|
|
|
|
|
|
|
multinational firm and its information managementclassic problems of decentralized control in the post-Fordist era. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Government: The State versus the Individual |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Another series of actors emerges when we turn to the relationship between the state and the individual. There are a number of moral and political categories here that directly affect the structures of information. The classification of death by suicide is a good example. Early in this century, many doctors complained about the detailed breakdown of this category, which had ''no prophylactic value." Statisticians responded that the details should be recorded "for their sociological interest and for the police," defined by the judiciary not by medicine. This incorporated some moral and political distinctions. Thus: "In the case of collective suicides, you have to count as many suicides as there are people over the age of majority. Minors have to be considered victims of murder. Death by starvation was said to be a "crime" if children suffered it; a ''misfortune" if an adult cause of death (Commission Internationale Nomenclature Internationale des Maladies 1910, 116118). |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Similarly, when criminal abortion was defined in a fairly undifferentiated way as homicide (whereas legal abortion had its own category), it was difficult to obtain statistics about it. Similarly, stillbirth was a political and religious category that varied by nation and by brand of Christianity. Should a fetus that had never breathed (or tried to breathe) be recorded as a death? If so, it would contribute both to infant mortality statistics and have a soul; if not, the miscarriage would simply be recorded under the morbidity tables. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Conflicting Needs of Doctors, Epidemiologists, and Statisticians: Questions of Data Accuracy |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
How accurate does information need to be? The question is not a trivial one as the opportunity and transaction costs involved in collecting information multiply with precision. In the case of the ICD, clinicians saw the work of collecting data as trading off against patient resources, while statisticians wanted as much accurate information as possible. The task of filling in the death certificates ordinarily falls on the doctor who does not necessarily see the value in filling in a complex form to the degree of accuracy required. After all, this patient is dead; is the time not better spent on the living? As we noted in the last chapter, this creates an impossible situation from the point of view of |
|
|
|
|
|