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Post by CCADP on May 17, 2005 14:27:52 GMT -5
This thread originally started under the News section - but it ended up that it sparked an interesting discussion; so I renamed the thread; and am moving it to General Anti DP discussion. - Tracy
Child killer scheduled to die early tomorrow
Published Tuesday, May 17, 2005
BONNE TERRE (AP) - Relatives of a 9-year-old girl killed by Vernon Brown in 1986 have no plans to attend his execution but believe the two-time convicted killer "should pay for the crimes," the child’s aunt said.
Relatives didn’t think watching Janet Perkins’ killer die early tomorrow would bring comfort. The execution was scheduled for 12:01 a.m. at the Eastern Reception Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre and would be the third this year in Missouri.
"I’m not a person that believes in hurting someone, but he should pay for the crimes he did," Janet’s aunt, Dianne Perkins of St. Louis, said last night.
Brown’s attorneys continued to pursue state and federal appeals. Gov. Matt Blunt also was weighing a clemency request. Lawyer Janet Thompson said Brown was "holding together. He’s scared, but he’s holding together."
Brown declined an interview request.
Brown, 51, has been convicted of first-degree murder twice, both times receiving the death penalty, though tomorrow’s execution was set only for the killing of the child. In the other case, Brown stabbed 19-year-old Synetta Ford and strangled her with a curling iron cord on May 7, 1985. Ford’s mother and sister did plan to attend the execution, Department of Corrections spokesman John Fougere said.
On Oct. 24, 1986, Janet was walking home from school when Brown enticed the child into his home. He locked his stepsons in their bedroom and took the girl to the basement. There, he bound her feet and a hand with a wire coat hanger and strangled her with a rope. Her body was found wrapped in trash bags in an alley behind Brown’s house the next day.
Perkins said she wonders to herself, "Did she suffer? Did she cry? Was she crying for help? How were her last moments?"
Perkins said the fourth-grader, her sister Suzanne’s daughter, was fond of animals and jumping rope with her friends. "She would have been 28. He took her away from her family and friends. She never had a chance to really experience life," she said.
Brown’s lawyers said he was sexually and physically abused as a child by his grandfather, George McGuire, now deceased.
"Vernon was chained naked and beaten with a switch, a belt, a buggy whip and a bull whip. This abuse left a trail of welts and bruises. When anyone in the family protested this treatment, George tied Vernon to a bed and severely beat him yet again," the clemency application said.
Attorney General Jay Nixon said Brown must be held responsible for the killings. "Obviously, the juries didn’t think someone other than Vernon Brown should be blamed for these murders, and neither do I," Nixon said.
Brown’s lawyers are arguing against his execution on several additional fronts in state and federal courts. They say Brown suffered a head injury and was on the drug PCP at the time he killed Perkins.
On Friday, a federal judge in St. Louis denied a request for a temporary restraining order to block the execution after lawyer John Simon argued that the lethal injection could subject Brown to excessive pain, citing an April article in the Lancet medical journal. Lawyers for the corrections department argued the study was not based on data from Missouri.
Also, Brown’s lawyers met with Episcopal bishops in Missouri, who wrote a letter dated May 15 against Brown’s execution.
Missouri Bishops Barry Howe and George Smith said Brown was "no innocent" but were troubled in part because Brown will be the third black man executed in Missouri in the past three months.
They said he was raised in poverty, was abused and became addicted to drugs as an adult. They asked their dioceses to pray for those on death row, the crime victims and their families, as well as those in positions of authority. They said since 1958, the Episcopal church has had a gospel-based opposition to the death penalty.
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jj
New Arrival
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Post by jj on May 17, 2005 16:11:54 GMT -5
"Vernon was chained naked and beaten with a switch, a belt, a buggy whip and a bull whip. This abuse left a trail of welts and bruises. When anyone in the family protested this treatment, George tied Vernon to a bed and severely beat him yet again," the clemency application said. There is no excuse for murder. I do have a question though.... were is the outrage when this man, as a child was abused in such a horrible way? Are people so cold hearted that they cannot even begin to understand the anger this man has inside of him? Mitigating circumstances, it doesn't make an excuse for murder, it does help explain why and this man needed counseling, not death. (and yes, a LONG prison term. I do believe in punishment and he deserves to spend a lot of time in prison for this horrible murder.)
