Therapeutic approaches to disease modifying therapy for multiple sclerosis in adults: an Australian and New Zealand perspective: part 1 historical and established therapies

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a potentially life-changing immune mediated disease of the central nervous system. Until recently, treatment has been largely confined to acute treatment of relapses, symptomatic therapies and rehabilitation. Through persistent efforts of dedicated physicians and scientists around the globe for 160 years, a number of therapies that have an impact on the long term outcome of the disease have emerged over the past 20 years. In this three part series we review the practicalities, benefits and potential hazards of each of the currently available and emerging treatment options for MS. We pay particular attention to ways of abrogating the risks of these therapies and provide advice on the most appropriate indications for using individual therapies. In Part 1 we review the history of the development of MS therapies and its connection with the underlying immunobiology of the disease. The established therapies for MS are reviewed in detail and their current availability and indications in Australia and New Zealand are summarised. We examine the evidence to support their use in the treatment of MS.

Vision and rationalisation : a study of the school psychology profession within the Victorian Government school system

Since its origins in the 19th century, modern schooling has been a continuously contested domain within nation states. Underlying this contestation dynamic lie competing value systems about the social purpose of education; competing values around which are generated different discourses, and which in turn generate inherently contradictory social and organisational structures. As reflected in other areas of society, the 20th century expansion of state-provided schooling has essentially developed around variations of a bureaucratic model Thus, organisational cultures based around bureaucratic values have come to permeate the enterprise of schooling on a world wide scale. Concomitantly, the value for education to be fundamentally associated with human emancipation from psychological, social, political, or economic states of being, persists as a recurring theme in modern schooling. Premised on these understandings, the thesis argues that the development of the practices of school psychology as a profession, like education in general, and special education in particular, has similarly been influenced by tensions between different and competing constellations of values. It is argued that throughout the 20th century, the pervasiveness of formal schooling systems suggest that schooling may be understood as a modernist cultural archetype. As a socially constructed reality, the phenomenon of schooling has become unproblematic the apparent cultural inevitability of formal schooling in the modern era can also be understood as a premise of a systemised way of looking at the world; that of bureaucratic consciousness. Dialectically, bureaucratic consciousness persists in influencing every manifestation of schooling; structurally through its organisational forms, and epistemologically through the institutionalization of teaching and learning. A particular illustration of the dialectical relationship between bureaucratic consciousness and the social forms and social practices of schooling is the school psychology profession which has developed as a part of school systems. The thesis argues that the epistemic archeology of psychology as a knowledge discipline can be traced through an earlier European intellectual and cultural tradition, but in the 20th century, has come to develop a symbiotic yet contradictory relationship with compulsory schooling in the modern nation state. The research study employs historical and fieldwork methods in a study of the development of the school psychology services within the Victorian Education Department, particularly between 1947 and 1987. The thesis also draws upon several usually distinct literatures; the philosophical and theoretical discourse of modernity and post modernity, the history and development of modern schooling, the ethnography of schooling, the international comparative literature on the school psychology profession, and the literature on action research in education practice and curriculum development, As a case study of Victorian school psychology, the research eschews a quantitative statistical approach in favour of qualitative investigatory genres, which have in turn been guided by the values of action research in education, as well as those of critical theory. The important focus of the thesis is its investigation of some aspects of the development and transformations within the Victorian state education bureaucracy, and the dialectical relationship that has persisted between the evolution of change processes and the shifting conceptions of school psychology practices in the 20th century. A history of the organisational development of school psychology services in Victoria constitutes an important part of the thesis. This is complemented by specific illustrations of how some school psychologists have been influenced by and have contributed towards paradigm shifts within the profession, shifts relating to how the changing nature of their work practices have come to be understood and valued by teachers and by school administrators. The work of J. R. MacLeod from the 1950s is noted in this regard. Particular attention is also drawn to the dialectical relationship between bureaucratic consciousness and school psychology's professional orientation in the 1980s. As a means of providing field data to explore this relationship, ethnographic case studies with two school communities are included as part of the fieldwork of the thesis, and are based upon the author's own work in the mid 1980s. These case studies provide a basis for conceptually refraining the school psychologist's professional experience within schooling systems, and an opportunity to examine how competing value systems impact upon the work of the school psychologist. The thesis concludes with some observations about bureaucratic transformations within educational organisations, and about the future relationship of the school psychology profession with schooling systems, as framed by the theoretical parameters of the modernist /post modernist debate. The issue of competing value systems within the administration of public education is re-examined as is the value of promoting human empowerment in the ongoing work of the school psychologist. Finally, some scenario building with reference to the future of school psychology in Victoria in is undertaken.

