Psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz dies at 92

Dr. Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist at New York Don Quixote-like attacks on the psychiatric profession in 1960 and 1970, led him to a position of prominence and influence with their radical ideas fell into disrepute and disappeared.

Szasz died Sept. 8 at his home in Manlius, New York, his family announced. He suffered a spinal compression fracture resulting from a fall.

He rose to fame with his 1961 book, "The Myth of Mental Illness", which argued that mental illness is not a disease, but simply "life problems." In this and a series of successive volumes, he said not to use drugs to treat mental disorders with insanity as a defense against criminal acts and people committed to mental institutions against their will. He called the act "a crime against humanity."

In 1992, Szasz - pronounced "ZOZ" - said with courage Syracuse Post-Standard: "I am probably the only psychiatrist in the world who do not have clean hands I commit to I never gave him electric shocks which have never , ... never gave drugs to a mental patient. "

Perhaps his most controversial act was allied with the Church of Scientology founded the Citizens Commission for Human Rights, a group that is clearly opposed to psychiatry and its methods of treatment. Although he was not a Scientologist Szasz, has lent his collaboration patina of credibility to an organization inspired not by science but by a science fiction writer, according to his critics.

He later distanced himself from the church, but his association with the Commission and other views led New York authorities to block mental health teaching hospital in a state where residents with University New York State format.

The Crusader has emerged at a time when many critics have questioned some of the principles of psychiatry, including activities such as the diagnosis of women as "hysterical" when they refused to submit to the domination of men or request that homosexuality is a mental illness. Some critics also agreed that too "mentally ill" people were locked in an illegal way.

But Szasz, has actually thrown the baby with the bathwater, on the grounds that the majority of psychiatric diagnoses were poorly designed and without scientific basis.

However, their arguments introduced some new ideas, Dr. Robert W. Daly, a psychiatrist at SUNY Upstate Medical Center, Syracuse Post-Standard awarded to "The discussion on the use of coercion and forced treatment and all that, I had a real impact on the discussion of these items within the profession and within the law. has helped increase awareness of what in fact they were doing. "

In a 2006 profile in The New Atlantis, Szasz virtually admitted that there were windmills. "I really do not think I'm doing when I say that I was hoping not to have much impact on psychiatry. Psychiatry've seen all the time as more of the Catholic Church. Voltaire What impact do about it? If you think about what has happened since then, no, no, I did not expect any difference. "

Thomas Stephen Szasz is, April 15, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary. After his family emigrated to the United States in 1938, obtained a degree in physics from the University of Cincinnati in 1941. When he graduated in medicine from the University was the first of its kind in 1944.

He studied psychoanalysis at the University of Chicago and, except for two years in the Naval Reserve, he worked at the University in 1955 before joining what is now the SUNY Upstate. He remained on the faculty until his retirement in 1990, but continued writing and research until his death.

Two years after his retirement, he was sued for negligence by the widow of a man who committed suicide after six months Szasz told him to stop taking lithium for depression. The case was settled out of court, and finally gave up private practice Szasz.

More than half a century, Szasz has published 35 books and hundreds of articles.

His wife, Rosine, who died in 1971. He left two daughters, Dr. Szasz Margot Peters and Suzy Szasz Palmer, a brother, George, and grandson.

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Pioneer of Artificial Heart David Lederman Dies at 68

David M. Lederman, who led the team of scientists who developed the first artificial heart implanted at all - which, although they have had limited success, we must advance in the treatment of advanced heart disease - died on August 15 home in Marblehead, Mass.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, his son, Jonathan said.

Dr. Lederman, an aerospace engineer, founded a small company called Abiomed in 1981, hoping to prolong life by providing a greater degree of independence for the severely weakened heart patients waiting for a transplant.

Working with Dr. Robert Kung, chief scientific officer of the company, brought together a research team (including aerospace engineers by the way) who designed the AbioCor.

A grapefruit-sized device that replaces a sick heart, the AbioCor has no wires or pipes that pass through the skin. When implemented, a coil transfers power from the charging device and the skin from the outside. An internal battery and a controller that controls and regulates the heart implanted in the abdomen.

The AbioCor is very different from the first Total Artificial Heart, the Jarvik-7, designed by Dr. Robert Jarvik, who asked the tubes that carry the patient to a small compressor fridge which was implanted in Dr. Barney Clark in "University of Utah, December 1982.

Even this is the distinction between the AbioCor artificial heart and other plant, SynCardia, which is also powered by an air compressor outside the body.

Only 14 of the devices were implanted AbioCor, during clinical trials, 2001-2004, the longest surviving recipient 512 days. In comparison, the SynCardia with its out-of-body halter, has been implemented in more than 1,000 patients, with the longest surviving 1374 days.