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Post by mikebook on May 17, 2005 19:43:14 GMT -5
I agree about theoutrage to this killer when he was a child, but we have a dead nine year old girl. He killed her and has to face the consequences of his actions.
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Post by CCADP on May 17, 2005 19:53:45 GMT -5
This is a true story.
I was reading a book about a young boy who was horribly murdered at the age of three; after his whole short life was one of horrible; unthinkable abuse; physical and sexual; until the day he was murdered by his own parents.
The community was horrified and traumatized; the felt the loss of this baby like their own; everyone being invested in it; and attending the funeral for this tragic child.
When I was thinking this it was not long after hearing tons of horrific abuse stories of DR prisoners - and I am talking HORRIFIC stories - the worse you can imagine. So I wondered; if that three year old had managed to live through that beating; and somehow live through the next several years of abuse as bad as those first three that he did live- and then one day when he's sixteen; having truly never seen anything positive about life; love, family, support (I am sure u are familiar with research explaining just how important the first five years of life are) - and then one day; he strikes back.
This person who a minute ago was a sympathetic victim that ALL of us would embrace; has now become the offender. Maybe he even did something as bad or (worse?) than what was done to him. But NOW that he has done something that he would never had done had his life taken a different path; now he's the bad guy; so evil and so monstrous that he must be killed.
Where was society's outrage every day that a helpless child (as helpless as this poor murdered 9 year old) was screaming to a deaf world for help ?
So; now we just wipe out the problem we never looked after....?
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jj
New Arrival
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Post by jj on May 17, 2005 21:01:58 GMT -5
This is a true story. I was reading a book about a young boy who was horribly murdered at the age of three; after his whole short life was one of horrible; unthinkable abuse; physical and sexual; until the day he was murdered by his own parents. The community was horrified and traumatized; the felt the loss of this baby like their own; everyone being invested in it; and attending the funeral for this tragic child. When I was thinking this it was not long after hearing tons of horrific abuse stories of DR prisoners - and I am talking HORRIFIC stories - the worse you can imagine. So I wondered; if that three year old had managed to live through that beating; and somehow live through the next several years of abuse as bad as those first three that he did live- and then one day when he's sixteen; having truly never seen anything positive about life; love, family, support (I am sure u are familiar with research explaining just how important the first five years of life are) - and then one day; he strikes back. This person who a minute ago was a sympathetic victim that ALL of us would embrace; has now become the offender. Maybe he even did something as bad or (worse?) than what was done to him. But NOW that he has done something that he would never had done had his life taken a different path; now he's the bad guy; so evil and so monstrous that he must be killed. Where was society's outrage every day that a helpless child (as helpless as this poor murdered 9 year old) was screaming to a deaf world for help ? So; now we just wipe out the problem we never looked after....? Wow, very well said. Society today would rather wipe away the problem than deal with it.