Presbyterian ethos and environment in the novels of John Buchan : a religious and historical study

The aim of this thesis is to establish, from a historical and religious perspective, that the Presbyterian ethos and environment in which John Buchan was reared was the predominating influence in the writing of his novels. Presbyterianism was not the only influence on Buchan that determined the character of his stories. Buchan was by temperament a romantic, and this had considerable influence on his literature. His novels are romances, peopled by romantic figures who pursue romantic adventures. There are the signs of Buchan's romantic nature in the contents of the novels: creative imagination, sensitivity to nature, and expectations of the intrusion of other worlds, with destiny-determining events to follow. But Buchan had also an acquired classicism. His studies at Glasgow and Oxford Universities brought him in touch with a whole range of the master-pieces of classical literature, especially the works of Plato and Virgil. This discipline gave him clarity and conciseness in style, and balanced the romantic element in him, keeping his work within the bounds of reason. At the heart of Buchan's life and work, however, was his deeply religious nature and this, while influenced by romanticism and classicism, was the dominant force behind his work. Buchan did not accept in its entirety the Presbyterian doctrine conveyed to him by his father and his Church. He was moderate by temperament and shrank from excesses in religious matters, and, being a romantic, he shied away from any fixed creeds. He did embrace the fundamentals of Christianity, however, which he learned from his father and his Church, even if he did put aside the Rev. John's orthodox Calvinism. The basic Christianity which underlies all Buchan's novels has the stamp of Presbyterianism upon it, and that stamp is evident in his characters and their adventures. The expression of Christianity which Buchan embraced was the Christian Platonism of seventeenth century theologians, who taught and preached at Cambridge University, They gave prominence to the place of reason and conscience in man's search for God, They believed that reason and conscience were the ‘candle of the Lord’ which was existed every one. It was their conviction that, if that light was followed, it would lead men and women to God. They were against superstition and fanaticism in religion, against all forms of persecution for religious beliefs, and insisted that God could only be known by renouncing evil and setting oneself to live according to God’s will. This teaching Buchan received, but the stamp of his Presbyterianism was not obliterated. The basic doctrines which arose from his father's Presbyterianism and are to be found in Buchan's novels are as follows: a. the fear (or awe) of God, as life's basic religious attitude; b. the Providence of God as the ultimate determinative force in the outcome of events; c. the reality, malignity and universality of evil which must be forcefully and constantly resisted; d. the dignity of human beings in bearing God's image; e. the conviction that life has meaning and that its ultimate goal, therefore, is a spiritual one - as opposed to the accumulation of wealth, the achieving of recognition from society, and the gaining access to power; f. the necessity of challenge in life for growth and fulfilment, and the importance of fortitude in successfully meeting such challenge; g. the belief that, in the purpose of God, the weak confound the strong. These emphases of Presbyterianism are to be found in all Buchan's novels, to a greater or lesser degree. All his characters are serious people, with a moral purpose in life. Like the pilgrims of the Bible, they seek a country: true fulfilment. This quest becomes more spiritual and more dearly defined as Buchan grows in age and maturity. The progress is to be traced from his early novels, where fulfilment is sought in honour and self-approving competence, as advocated by classicism; to the novels of his middle years, where fulfilment is sought in adventures suggested by romanticism. In his final novel Sick Heart River. Buchan appears to have moved somewhat from his earlier classicism and his romanticism as the road to fulfilment. In this novel, Buchan expresses what, for him, is ultimate fulfilment: a conversion to God that produces self-sacrificing love for others. The terminally-ill Edward Leithen sets out on a romantic adventure that will enable him to die with dignity, and so, in classic style, justify his existence. He has a belief in God, but in a God who is almighty, distant and largely irrelevant to Leithen's life. In the frozen North of Canada, where he expects to find his meagre beliefs in God's absolute power confirmed by the icy majesty of mountain and plain, he finds instead God's mercy and it melts his heart. In a Christ-like way, he brings life to others through his death, believing that, through death, he will find life. There is sufficient evidence to give plausibility to the view that Buchan is describing in Leithen his own pilgrimage. If so, it means that Buchan found his way back to the fundamental experience of the Christian life, conversion, so strongly emphasised in his orthodox Presbyterianism home and Church. However, Buchan reaches this conclusion in a Christian Platonist way, through the natural world, rather than through the more orthodox pathway of Scripture.

