Much attention has been focused in recent years on the ethical acceptability of physicians receiving gifts from drug companies. Professional guidelines recognize industry gifts as a conflict of interest and establish thresholds prohibiting the exchange of large gifts while expressly allowing for the exchange of small gifts such as pens, note pads, and coffee. Considerable evidence from the social sciences suggests that gifts of negligible value can influence the behavior of the recipient in ways the recipient does not always realize. (...) Policies and guidelines that rely on arbitrary value limits for gift-giving or receipt should be reevaluated. (shrink)

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the ethical acceptability of physicians receiving gifts from drug companies. Professional guidelines recognize industry gifts as a conflict of interest and establish thresholds prohibiting the exchange of large gifts while expressly allowing for the exchange of small gifts such as pens, note pads, and coffee. Considerable evidence from the social sciences suggests that gifts of negligible value can influence the behavior of the recipient in ways the recipient does not always realize. (...) Policies and guidelines that rely on arbitrary value limits for gift-giving or receipt should be reevaluated. (shrink)

Responding after the Third Crusade to the change in rule from Norman to Hohenstaufen, Sicilian visual culture underwent a significant shift. In Peter of Eboli’s Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis (ca 1196), the Norman king Tancred of Lecce’s powerful chancellor Matthew of Ajello, who opposed the German emperor Henry vi’s claim to the Sicilian throne, is depicted as a bigamist priest. Matthew’s favored foundation, Palermo’s church of SS. Trinità del Cancelliere, included in its interior monumental epigraphy in (...) Arabic. In 1197, the site - by then a Cistercian monastery - was transferred by the emperor to the Order of the House of St Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem, who were closely associated with the Hohenstaufens. Then known as “La Magione”, the site became their base in the former Norman capital. The strategy of displaying Matthew of Ajello, a major figure of the previous regime, as a non-Christian “other” in the Hohenstaufen Liber ad honorem Augusti is elucidated against Henry vi’s preparations to depart for the Holy Land. (shrink)