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Post by CCADP on May 17, 2005 22:05:50 GMT -5
Here's an example that I just ran in to - "Frye's lawyers said he would not have been sentenced to death had the jury known the full story of his upbringing. When Frye was 4, his alcoholic parents gave him away at a diner. His new father beat him with a bullwhip, leaving such severe scars that police STILL use the pictures at child-abuse seminars. " -regarding executed death row prisoner Ronald Wayne Frye News article this came from : Los Angeles Times 08/31/2001 and "Frye’s lawyer did not investigate and present to the jury evidence of Frye’s horrendous and tragic childhood. Thus, jurors never saw pictures of Frye’s scarred nine-year-old body that were used by local police in trainings on child abuse." -http://www.ncmoratorium.org/ ********************** "Victims of child abuse and neglect are overrepresented among incarcerated juveniles, including those on death row. " From the policy statement of the www.aacap.org/publications/policy/ps42.htmAmerican Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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Post by CCADP on May 17, 2005 22:10:59 GMT -5
"He was the victim of severe child abuse and neglect by his parents which included savage beatings and an attempt to kill him..." Michael Moore; executed in Texas January 9, 2002 www.ccadp.org/michaelmoore.htm************************** "The Cycle of Child Abuse Must be Stopped. Studies have shown that children, who are abused, often grow up to be abusers themselves. Child abuse also leads to crime, drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancies, and chronic health problems. Tragically, the majority of inmates on death row in this country's prison system were abused as children." -From Prevent Child Abuse Illinois www.preventchildabuseillinois.org****************************
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Post by CCADP on May 17, 2005 22:18:07 GMT -5
Inhalants offered Joseph (joseph john cannon, TX death row) some escape from the sexual abuse he had been suffering at the hands of his third stepfather since he was 7 years old. Men in his family sexually assaulted Joseph right up until the time he was arrested for murder at the age of 17... His mother and stepfather would thrash Robert and his 5 siblings with wooden sticks and electric cords. At age 5, he was hit in the head with a brick. At 10, one of his brothers hit him so hard on the head with a baseball bat that the bat broke. Another time, his mother smashed a dinner plate on his head. None of these injuries was ever treated. jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/646.htm
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Post by CCADP on May 17, 2005 22:19:59 GMT -5
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Post by CCADP on May 17, 2005 22:24:53 GMT -5
"Every one of the 14 juveniles they studied on death row had a history of intolerable child abuse. As Lewis writes, "Those we examined were nothing like the cold, calculating thugs we had seen on the silver screen. ... We found ourselves, rather, in the company of a pathetic crew of intellectually limited, dysfunctional, half-mad losers." And those inmates were losers for a reason: "Long before these men wound up on death row, their similarly limited, impulsive parents had raised them in the only fashion they knew. They battered them. They used them sexually. They sold their child bodies to buddies in exchange for drugs or food or money. They neglected them. Sometimes, they even tried to kill them. These brutish parents had set the stage on which our condemned subjects now found themselves playing out the final act. It was a drama generations in the making." Garrett's life fit the pattern, but what made his tale so arresting was a secret that Lewis learned only after Garrett was executed, when she came across an affidavit filed just before a clemency hearing. In this sworn statement, Garrett's cousin Kathalene detailed the abuse that he (and to a lesser extent she) had suffered at the hands of their grandparents. "I will tell you the truth about how Johnny got burned. There was a gas heater in the bathroom and Grandma took Johnny in there and turned the gas heater up until the flames were touching the top. She waited until it got real hot and then she took off his pants and sat him down on the heater. She held him there for what seemed like a long time." And that wasn't all. According to the affidavit, "Grandma" would dress Johnny up like a little girl and then Grandpa would sexually abuse Johnny. After reading this affidavit, Lewis finally understood that the rape and murder of Sister Catherine in 1981 was not an act of random violence. "The act had been programmed years before, in a house on North Hayes Street," she writes. As Lewis has found in her years of interviewing juveniles on death row and their families, "many of the families would rather see their children put to death than reveal what happened behind the closed doors of childhood." And society, Lewis says, colludes with their efforts. "
- Killers' lives of abuse get careful look By ALISON BASS
GUILTY BY REASON OF INSANITY: A Psychiatrist Explores the Minds of Killers. By Dorothy Otnow Lewis. Fawcett Columbine, $25.