Streetwise Asia, a practical guide for the conservation and revitalisation of heritage cities and towns in Asia.

This is a practical and accessible guide for residents and professionals concerned to preserve and revitalise heritage cities in Asia. Heritage cities (many listed by UNESCO) are of course of major interest to one of the world's largest industries, tourism. Using inset colour photographs to complement the text, the realities of destructive and constructive development, repairs, restoration and usage are made clear. Legal, financial, administrative, historical and educational aspects of conservation policies, incentives and implementations are discussed. With outlines for strategy, goals and bibliography.

Back to the future : the war on terror and its impact on civil liberties

This comment looks at the capacity of the Australian Constitution to protect the civil liberties of a small number of citizens and would be citizens whose lives have been forever changed by recent acts of terror and the legislative and executive actions taken by the Commonwealth in response to those terrorist acts. These legal changes have included the creation of specific "terrorism" offences, the legislative proscription of two foreign organisations and, most notably, a significant expansion of ASIO's investigative powers.1
Whilst the Constitution contains a number of provisions and principles protective of civil liberties, in most instances they cannot resist government action expressly aimed at curtailing or infringing individual rights and freedoms. To this end, steps ought to be taken to strengthen existing institutions and mechanisms capable of providing meaningful civil rights scrutiny of government legislation. The comment begins with an examination of the close historical and legal parallels that exist between the present day and the Cold War era and suggests how the High Court might interpret the defence power should a terrorist attack occur on Australian soil. It concludes with a proposed reform. The reform involves vesting Ch III courts with the power to measure Commonwealth laws against the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights when determining a legal controversy. This may operate to secure better legislative outcomes from a civil liberties perspective without compromising the supremacy of Parliament.

The use and misuse of religious language: Zionism and the Palestinians

Every discipline which deals with the land question in Canaan-Palestine- Israel is afflicted by the problem of specialisation. The political scientist and historian usually discuss the issue of land in Israel purely in terms of interethnic and international relations, biblical scholars concentrate on the historical and archaeological question with virtually no reference to ethics, and scholars of human rights usually evade the question of God. What follows is an attempt, through theology and political history, to understand the history of the Israel-Palestine land question in a way which respects the complexity of the question. From a scrutiny of the language used in the Bible to the development of political Zionism from the late 19th century it is possible to see the way in which a secular movement mobilised the figurative language of religion into a literal 'title deed' to the land of Palestine signed by God.

Herbert Spencer in the suburbs? Class, politics, ideology and the Australian petty-bourgeoisie in the Howard years

A dominant trope of media commentary after the 2004 federal election was the rise of blue-collar self-employment and small business and its negative impact on Labor electoral support. In this paper I examine the evidence on the growth of self-employment and small business in Australia since the 1980s and the political consequences of this growth. I consider why the growth of self-employment and small business has been overstated by many observers, and the emergence of a right-wing anti-capitalism in the critique of the dependence of wage-labour. Although the growth of self-employment and small business has been overstated it is a real phenomenon. I extract the rational kernel from the largely ill-informed commentary on this issue and place contemporary debates about self-employment in a historical and global context. I consider why the self-employed and small business were once seen as natural allies of the working-class in a populist coalition but why they are now identified by commentators as hostile to class politics.

Kristeva and an archaeology of sources and translation

Pinder examines Julia Kristeva's essay "Stabat Mater," a focus of psychoanalytical, historical and cultural concepts which require very careful consideration. In order to illustrate the complexity of these linguistic and cultural interrelationships, she looks first at Kristeva's own original essay in French to see what light her method of construction may throw on her particular ideas, then examines some translations of the essay into English to see if there is anything lost by attrition or gained by accretion.

