publicity

Comparison of clinical characteristics and healthcare resource use of pediatric chronic and non-chronic critically ill patients in intensive care units: a retrospective national registry study.

Chronic critically ill patients (CCI) in pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) are at risk of negative health outcomes, and account for a considerable amount of ICU resources. This study aimed to (a) describe the prevalence of CCI children, (b) compare their clinical characteristics and ICU resources use with non-CCI children, and (c) identify associated risk factors of CCI. A retrospective national registry study including 2015-2017 data from the eight Swiss PICUs of five tertiary and three regional hospitals, admitting a broad case-mix of medical and surgical patients, including pre- and full-term infants. CCI patients were identified using an adapted definition: PICU length of stay (LOS) ≥8 days and dependence on ≥1 PICU technology. Out of the 12,375 PICU admissions, 982 (8%) were CCI children and compared to non-CCI children, they were younger (2.8 vs. 6.7 months), had more cardiac conditions (24% vs. 12%), and higher mortality rate (7% vs. 2%) (p < 0.001). Nursing workload was higher in the CCI compared to the non-CCI group (22 [17-27]; 21 [16-26] respectively p < 0.001). Factors associated with CCI were cardiac (aOR = 2.241) and neurological diagnosis (aOR = 2.062), surgery (aORs between 1.662 and 2.391), ventilation support (aOR = 2.278), high mortality risk (aOR = 1.074) and agitation (aOR = 1.867). the results confirm the clinical vulnerability and the complexity of care of CCI children as they were defined in our study. Early identification and adequate staffing is required to provide appropriate and good quality care

Zebrafish studies identify serotonin receptors mediating antiepileptic activity in Dravet syndrome.

Dravet syndrome is a life-threatening early-onset epilepsy not well controlled by antiepileptic drugs. Drugs that modulate serotonin (5-HT) signalling, including clemizole, locaserin, trazodone and fenfluramine, have recently emerged as potential treatment options for Dravet syndrome. To investigate the serotonin receptors that could moderate this antiepileptic activity, we designed and synthesized 28 novel analogues of clemizole, obtained receptor binding affinity profiles, and performed in vivo screening in a scn1lab mutant zebrafish (Danio rerio) model which recapitulates critical clinical features of Dravet syndrome. We discovered three clemizole analogues with 5-HT receptor binding that exert powerful antiepileptic activity. Based on structure-activity relationships and medicinal chemistry-based analysis, we then screened an additional set of known 5-HT receptor specific drug candidates. Integrating our in vitro and in vivo data implicates 5-HT2B receptors as a critical mediator in the mechanism of seizure suppression observed in Dravet syndrome patients treated with 5-HT modulating drugs