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Aims: Advances in genomics may eventually lead to genetic susceptibility screening of the general population, regardless of a personal or familial history of the disease in question. Yet, little is known about clinicians' attitudes toward such programs. We explored attitudes of family practitioners, medical geneticists and genetic counselors toward genetic screening of the general Ashkenazi-Jewish population for the common founder mutations in BRCA1/2 and LRRK2 genes (which increase the risk of hereditary breast/ovarian cancers and Parkinson's disease, respectively). Methods: Participants (n = 204) completed a specially designed questionnaire, distributed by e-mail, regular mail or in-person. Results: Slightly more than half (52%) were in favor of BRCA screening, while the vast majority (86%) opposed to LRRK2 screening. About two-thirds (68%) of the respondents supported pre-test genetic counseling. Attitudes were largely independent of professional background and sociodemographic characteristics, though a correlation was found with personal interest in genetic self-testing for the above genes. Adverse psychological impact and discrimination in insurance and employment were the major concerns cited by respondents with regard to screening programs. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that the availability of measures for prevention and/or treatment is a major factor in the attitudes of healthcare providers toward population screening for late-onset conditions.

Since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the USSR has transformed itself from an undeveloped economy into a modern industrial state. Soviet economic growth is evaluated as it appears in the specialized Western literature, in a framework of modern economic growth (MEG) as developed by Kuznets, Gerschenkron, and many others. Modern economic growth is perceived as a general framework within which many variants and diverse paths are accepted and tolerated provided that certain essential features are present. A survey of the USSR's growth record and of the major structural changes in its economy is presented, both in a comparative setting. The elements of the Soviet system, its growth strategy, and the major economic policies that determine its growth patterns are examined. Most of the major decisions on the development strategy and on the nature of the regime were made in 1920s and 1930s, but their impact can be seen in Soviet patterns of behavior today. An explanation for declining Soviet growth rates is offered.

The question of whether to permit private medical services (dubbed SHARAP) in government hospitals is one of the most controversial issues in Israeli health care today, with parallels in European countries. Under the Israeli National Health Insurance Law, all residents that are entitled to free medical care included in a defined \"basket\" of services. This basket excludes the choice of surgeon for hospital services, such as surgical operations. However, people can pay for this choice out-of-pocket or through supplementary insurance. Such surgical procedures can take place in private facilities, often by publicly employed surgeons during their after work hours. Most of the public hospitals in Israel forbid such \"private\" operations on their premises. However, in three Jerusalem public, non-profit hospitals, choice of surgeons is allowed under long-standing SHARAP programs. This study explores the functioning of surgical care in these hospitals, in order to contribute empirically based evidence to the above mentioned debate. The study is based on administrative data of the three hospitals on about 37 000 operations carried out in the year 2001, 16 percent of which were in the SHARAP program. The study analyzes and discusses the implications of SHARAP for equity, efficiency and freedom of choice. It finds, first, that most SHARAP activity is for relatively routine procedures. Second, that despite SHARAP, nearly all the public complex operations are performed by teams that include very senior surgeons. Finally, the study finds that the costs to the majority of patients for most operations are reasonable, especially when covered by supplementary insurance, which most people hold. On the other hand, SHARAP appears to continue to be beyond the reach of most low-income persons. Moreover, by opting for SHARAP, patients do increase the likelihood that a very senior surgeon will be the surgeon-of-record, and this does have implications for health care equity. (JEL classification: I18, I32) Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

In this paper, we have tried to examine the complex dynamics of the therapist's physical chronic illness. Little attention has been paid to physical non-functioning, especially during chronic illness, and its psychotherapeutic corollaries. A crucial theme is the extent of damage to the capacity to contain. It is our claim that, when sufficiently worked through, the 'cracked therapeutic container' may serve as a facilitator of better understanding and enhance empathy. The impact of chronic illness on the therapeutic setting, contract, process and language is discussed as well as some salient features of chronicity.

Over the last two generations, women in Soviet Russia reached the highest labor force participation rate in the world. As everywhere else, the process was accompanied by a sharp rise in their educational attainment and a similarly sharp decline in fertility. On the basis of data about families of Soviet emigrants during the early 1970s, it is shown that Soviet women respond to the same economic variables that create similar trends in market economies. Socialist ideology and Soviet growth strategy help on the one hand to expedite the process, but on the other amplify the contradiction between women's family and labor market roles and result in relatively low wages for women.

This paper attempts to clarify the nature, function and centrality of curiosity in the development of object relations and the consolidation of the self. It demonstrates how the primary relationship between the infant and the caregiver influences the development of curiosity, the ability to use it productively for thinking and for building the internal world. Curiosity, in its schizoparanoid forms, is an attempt at freezing states of primary undifferentiatedness. In its more mature forms, it serves as an integrative agent and signifies both the possibility and the need to know, as w ell as the boundaries of knowledge. It is an essential element in the individual’s psychic fabric and counterbalances splitting and projective identification. Hence, in analysis, it is vital to be constantly attentive to all the diverse expressions of curiosity or, conversely, to its absence. In the transference, the analyst, as well as the analytic setting often become the aims of that curiosity and its containers. By allowing curiosity and surviving it, curiosity is transformed from an expression of destructiveness and disintegrating intrusiveness to a necessary prerequisite for psychological growth, self-discovery and creativity. Several vignettes illustrate the impact of curiosity during therapy.

I. The case for a different industrial structure, 220. — II. Differentials in the industrial structure: 1960, 226. — III. Deviations of the individual socialist countries, 241. — IV. Concluding remarks, 243.