Public relations, sophistry and the rhetoric of democracy

The intention of this paper is to explain the activities of public relations in terms of rhetorical theory and the history of sophistry. There is a burgeoning field of study in the US which is incorporating much cultural and communication theory into both historical and contemporary perspectives on these two ancient arts. Consequently, an examination of the purposive communication activities of public relations offers an opportunity to involve semiotics as a central concept for analysing the creation and maintenance of democratic thought and institutions. This paper highlights Peircean semiotics in this respect and suggests the relevance of Peirce's notion of the 'Pragmatic Maxim' and his use of the concept of 'habit' in terms of how public relations might be said to 'cast' the quality of the democracy which we experience.

New world orders and the dystopian turn : transforming visions of territoriality and belonging in recent Australian children's fiction

Through the 1990s and into the new millennium, Australian children's literature responded to a conservative turn epitomised by the Howard government and to new world order imperatives of democracy, the market economy, globalisation, and the IT revolution. These responses are evidenced in the ways that children's fiction speaks to the problematics of representation and cultural identity and to possible outcomes of devastating historical and recent catastrophes. Consequently, Australian children's fiction in recent years has been marked by a dystopian turn. Through an examination of a selection of Australian children's fiction published between 1995 and 2003, this paper interrogates the ways in which hope and warning are reworked in narratives that address notions of memory and forgetting, place and belonging. We argue that these tales serve cautionary purposes, opening the way for social critique, and that they incorporate utopian traces of a transformed vision for a future Australia. The focus texts for this discussion are: Secrets of Walden Rising (Allan Baillie, 1996), Red Heart (Victor Kelleher, 2001), Deucalian (Brian Caswell, 1995), and Boys of Blood and BOlle (David Metzenthen, 2003).

Memory, photography, and the politics of abuse : the ambiguous nature of photography

Critical commentary on Australian artist Bill Henson’s work including the series Untitled 1994-1995 which represented Australia at the Venice Biennale is frequently framed within the discourse of the ‘white cube’. Its contextualisation in predominantly art historical and formalist perspectives tends to operate as a mechanism that denies affective and embodied dimensions of meaning making. Much the same could be said of the work of Marian Drew who uses road kill in her photographic still life works. However, the ‘distancing’ in these works is also achieved through historical allusion, which at the same time reactivates the fl ow of emotional empathy and desire. In this paper, I ask the question: “What distinguishes the work of these two artists with media images of torture?”

My attempt to address this question will involve a narrative re-reading of selected works of Henson and Drew incorporating notions of affect, identification, memory and desire as processes which operate non-discursively, but which are inseparable from memory and lived experiences. This will permit a double exposure of the work of these artists. Within a psychoanalytical context, my re-reading will be used to extend an understanding of the now familiar press and Internet images of the torture of Iraqi prisoners.

As a metaphor for desire and ideology, photography operates within manifest and latent registers. I will argue that certain forms of photographic practice may be understood in terms of a politics of abuse — instantiating an uneven differentiation of power between actants, the winning (forcefully or otherwise) of consent or complicity, the silencing of refusal of resistance and/or the incriminating of the ‘victim’ — whilst at the same time upholding the claim of verisimilitude and aesthetic or ethical intent. Critical engagement with such practices is crucial to an understanding of the relationship between institutional discourses, trauma and abuse in contemporary society.

Abjection and midwifery : towards a revision of Julia Kristeva's theory of the maternal

This paper will develop a specific reading of Julia Kristeva’s analysis of the Mother in psychoanalytic contexts and artistic production. I want to suggest a particular connection between the Mother and a second figure closely associated with her: the Midwife. Such a move opens up the possibility for a new understanding of Kristeva’s correlation of the Mother with the psychoanalytic concept of “abjection”. I wish to identify the Midwife as the crucial intersection of a masculine and feminine subjectivity. I will undertake this project via a historical study of Midwifery, which will include an exploration of the Midwife’s relationship to masculine ideologies of medical thought, as well as an account of the problematic rise of the “Man-Midwife”. My strategy will be to extend the submerged historical and material content of Kristeva’s own theories, with particular reference to Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection.

