Judicial expert opinion as a speech genre (based on judicial medical expertise)

The article describes the model of the genre of “judicial expert opinion” and considers a medical expert opinion as its example. A judicial expert opinion is defined as a written text including the research and conclusions on the issues posed to the expert by the person conducting the criminal proceedings, or by the defense or prosecution. This text functions simultaneously in two branches: in jurisprudence, as a document, and in a certain field of science that is related to the field of expert knowledge, in this case in medicine. To build a genre model of the judicial expert opinion, the author uses the speech genre model proposed by T. V. Shmeleva. This model seems most consistent and allows to cover not only linguistic, but also communicative parameters. According to this model, the article describes the compositional and speech features of the reviewed genre, its differential features (the image of the author, addressee, image of the past and the future, dictum content, and the image of the object of examination as an additional parameter), communicative goals and aspects of its linguistic embodiment. The analysis allows to present a judicial expert opinion as an informative reactive speech genre with a perfect perspective of dictum. The linguistic embodiment of this speech genre is partially clichéd, the linguistic means are selected in accordance with the textual traditions of formalizing official documents and expressing professional knowledge. The main features of the language embodiment of the genre are the following: a combination of official, academic and colloquial speech styles; frequent use of medical terminology, abbreviations; zero subject sentences and passive constructions, elliptical sentences.

The Everyday Life of Patients With Tuberculosis in the Concentration Camp of Mittelbau-Dora (1943–1945)

The everyday life of patients with tuberculosis in the main prisoner infirmary of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp is analyzed historically-critically by medical records, documents of the Schutzstaffel (SS) physicians, contemporary medical textbooks and memoirs of former inmates from partly international archives. To compare the medical treatment in the three phases of the concentration camp, the representative months of February 1944, July 1944 and January 1945 were examined. The analysis shows that SS hygienists inspected the place for fear of a collapse of the V-2 rocket production. The primitive medical infrastructure was slowly expanded after its founding in 1943. SS physicians and medics led and supervised the treatment provided by inmates. These were in an ethical dilemma between cooperation with the SS and commitment to the sick prisoners. The Tuberculosis Department was used for isolation. Sputum diagnostics and X-ray equipment were utilized as selection tools. Infectious patients laid usually for weeks in the same bed with two other patients. Significantly more resources were available, however, for non-infectious tuberculosis patients. The therapy was based on the medical expert opinion of the time and was mainly symptomatic such as fever reduction. Rest and vitamins should make prisoners fit for the armament industry. Patients with tuberculosis had a high death rate. The prisoners who survived were discharged, but often did not recover. Several thousand prisoners were selected for transports, which led to special concentration camps for seriously ill prisoners (Lublin-Majdanek, Bergen-Belsen) and the subcamp Boelcke-Kaserne. There, they often died of catastrophic conditions or were killed.

Automated Diagnosis of Hepatitis B Using Multilayer Mamdani Fuzzy Inference System

In this research, a new multilayered mamdani fuzzy inference system (Ml-MFIS) is proposed to diagnose hepatitis B. The proposed automated diagnosis of hepatitis B using multilayer mamdani fuzzy inference system (ADHB-ML-MFIS) expert system can classify the different stages of hepatitis B such as no hepatitis, acute HBV, or chronic HBV. The expert system has two input variables at layer I and seven input variables at layer II. At layer I, input variables are ALT and AST that detect the output condition of the liver to be normal or to have hepatitis or infection and/or other problems. The further input variables at layer II are HBsAg, anti-HBsAg, anti-HBcAg, anti-HBcAg-IgM, HBeAg, anti-HBeAg, and HBV-DNA that determine the output condition of hepatitis such as no hepatitis, acute hepatitis, or chronic hepatitis and other reasons that arise due to enzyme vaccination or due to previous hepatitis infection. This paper presents an analysis of the results accurately using the proposed ADHB-ML-MFIS expert system to model the complex hepatitis B processes with the medical expert opinion that is collected from the Pathology Department of Shalamar Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan. The overall accuracy of the proposed ADHB-ML-MFIS expert system is 92.2%.

Perception of District Judges and Lawyers Towards Medico-legal Reports, Medical Certificates and Medical Expert Opinion

Introduction: The medico legal reports and certificates prepared by doctors can be used as valuable documentary evidence in the court of law. The study was designed with objectives to explore the perception of judges and lawyers about the quality of medico legal reports prepared by the doctors and their competence in providing the expert evidence in the court. Methods: It is a questionnaire based cross sectional study conducted among the district judges and government attorneys of 75 districts of Nepal from March to May 2016. The data obtained was analysed by SPSS version 16.0. Results: Among a total of 78 participants who responded the questionnaire, 40 (51.3%) were district judges and 38 (48.7%) district attorneys. Most of them graded that the reports prepared by the doctors were just average. Among them, 49 (63.6%) strongly agreed and 28 (36.4%) partially agreed that the reports were useful in deciding the cases. A total of 44 (56.4%) respondents strongly agreed and 34 (43.6%) partially agreed that expert opinion of the doctors in the courts were useful to decide the cases. Seventy one (92.2%) of them rated general doctors as moderately competent. Conclusions: The medical reports prepared by the Nepalese doctors were just average as perceived by judges and lawyers and the competency in presenting the evidence in courts was moderate as rated by them.