[No Tiltle]

Abstract

exclusive to a particular culture (and therefore bound to it) and has nothing to do with a gap between a ‘¿ scientifically aware medical population' and the ‘¿ myth orientated' natives (as Singh mentions). Unfor tunately, the term continues to be used predominantly for psychiatric phenomena in non-Western cultures, which have been established and measured by using one cultural scale (mainly Western so far), to judge another. In fact, proponents ofthe ‘¿ new cross-cultural psychiatry' (Klienman, 1981; Littlewood, 1990), have argued that culture influences (Western) psychiatric theories no less than the myth-ridden ideas of natives that Singh refers to. This view may be ‘¿ new' to psy chiatry but is certainly well established in the social sciences (Foucault, 1961; Gould, 1981). If we wish to pursue a meaningful inquiry that clarifies therelationshipbetween ‘¿ culture' and ‘¿ psycho pathology', we need to get away from our own self professed pre-Copernican views.It iscertainly noble to convey the benefits of scientific knowledge to society, but that is no excuse for assumptions that breed methodological arrogance, valuejudgements (of ‘¿ true' and ‘¿ false' beliefs), and colonise society with views that are no lessdisorted than those of the ‘¿ natives'.

Oral Communications

“…Kelly The selective ETA receptor antagonist BQ123 (Ihara et al, 1992) has been used to characterise receptors mediating contraction to endothelin-l (ET-1) in rat aorta (RA) and ET-1 mediated responses in the guinea pig airways (Hay, 1992). In order to further characterise endothelin responses in RA and rat trachea (RT) we have used endothelin receptor agonists ET-1, endothelin-2 (ET-2), endothelin-3 (ET-3), sarafotoxin 6b (STX-6b), sarafotoxin-6c (STX-6c) and [Alal3 11,15] endothelin-1 (4alaET-1) and the putative selective ETA receptor antagonists BQ123 and FR139317 (Sogabe et al, 1992).…”