Mermaids and sirens as myth fragments in contemporary literature

This thesis examines three works: Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride and Alias Grace, and Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. All three novels feature female characters that contain elements or myth fragments of mermaids and sirens. The thesis asserts that the images of the mermaid and siren have undergone a gradual process of change, from literal mythical figures, to metaphorical images, and then to figures or myth fragments that reference the original mythical figures. The persistence of these female half-human images points to an underlying rationale that is independent of historical and cultural factors. Using feminist psychoanalytic theoretical frameworks, the thesis identifies the existence of the siren/mermaid myth fragments that are used as a means to construct the category of the 'bad' woman. It then identifies the function that these references serve in the narrative and in the broader context of both Victorian and contemporary societies. The thesis postulates the origin of the mermaid and siren myths as stemming from the ambivalent relationship that the male infant forms with the mother as he develops an identity as an individual. Finally, the thesis discusses the manner in which Atwood and Carter build on this foundation to deconstruct the binary oppositions that disadvantage women and to expand the category of female.

Arts curriculum reform : social and cultural reproduction in Victorian schools

This thesis examines the implementation of the government educational policy document The Curriculum and Standards Framework. I examined the historical and political motivation behind the development of this document and how it introduced a pervasive new initiative of outcomes based education and accountability based on economic rationalism. In particular I examined the implications this new approach had for visual arts education and the subsequent changes to the arts curriculum. This has entailed the introduction of the aesthetic appreciation of the arts as an outcome of the CSF: The Arts. I applied Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction in education which draws predominantly on a Weberian view and a theory of practice. Bourdieu discusses differential educational achievement according to cultural capital stating education requires certain forms of cultural capital that are not equally distributed among the classes. This therefore impedes or enhances life chances according to social class i.e. educational qualifications become a commodity in the labour market and other social fields. I examined how aesthetic appreciation of the arts has evolved historically as a form of social distinction. This entails an abstract element of arts discourse, which demands a certain linguistic competence, and familiarisation, which Bourdieu claims, is developed in the family, as 'cultural capital' this is further perpetuated in schools. The likely outcome is that the introduction of aesthetic appreciation in arts education i.e the demand to 'write about' and 'talk about' art, will perpetuate class inequality due to social and cultural difference. The study has been to examine the practices of arts education in four schools and the extent to which aesthetic appreciation was implemented in the visual arts. Data was collected by case study methods of observation, questionnaire and interview and was interpretive in both quantitative and qualitative methods. I analysed the data based on class differentiation by socioeconomic divisions and examined the school ethos and attitude towards the Arts along with differentiation in cultural capital between student population. I also found teacher and student habitus played a vital role in the implementation of the CSF. This is because habitus can cause resistance to change due to the division between the formulation of the curriculum in the bureaucratic order and the practice of teachers in classrooms. My thesis interprets education as a form of social reproduction, perpetuating the existing social order. However, as Bourdieu asserts and I agree education is a form of symbolic power as it conceals its social function under the guise of neutrality and the technical functional premise. Therefore, this thesis aims to make transparent how the education system serves the interests of the dominant group through curriculum policy. Consequently, it becomes clear how education has far reaching social implications where the distinctions of class are perpetuated through cultural reproduction.

As fire burns : functional work and praxis in ontology

The context: the historical and philosophical demise of the Marxist model of praxis as a unity of theory and practice organized by a Party in service of a Cause. The task: to remodel praxis by distinguishing it from functional work. The proving ground: the discourse of ontology. The thesis works through four types of ontology in its attempt to construct different ontological schemas for praxis and functional work. In the first three ontologies, Platonic, Aristotelian and relativist, ontological impasses occur in the accounts of the relation between one and the multiple, and of the existence of order. They prevent the successful construction of a schema for functional work. It is in the set-theory ontology of Alain Badiou that the means arise for the passage through these impasses and the definitive construction of distinct ontological schemas for functional work and praxis. This results in a new concept of praxis and a multiplication of its domains beyond politics to science, art and love