One problem with the AbioCor is too big to be in many patients. Abiomed AbioCor II is developed, which is a third smaller than the original and designed to last up to five years.

However, the original device had a significant impact on cardiology. "Despite the fact that the AbioCor has not been used in a large number of patients, has paved the way for further development of fully autonomous artificial heart technology," Dr. Kathy point, a spokeswoman for the American Association Heart and director of cardiology services for women in St John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, said.

Dr. A. Lame Gray Jr., professor of cardiac surgery at the University of Louisville with Dr. Robert D. Dowling made the first AbioCor system in 2002, agreed. "The importance is that it was totally implantable and gave people a better quality of life," he said, adding that among the most recent is a left ventricular device, "which is widely used today as bridge to transplant. "

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the national transplant system, 3254 patients waiting for a new heart, and that the year 1045 was donated hearts. It was not possible to determine how many of those patients waiting for a transplant are compatible with devices that have been developed from the AbioCor.

When it was invented by Dr. Gray said: "Never's been a more sophisticated device implanted in a human being."

Dr. Lederman had a great vision for your business. In a 2003 interview with CBS News, said: "There is no reason that a person has died when his heart stops If the brain of the person and the body is in good shape, because people has died.? "

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Editor on the Pentagon Papers Gerald Gold Dies at 85

Gerald Gold, editor of The New York Times who helped oversee the Herculean task to sift through a secret of 2.5 million words the story of Defense Department of the Vietnam War, later known as the Pentagon Papers to produce papers showing that officials had lied to the war, died Wednesday at a hospice in Melville, New York 85 years.

The cause was heart failure, his daughter Madeleine said Golden.

After Neil Sheehan, a Times reporter, received 47 volumes of top secret documents, the filling of 7,000 pages, he and Mr. Gold was found in a hotel suite in Washington to evaluate the material. Once it had given its usefulness, he traveled to New York publishers for the best short, buy a house for documents to keep in sight.

The Times has published the first of a series of articles in newspapers on 13 June 1971. The documents showed, among other things, that the Johnson administration "systematically lied" to Congress and the public on "a subject of transcendent national interest and importance," he told The Times in 1996.

After two articles appeared, the government has won a court order that restricts the subsequent publication.

On June 30, the Supreme Court decided in favor of The Times, voting 6-3 to allow the resumption of the publication.

The Pentagon Papers episode was hailed as a great victory for press freedom and has raised skepticism that the new government. But before all that, someone had to do hours of hard work and careful preparation of articles and excerpts of documents for publication. Mr. Gold, assistant editor of Foreign Affairs, shoulders much of the burden.

He has organized a suite at the Hilton New York on Avenue of the Americas, where, Mr. Sheehan and Mr. Allan Siegal, another deputy editor of Foreign Affairs, started the project. Over time, their makeshift office grew to nine rooms.

There were enough computers and copiers - just piles of paper.

Mr. Gold and Mr. Siegal, who later became assistant executive director of The Times, and decide which best reflects the values ??underestimated the fact-rich documents.

They also use titles to address the reader to extract a specific document, which Mr. Gold is described as a kind of footnote.

In an interview Thursday, Mr. Sheehan said Gold rejected the idea of ??a manager to do the job in a motel in New Rochelle, New York, saying. "We were crazy top" Mr. Sheehan said their gratitude to Mr. Golden for his reassuring presence as Mr. Sheehan stayed three days and two nights to finish the second and third series. "Stay with it, man, they do," said Gold is saying.

Gerald Gold, who lived in Beechhurst, Queens, was born January 11, 1927, in Brooklyn. After serving in the Navy in World War II, he earned a degree in English Literature at the University of Long Island.

He earned a master's degree in English literature from New York and earned a doctorate in Elizabethan literature at Columbia, but went unfinished work in his thesis Times.

In the paper, which began as an editor on the desktop of the city before joining the foreign desk. He later worked as art editor, specializing in classical music.

Besides his daughter, Mr. Gold is survived by his wife of 62 years, the former Gloria Daniels, a former school teacher in New York, daughter of another, Gueldenzopf Audrey, a son, Martin, and four grandchildren.

Mr. Gold wrote in Times Talk, an internal company publication, during the 10 weeks that was closed with the Pentagon Papers, he returned home only five times. A neighbor asked Ms. Golden if they had divorced, explaining that "'s so seldom at home, and every time you remove a suitcase."

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Norman Sas Dies at 87

Norman Sas, a toy manufacturer that has become a metal plate that vibrates in an exciting board game called football and sometimes infuriating power, winning the devotion of children from 1940 until the end of action came to the field simulated video screens in 1980, died June 28 at his home in Vero Beach, Florida at the age of 87 years.

His daughter Wendy Jones has confirmed his death.