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Post by CCADP on May 17, 2005 22:28:13 GMT -5
From : www.vachss.com/av_dispatches/disp_8200_a.htmlChild Abuse: A Ticking Bomb by Andrew Vachss Originally published in Change: A Juvenile Justice Quarterly, Vol. V, No. 3, 1982 # A young man sits on Death Row, awaiting execution for the rape-murder of a 13 year-old girl. A newspaper article, bemoaning the failures of a criminal justice system that seems to permit endless delays of his execution due to legal appeals, mentions in passing that the young man's early life was marked with protracted child abuse that can only be described as torture. # A 19 year-old prostitute who specializes in the "badger game" (in which the victim is lured to a hotel room to be beaten and robbed by her pimp) explains how her stepfather "broke me in" to the racket. When the sexual abuse was discovered, the girl was removed from the home "for her own good" and placed in a state institution. The stepfather entered an outpatient rehabilitation program in the community. # A 15 year-old boy, sentenced as an adult for homicide of a rival gang member, tells the probation officer who must prepare the pre-sentence report how his mother would chain him to his bed when she went out at nights; how his body was permanently scarred with an electric cord to teach him to "obey"; and how his mother eventually killed his younger brother by boiling him to death in a bathtub full of scalding water. He talks about being raised in a series of foster homes and juvenile institutions and then says, "I know I'm a man now. I can make a life, and I can take a life." # And a proud child molester, upon his sentencing for multiple counts of child sexual abuse and using children for sexual performances on videotape (to be marketed and sold), tells the judge the children enjoyed themselves, bitterly stating, "I thought children had rights." When does yesterday's victim become today's predator? How many more years must the juvenile justice profession hang its head in shame when the media loudly announces that some young murderer has been "in the system" for years before his crime? For every youthful killer previously known to juvenile justice, how many murdered children were "previously known to social services?" When will our profession wake up and realize that the media has been reporting on the same child, only at different stages in that child's "development?" The juvenile justice profession has traditionally been reactive in the extreme, responding to public outcry and political expediency with the grace (and some would say the morals) of a dancing cobra. Yet the serious, violent, habitual juvenile offender, the most overt symbol of the profession's abject failure to serve the public, was first dismissed as unworthy of the profession's efforts. By his vicious acts, he waived (no pun intended) his right to be treated as a child, and legislatures have fallen over each other in a headlong rush to provide ways in which this beast may be "treated" in the adult penal system. Let the juvenile justice professionals work with vandals, car thieves, and property offenders. For expertise in violence, we must look to the adult correctional system. But why should we look to adult corrections? Because of its long track record in rehabilitative and humane services? Hardly. The adult correctional system offers one single tangible benefit to the public: for so long as it maintains responsibility for its prisoners, they will not walk among us. Incapacitation, not rehabilitation, is all that is promised. And to a public which sees violent juvenile crime as the major threat to the quality of life, it is enough. Even that "solution," however, is falling far short of the mark. Even with the emphasis on adult incarceration for juvenile offenders, it seems to the public and some professional observers that juvenile and youth crime is on the rise (although the statistical support for this proposition is far short of definitive). Perception of the juvenile justice profession's bankruptcy continues unchecked. What to do? "Delinquency Prevention" Ever alert to political and public relations considerations, the profession has invented the greatest euphemism of all: "delinquency prevention." If we can't treat the violent juvenile offender once he emerges in our midst—his hands stained with blood and his mind closed to liberal platitudes—we have to prevent his birth. Like all euphemistic methods of social improvement, the concept of "delinquency prevention" offers tremendous political utility. Some advantages are: "prevention" takes years and years to measure, so the profession is immune from criticism for some foreseeable period of time; "prevention," as currently conceived, is a shotgun approach aimed at such a broad spectrum of the target population that effective measurement of success is impossible; "prevention" appeals to the investment mentality of the public, allowing the belief that "things will get better" while ignoring the tangible evidence which surrounds us; "prevention" allows a focus further and further away from the brutal reality of juvenile violence, permitting "concerned" workers to concentrate on a younger and younger population. Finally, almost any program, no matter how devoid of merit or divorced from reality, can fit within the cosmic scope of "prevention." Yet, despite the negatives, the concept of prevention is too attractive to completely dismiss. If we focus on where to begin the prevention effort, what population to target, and who will make these decisions, we reach some inescapable conclusions. There is no prevention of delinquency without intervention in early child abuse. And there is no hope for effective intervention without a unified system of service delivery to children that cuts across territorial lines. For those who would argue that all "prevention" efforts are doomed to failure simply because they rely on the ability to predict future behavior (a skill yet to be acquired by criminologists), the response is that we would not intervene (to "prevent delinquency") unless and until there has been an adjudication of abuse or neglect of a particular child.erved.
