The debate surrounding what has been termed in the literature as relocation stress, transplantation shock, transfer trauma, and pure relocation effect has fuelled academic interest and research over the last half century. Coffman’s review of both published and unpublished data on 26 groups of relocated individuals highlights the breadth of equivocal evidence of mortality post-relocation. Although his review found no general relocation effect, research on the effects of relocation are still found to be ambiguous and contradictory, and its causative or other link to physical and mental health and mortality measures are unclear. In the United States there have even been legal moves (i.e. O’Bannon v. Town Court Nursing Center, Inc.) to persuade courts that relocation ‘should be a legally recognized phenomenon invoking judicial protection against transfer.’