This is the first reported case in the United States of fatal TAGVHD from RBCs in an immunocompetent patient who received a randomly selected unit of RBCs from a donor who was homozygous for a shared HLA haplotype. The policy of selective irradiation should be reexamined.

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Establishing the study of altruism and social solidarity as a recognized field of specialization within sociology would make a major contribution to the discipline and to society at large. In the broadest sense this field focuses on those aspects of personality, society, and culture that benefit the lives of individuals and ennoble social life. This field would directly address the systematic study of these positive phenomena in interpersonal, intergroup, and international relations. Understanding how social relations of varied types can be made more positive in this manner is a most vital task in this historical era.Sociologists have devoted considerable attention to the study of dysfunctional phenomena, such as criminal behavior, racism, sexism, violent ethnic conflicts, and other forms of oppression that threaten societies and deprive individuals of security or their basic rights. In contrast, the discipline has tended to give more limited attention to positive forms of social behavior and organization, such as the study of altruism. The current Guide to Graduate Departments of Sociology (2006) indicates there is no graduate degree-granting university that lists a special program in the study of altruism.It is the discipline of psychology that established altruism as a scientific field within social psychology. Recent years have seen major contributions to this field by evolutionary biology on the one hand, and religious studies on the other. Contributions by sociologists appear limited to writings by particular individuals. A review of recent research from a sociological perspective is provided by Piliavin and Charng (1990).This article advances a proposal of foundational ideas for sociology to become a full partner with other disciplines in the development of this vital but understudied scientific field. Sociology has a body of theory and research, particularly in the areas of socialization, organizations, stratification, institutions, and culture that can be integrated with the existing state of the field and its greater emphasis on individual and psychological factors and levels of analysis. This article is intended to demonstrate that there is a substantial body of Vincent Jeffries is professor of Sociology at California State University, Northridge. Barry V. Johnston has recently retired from a professorship in sociology at

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This article examines the failed convergence of sociology, social psychology, cultural anthropology, and clinical psychology in Harvard's Department of Social Relations. The analysis shows that from its inception, the department was torn by fundamental contradictions involving membership criteria, stratification, the opposed needs of faculty and students, and the requisites of disciplinary autonomy. These conflicts, which were especially intense with regard to psychology, ultimately made the department ungovernable and led to the restoration of earlier administrative boundaries.Sociology has long been defined in terms of its relationships to other disciplines. Marx drew upon philosophy, economics, and history. Comte dreamed of synthesizing data from all established sciences. Spencer and Durkheim modeled sociology on evolutionary biology. Sorokin envisioned a science that generalized across all social fields. Mills linked the discipline to economics and politics. Berger and Luckmann hearkened back to philosophy. Walter Buckley championed a sociology grounded in cybernetics, while Harrison White and James Coleman incorporated mathematical models. Theorists such as Harold Garfinkel, Norman Denzin, Richard Harvey Brown, and Laurel Richardson have recently oriented the field toward linguistics, hermeneutics, literary criticism, and poetics.Talcott Parsons likewise sought to define sociology in terms of interdisciplinary relations. In the late 1930s, he theorized it as one of several "sciences of action" that was distinguished by a concern with the ultimate ends of action. A decade later, he reconceptualized the field as the unifying center of an interdisciplinary nexus.