An undergraduate education in liberal arts is viewed by many, especially in North America, as a desirable preparation for medical school. In countries where such a pre-medicine curriculum is not available, an introduction of 'humanities in medicine' has recently been emphasized. Few, however, has entertained the idea that Medicine already possesses many elements of a liberal arts education. In ...

In this paper, we evaluate the liberal claim that democratic states devote fewer resources to their militaries. Low military spending is thought to avert conflict spirals and release more resources to fund domestic programs. While prominent in many liberal international relations theories, most notably in Immanuel Kant’s, this proposition has received little empirical scrutiny. Using several in...

Epidemiology has features that resemble those of the traditional liberal arts. This makes it fit both for inclusion in an undergraduate curriculum and as an example in medical school of the continuing value of a liberal education. As a "low-technology" science, epidemiology is readily accessible to nonspecialists. Because it is useful for taking a first look at a new problem, it is applicable t...

Much of the literature, regardless of academic discipline, presents the publication of Economic Development in 1958 as analogous to a “big bang” event in the creation of modern Ireland. However, such a “big bang” perspective misrepresents the sophistication of economic debates prior to Whitaker’s report as well as distorting the interpretation of subsequent developments. This paper reappraises ...

Orthopedic trauma patients are routinely transfused for anemia even when asymptomatic at rest, despite there being relatively little scientific evidence as to what level of anemia can be safely tolerated. Some surgeons prefer a more liberal approach, transfusing to keep hemoglobin (Hgb) levels at 7.0 g/dL or higher; others prefer a more conservative approach, allowing Hgb levels to drop below 7...

Although medical humanities courses taught by teachers from nonmedical backgrounds are not unusual now, few studies have compared the outcome of medical humanities courses facilitated by physicians to that by teaching assistants majored in the liberal arts. The objectives of this study were to (1) analyze the satisfaction of medical students with medical humanities problem-based learning (PBL) ...

Objectives The TITRe2 trial is comparing two haemoglobin (Hb) thresholds for RBC transfusion after cardiac surgery, Hb<9.0g/dl (liberal) vs. Hb<7.5g/dl (restrictive). Based on historic data, and with complete adherence, transfusion rates should be 100% in the liberal and 30% in the restrictive group. Convergence of these rates due to non-adherence severely threatens the power of the trial; ther...

It has been argued, based upon national polling and mid-term election results, that Britain’s Liberal Democrats will lose a substantial number of seats at the next general election. However, such argument is in danger of underestimating the unique importance of strong local party organisation and incumbency to the Liberal Democrats as a platform for subsequent general electoral success. This ar...

This paper extends the analysis of liberal principles in social choice recently proposed by Mariotti and Veneziani (2009a) to in…nitely-lived societies. First, some novel characterisations of inegalitarian leximax social welfare relations are derived based on the Individual Bene…t Principle (IBP), which incorporates a liberal, non-interfering view of society. This is surprising because the IBP ...