Quantifying Potential Health Impacts of Cadmium in Cigarettes on Smoker Risk of Lung Cancer: A Portfolio-of-Mechanisms Approach

This article introduces an approach to estimating the uncertain potential effects on lung cancer risk of removing a particular constituent, cadmium (Cd), from cigarette smoke, given the useful but incomplete scientific information available about its modes of action. The approach considers normal cell proliferation; DNA repair inhibition in normal cells affected by initiating events; proliferation, promotion, and progression of initiated cells; and death or sparing of initiated and malignant cells as they are further transformed to become fully tumorigenic. Rather than estimating unmeasured model parameters by curve fitting to epidemiological or animal experimental tumor data, we attempt rough estimates of parameters based on their biological interpretations and comparison to corresponding genetic polymorphism data. The resulting parameter estimates are admittedly uncertain and approximate, but they suggest a portfolio approach to estimating impacts of removing Cd that gives usefully robust conclusions. This approach views Cd as creating a portfolio of uncertain health impacts that can be expressed as biologically independent relative risk factors having clear mechanistic interpretations. Because Cd can act through many distinct biological mechanisms, it appears likely (subjective probability greater than 40%) that removing Cd from cigarette smoke would reduce smoker risks of lung cancer by at least 10%, although it is possible (consistent with what is known) that the true effect could be much larger or smaller. Conservative estimates and assumptions made in this calculation suggest that the true impact could be greater for some smokers. This conclusion appears to be robust to many scientific uncertainties about Cd and smoking effects.     

Attributional Retraining Increases Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy

This study examined whether 60 college students (41 women and 19 men), grouped according to their career locus of control, were differentially affected by a videotaped career intervention. The intervention was an attributional retraining procedure designed to persuade students to attribute low levels of confidence in making career decisions and career-related failures to a lack of effort. Results indicated that the career decision-making self-efficacy (CDMSE) of students who initially exhibited an external career locus of control significantly increased after the attributional retraining procedure (p < .05), whereas the students who initially exhibited an internal career locus of control demonstrated no significant increase in CDMSE after attributional retraining.     

SYSTEMIC TREATMENT OF SUBSTANCE ABUSE: A GRADUATE COURSE

Today, family therapists should have an understanding of the development and maintenance of substance abusing patterns in families. In this paper, the authors describe a graduate course for teaching therapists about the contributions that have been made to the understanding and treatment of substance abuse by family researchers, theorists and clinicians. Course purpose, student selection, instructional methods and course content are delineated.     

A Cognitive Stress Reduction Program for Recently Unemployed Managers

This study examined the effectiveness of a structured cognitive stress reduction program for unemployed managers involved in an outplacement program. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. One group of managers received structured weekly counseling using a cognitively based stress reduction program. They were compared with a control group that received unstructured advice about managing stress as part of a typical outplacement program. The managers who received the cognitive intervention, as compared with managers in the control group, found reemployment significantly sooner and showed reductions in levels of state anxiety and anger that were statistically significant.     

Engagement: Who's Engaging Whom?

A definition of ‘engagement’ in therapy is developed, based upon the proposition “the client engages the therapist”. Engagement is then distinguished from ‘joining’, and a consideration of the relational power between client and therapist, implied by this definition, shows it to be consistent with systemic theory for therapy.     

Youth Culture Religious Movements: Evaluating the Integrative Hypothesis*

This paper assesses the “integrative hypothesis” as an aid to understanding the current emergence of new religious movements appealing mainly to young persons. Four ways in which these movements reintegrate young persons into the social system are identified: adjustive socialization, combination, compensation, and redirection. The limitations of each of these as an explanation for the integrative consequences of youth culture religious movements are discussed. A distinction is made between adaptive movements which actually appear to reassimilate social “dropouts” into conventional instrumental routines, and marginal movements which appear to take converts out of conventional roles and routines, but which also perform latent tension management functions for the social system. The correlated properties of adaptive and marginal movements and the tendency for marginal movements to evolve into adaptive movements are discussed. Finally, the problem of “reductionism” in analyzing religious movements in terms of their latent integrative “functions” is discussed.     

Beyond reductionism,with invidious comparisons between behavioral and paretian sociology

An acceptable reductive analysis does no more nor less than find the constitutive elements of a phenomenon. It should focus on observables, including indirectly given data but not including merely convenient assumptions. It should state propositions which refer to variables which are generalizable. Using these criteria, behaviorism is found to be wanting. In contrast, Pareto's model of five significant residues provides for a constitutive analysis which uses observables and generalizable variables. Revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York, August 1976.