Comment: MCI trials—Categorical “square pegs” in dimensional “round holes”?

Square Pegs and Round Holes

This article explores the relationship between the social construction of risk, uncertainty and evaluation in the field of development cooperation. It explores the assumption that risk and uncertainty are unusually high in development cooperation. Perceptions of risk and uncertainty are cultural constructs. Several authors have identified perceptions of uncertainty as one of the most important ...

Regulating Innovative Medicine: Fitting Square Pegs in round Holes

Increasingly, innovative medical products are creating a quandary for the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) because they often transcend the FDA’s traditional categorical approach to regulating medical products. In a recent attempt to simplify this process, the FDA has proposed a new rule for regulating "combination products." This iBrief discusses the FDA’s current approach and analyzes the...

Medical clergy: square pegs in holy holes?

Square pegs in round holes: information systems, hospitals and the significance of contextual awareness.

The considerable emphasis in the development and implementation of clinical information systems in hospitals internationally seems to have had a limited effect. In particular, the implementation of electronic patient record (EPR) systems has been slower and more difficult than anticipated and with little change in efficiency and security. This paper suggests why this might be the case. Well est...

Square pegs in round holes: the dilemma of conjoined twins and individual rights.

The judgment in the English Court of Appeal case of Re A (Conjoined Twins: Surgical Separation) highlights forcefully the highly individualistic and abstract assumptions that commonly shape the deployment of rights discourse in liberal legal adjudication. Forced by the all-or-nothing nature of this discourse into a dilemma between perceiving of the twins as separate right-bearers or perceiving ...