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Post by CCADP on May 17, 2005 22:28:27 GMT -5
These conclusions are best examined by a look at the public agency production lines which merge, in certain cases, to help produce the violent juvenile. Regardless of jurisdiction, the production systems all have similar names: Department of Social Services, Child Protection Services, Youth and Family Services, Department of Youth Services. The names, like the games, are interchangeable. The child who is brutally abused in his early years is viewed as a quasi-victim by the social services establishment. The term "quasi-victim" attempts to describe the reaction of a system which views abuse as part of a family dynamic, and sees its own role as rehabilitative. The following example will illustrate this point.
Let us say that a social services agency receives a report of child abuse. If that agency decides that the child's parents are, in fact, abusive, but that prognosis for eventual "rehabilitation" will be enhanced if no case is brought in court, it can proceed, totally unchecked, with its self-selected course of treatment. The agency will have decided that the best interests of both the parents and the child will be served by this course of action. However, while treatment, as decided by the agency, may well be in the best interests of the parents, it is not necessarily true that it will also be in the best interests of the child. Yet this agency decision is never subjected to review; the "facts" (as found by the agency during its own in-house "investigation") are never subjected to challenge; and the very course of the treatment itself is self-evaluated by the promoters of that treatment. The child remains unrepresented.
When (not if) this occurs, the message the child receives is crystal-clear: your abusers are correct in their behavior; indeed, the Mighty State has, in effect, placed its seal of approval on their conduct. Any notions the child may have harbored about truth, justice, and equity are torpedoed. And if a child learns very early in life that he or she cannot look to society for protection and justice, what is this child's reaction to that very society's anguished screams when some of its individual members reach an increasingly common status— that of "victim?"
The social services and juvenile justice professions are theoretically fighting the same war. In theory, we are all part of the child protective continuum and all invested with the same philosophy: by protecting the child today we protect society tomorrow. But the two professions, which should be inexorably intertwined to form a protective shield over the physical and emotional lives of our children are, in fact, not even conscious of each other's existence. Instead, we exercise territorial imperatives, blame each other, and achieve nothing.
The merry-go-round of bureaucratic bungling must stop: a tortured infant must not remain in his dangerous environment because of the lack of suitable placement alternatives; the incest victim must be emotionally supported by the same system that now, too often, allows continuing victimization because incarceration of the family breadwinner will "increase the welfare rolls;" kiddie prostitution cannot be viewed as a "victimless crime;" and the merchandising and sale of children for sexual purposes must be treated as the genocidic crime that it is. Nor should we tolerate a juvenile justice profession that begins "prevention" of delinquency with a child who is already a practicing criminal.
The time has come for a continuum of care for all children. The time has come for the child protective professions (by whatever name called) to unite, combine resources, and drop the rhetoric in favor of some results. The combined profession (and despite the social-political philosophies of those involved, such a combination must include law enforcement if any meaningful coalition is to result) would accept responsibility for all children, regardless of status.
The time has come for some realistic performance standards to guide the activities of public agencies. (I am not referring to the laundry lists mass-produced by every so-called "think tank" with sufficient political strength to receive a government grant.) For example, the decision to remove a child from an abusive home or to treat the family as a unit with the child remaining in it should be based on some clear criteria, not on an individual social worker's personal philosophy. Could we not say that those individuals engaged in child abuse because of their situational inability to cope with certain stresses in their life might be good candidates for total-family treatment, while those who abuse children for their own gratification and out of their own needs are not? Isn't a juvenile institution which maltreats its "residents" as guilty of child abuse as any offending parent? And isn't the sexually abusing parent as guilty of endangering society as the individual who builds a bomb and leaves it in an occupied building?