In 1930, an employee in a New York metal products company led by the father of Mr. Sas has developed a device that figures pushed through a metal surface by means of vibrations created by a small motor.

The company, Tudor Metal Products, was first used technology for cars and racing games. However, when Norman Sas bought the company with a partner shortly after the Second World War, saw the potential application of technology in football, which had become increasingly popular and began to be televised in the region of New York.

"I was looking for something to be addressed, because the company was in trouble," said Earl Shores, a writer who has met several times with Mr. Sas for a book that he and a colleague claims, Roddy Garcia, is writing the power of football, entitled "What is called unforgettable."

Mr. Shores said Mr. Sas may also have been designed for football because of the frustrations of technology: the vibrations tend to drive the figures unpredictable, often in groups that resembled a crash at the end of a string football game. The lack of predictability and attempt to mitigate came to define the electric football as much as his little balls of felt, which is easily lost among the sofa cushions.

"I'm sure there were many young boys thrown against the wall," said Sas Irene, wife of Mr. Sas, in an interview Tuesday. "The statue had their own lives. Just as they had run faster or run was all the techniques of the player. It was just something that lights up and vibrates. I 'was something you did men with their children. "

Early versions of the game, including figures that seemed little real players. But in 1960, Mr. Sas has begun working with an industrial designer, Lee Payne, who had played one year of college football at the University of Georgia. Payne helped to improve the aesthetics of the game, making more realistic figures, the colors of the specific team, giving players a degree of directional control and the addition of a representation of a stage cardboard, which is mounted along the frame.

The National Football League has begun to license the product in 1967 and became a fixture in the toys in the Sears catalog.

The company, which Mr. Sas renamed Tudor Games, flourished in 1980, until the introduction of new gaming handheld, and then the computer and video games, did seem strange for a new generation of children.

"Norman has predicted that," said Ms. Sas. "He said, 'Hey, this is now we are making a killing on it, and will end as soon as the electronic versions come out.'".

Mr. Sas sold the company to Miggle Toys in 1988. Miggle was purchased this year by the classics of the stadium, a Seattle company, which makes the games licensed by Major League Baseball, but recently was renamed Tudor Games.

Anders Norman Sas was born in Manhattan, 29 March 1925. He attended the Bronx School of Science and has a degree in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as part of a program of the Navy.

Later he became a full time officer and served in the Navy before returning to MIT and earned a masters in business administration. He became president of Tudor metal products in 1948. For over 30 years has lived in Alpine, New Jersey, where he served on the board.

Besides his wife and daughter, Mrs. Jones, will survive another daughter, Martha O'Connor, and seven grandchildren. A son, Wayne, who died in 1994, and a son died shortly after birth.

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Jim Drake dies at 83

Aeronautical engineer Jim Drake had already solved the "riddle" coupling of a surfboard with a sail, when a young man who stopped to admire the "Lower the Board" in late 1960 suggested that he called "perfect name": windsurfing.

In his garage in Santa Monica, Drake had designed and built a prototype designed to operate in a new way - on foot - and guided by a set of hand wing of the invention.

He first tried the card in 1967 out of Marina del Rey and the "wind-propelled apparatus" was patented three years later.

The vessel has caused the sport to take off in Europe, and by early 1980 some 200,000 had been sold windsurfing enthusiasts.

Windsurfing when he debuted as an Olympic sport in 1984, Drake looked at his first competition outside of Long Beach.

There was also a measure of the influence of the amorphous tip: "Windsurfing" essentially has become the generic name for the sport.

Drake, who also made a significant contribution to the aerospace industry, died June 19 at his home in Pfafftown, North Carolina, of complications from pulmonary disease, said her daughter Hollis Fleming. He was 83 years.

While working for the Defense Department in the East in 1962, thought of the "standing on a surfboard in the middle of the Potomac and the power of the kite flying with a laptop," said Drake in 1981 The Times.

Back in California, the sailor has suggested the idea to combine sailing and surfing in his intimate friend Hoyle Schweitzer, a surfer who offered to pay for the development board, Drake told the Times in 1983.

I had to understand "how to make everything work in a simple, direct and emotionally satisfying settings. The key was how to handle," said Drake in 1983. "I knew I wanted to stay and did not want a rod thyme, then there was the problem of thinking in a control mechanism."

Plates small sailboats were popular at that time, but had to be used during the session. Drake devised a way of uniting sailing on board via a universal joint, allowing the screw to navigate a full circle or flat - and allowed the pilot to stand. Has also been updated "an old idea" that had worked on many boats, appliances laptop quadrilateral that has allowed the wing to tilt and rotate in any direction.

From the beginning, Schweitzer was more interested in the transformation of a business card, Drake recalled later. Together they form Windsurfer International to manufacture the panels, and both their names appear on the patent.

