This Article  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Alfred P. French, MD
Sacramento, Calif

JAMA. 1978;240(22):2431.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Drs King and Young "relied on the rates that anticonvulsant medications were actually prescribed by the physicians who provide medical care in various correctional institutions" and concluded that the incidence of seizure disorders is increased among prisoners. Unfortunately, the authors have failed to consider several of the following possible sources of bias: (1) As a generalization, prisoners are skilled at manipulating others to get what they want. (2) One might anticipate a certain willingness by prisoners to go to some lengths to obtain a sedative, and phenobarbital, commonly used in the treatment of seizure disorders, is a coveted "downer." (3) A false-negative error in the treatment of a seizure disorder would be highly visible to many members of a prison community and possibly highly embarrassing for a prison physician, while a false-positive error would not be noticed in an environment wherein the watchword must be "don't rock . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?