We can continue to ignore the evidence of professional studies, such as the finding recently announced by the National Institute of Mental Health that many individuals diagnosed and treated as schizophrenics developed multiple personalities as a way of distancing themselves from protracted early child abuse. We can ignore the overt linkages between childhood sexual abuse and prostitution. But we cannot ignore our own senses and deny our own experiences. Charles Manson once said, "You can see me in the eyes of your ten year-olds." Is there any question in our minds which section of your youthful population he was targeting with this horribly prophetic observation? Only human beings, among all life forms, torture their own young. And child abusers are the only criminals who produce their own victims.
The concept of "delinquency prevention" need not be a sham. But if the juvenile justice profession continues to operate independently of the rest of the child protective networks that are in place (if not necessarily functioning) in every state in the union, it can be nothing else. The current bankruptcy of the child protective profession presents both adversity and opportunity. Perhaps our desperation will now propel us, for the first time, toward building a system that achieves the perfect duality we all claim to seek: to protect the child, and thus to protect us all.
Juvenile Justice Riddle
What is the difference between a baby elephant and a baby alligator?
A baby elephant depending upon his upbringing, training, and treatment can grow into many different things as an adult: he can be a valued partner in many forms of labor, he can be a circus performer and entertain the public or he can become a predator rogue, living only for the pleasure of crushing human skulls beneath his massive feet.
A baby alligator leaves the egg a deadly killer, existing for no other purpose, and waits only for his full biological growth to attain his maximum potential in this regard. He cannot be trained, and will proceed in a violently linear fashion from birth to death.
Those of us in the juvenile justice profession have always maintained we are working with baby elephants. Increasingly, the public believes we are working with baby alligators. Unless and until we begin to intervene in early child abuse and neglect and make "delinquency prevention" science as opposed to rhetoric the distinctions between baby elephants and baby alligators may soon be immaterial.
© 2000 Andrew Vachss. All rights res
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Post by CCADP on May 17, 2005 22:29:36 GMT -5
"I will tell you the truth about how Johnny got burned. There was a gas heater in the bathroom and Grandma took Johnny in there and turned the gas heater up until the flames were touching the top. She waited until it got real hot and then she took off his pants and sat him down on the heater. She held him there for what seemed like a long time." And that wasn't all. According to the affidavit, "Grandma" would dress Johnny up like a little girl and then Grandpa would sexually abuse Johnny."
- Johnny Garret's sister
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Post by CCADP on May 17, 2005 22:33:42 GMT -5
Many children who commit serious crimes come from severely abusive homes, and those of us in the mental health field know that children who are victims of child abuse or neglect consistently show a high incidence of mental disorders, serious brain injuries, substance abuse and learning disabilities, and this can predispose them to aggressive or violent behavior. The sad thing is that these juveniles rarely receive the help they need that could lead them to mental health treatment facilities instead of death row. We don’t take care of children in our country as we should and then when they get in trouble, we punish them severely.
-Rosalynn Carter Addresses Pro Bono Luncheon of the American Bar Association
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Post by CCADP on May 17, 2005 22:37:31 GMT -5
" Freedman D, Hemenway D. Freedman Investigations, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA. freedman99@earthlink.net A qualitative methodology based on the standards of criminal defense investigation was used to analyze the social and family histories of 16 men sentenced to death in California. Using a multisource cross-validation methodology, we assessed patterns of impairment, injury and deficit at each of four ecological levels: family, individual, community and social institutions. Investigation documented consistent and pervasive patterns of serious impairment, injury and deficit across the cases and levels. The men share numerous risk factors and few resiliency factors associated with violence. We found family violence in all 16 cases, including severe physical and/or sexual abuse in 14 cases; individual impairments in 16, including 14 with post-traumatic stress disorder, 13 with severe depression and 12 with histories of traumatic brain injury; community isolation and violence in 12; and institutional failure in 15, including 13 cases of severe physical and/or sexual abuse while in foster care or under state youth authority jurisdiction. Appropriate interventions might have made a difference in reducing lethal violence and its precursor conditions. PMID: 10798330 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]" -National Library of Medicine www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10798330&dopt=Abstract
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