At best, Drake said he considered himself "re-inventor" of windsurfing, two men who could claim for himself the invention. "My contribution was to be really effective and functional," said Windsurf magazine in 1996.

When the Association of Professional surfing. Schweitzer and Drake presented his Hall of Fame in 2002, was acclaimed as an aid "to mold windsurfing into its present form." The Drake Group called the "father of surfing", Schweitzer and co-developer "who brought surfing to the masses."

However, the couple had separated for a long time. In early 1970, Drake sold his interest in the business of Schweitzer for 36,000 dollars, equivalent to about U.S. $ 175 000 today.

Drake then explained his decision by saying simply "It's just too little my cup of tea."

"It's always been a hobby for him," said his daughter. "He had six mouths to feed young and I honestly never wanted to give the aerospace industry, which he loved."

As an aeronautical engineer and analyst for national security systems, dividing his time between private industry in Southern California and the government work in Washington.

He worked on the project by the X-15 rocket plane and finding the configuration of the successful supersonic strategic bomber B-70, according to the Times in 1983.

He also was involved in the initial plans for the Tomahawk cruise missile, according to the Rand Corporation, where he worked as an aeronautical engineer.

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Margot Feuer dies at 89

After Margot Feuer in 1965 moved to the hills of Malibu, she "launched a community action" by the threat of development in the surrounding Santa Monica Mountains.

The frightening suggestions include building a nuclear plant in a remote ravine and a highway through Malibu Canyon.

"I looked around I in the midst of was," she later said, "I thought, gosh, the idea of ​​a park is a wonderful idea."

Hundreds of her movement to a national park in Los Angeles would join to create, but Feuer and two other activists will be recognized as the "founding mothers" of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, in 1978 the federal approval.

Feuer, the last survivor of the trio of advocates, died June 16 of a stroke in her Los Angeles home overlooking Stone Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains, said her son, Mark. She was 89.

"We are indebted to Margot for her lifelong environmental activism and the role she played in the founding of the nation's largest urban national park," Lorenza Fong, acting superintendent of the recreation area, in a statement to The Times said.

Feuer's sister was in activism Jill Swift, that grassroots awareness building through increases in the Santa Monica Mountains to organize, and Susan Nelson, who works closely with then-Reps. Phillip Burton (D-San Francisco) and Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills).

When the Sierra Club Feuer talks on country meetings, she was asked to join Swift as co-chairman of the group's Santa Monica Mountains Task Force.

Feuer Sierra Club's chief lobbyist for the park and become repeat trips to Washington to testify before Congress, according to the 2006 edition of the "National Parks and the woman's voice: a history"

"A few people like Margot had happened. This is not something that an agency did," said David Brown, the conservation chair of the Santa Monica Mountains Task Force. "She insisted, she had connections that helped his mind."

On the West Side in 1978 a group of park supporters are nervously awaiting the results of a conference vote when a phone rang.

Feuer has to answer, and again to announce that legislation establishing the recreation area has passed. The park has since grown to more than 150,000 hectares to include.

Feuer sees the creation of the park as a great achievement - and a reaffirmation of the democratic process.

"The public is so often instructed not really in" action on a specific goal depends, she said to The Times in 1978. "It confirms the need for really depends. All the people who worked there - for the length of time - did it."

A portion of the quote on a plaque at the recreation area was recently opened visitor center at the historic King. Gillette Ranch, a piece of land in Calabasas that Feuer helped the rescue of the development.

Margot Elizabeth Kramer was born in 1922 and grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, the youngest of two daughters, Eva and Morris Kramer, immigrants from Russia. Her father was farming in South Dakota to fur up.

Grew, she developed an appreciation for nature while walking the roads of Long Island, her son said.

At Wellesley College, she earned a BA degree in music in 1943 before moving to New York to try to make it in the theater.

In 1946, she moved to Los Angeles for her singing career to promote. She soon met and married Stanley Feuer, who was a mechanical engineer.

If a local environmental activist Margot Feuer started as a founder of Stamp Out Smog, by women who formed "self-described amateur in politics, but willing to learn," The Times reported in 1959.

Since the mid-1960s, she was involved with the provincial government on land use planning issues and has served on the South Coast Regional Commission of the California Coastal.

As a founder and leader of the Save Open Space Santa Monica Mountains, Feuer has an important role in helping the Ahmanson Ranch preserve on the eastern edge of Ventura County and neighboring Jordan Ranch, according to. Joanne Jackson, a longtime friend.

Feuer Besides her son, Mark of Boulder, Colo., is survived by two sons, Zachary Feuer of Los Angeles and Dr. Joshua Feuer Santa Barbara, and four grandchildren. Her husband died at 74 in 1989.

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