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Radical psychology institutionalized: a history of the Journal Psychologie & Maatschappij [psychology & society].

Starting out as a newsletter for radical psychologists, the Dutch journal Psychologie & Maatschappij (Psychology & Society) moved in the past decade toward the theoretical mainstream within psychology. In this paper, the major changes in the journal are described and analyzed, as well as the features that did not change: an emphasis on theory and history, an interdisciplinary approach, and an emphasis on discussion. The main transformations were from psychology as instrumental toward the goals of the progressive movement in the Netherlands, then to extreme criticism of all scientific and professional psychological activities, and finally to adherence to the most advanced approaches within academic psychology.

Communism↗

Health consequences of postsocialist transition: dietary and lifestyle determinants of plasma lipids in Yakutia.

The rapid social and cultural changes introduced by the collapse of the Soviet Union have resulted in important differences in cardiovascular health for indigenous Siberians. This study investigated diet and lifestyle determinants of plasma lipids in the Yakut, an indigenous Siberian herding population. The study used a cross-sectional design with data on 201 subjects in three urbanized towns and three rural communities in northeastern Siberia. Data on sociodemographic characteristics, dietary intake, and material lifestyle were collected, and lipids were analyzed from venous whole blood. Diet was analyzed using patterns of dietary intake based on principal components analysis of a dietary intake (food frequency) questionnaire. We identified three diet patterns: a traditional subsistence diet, a market foods diet, and a mixed diet. The effect of lifestyle on cardiovascular risk factors was measured using an ethnographically defined lifestyle index, with two orthogonal dimensions: subsistence lifestyle and modern lifestyle. Total cholesterol (TC) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) were significantly higher among those consuming a traditional subsistence diet of meat and dairy products. A modern lifestyle was associated with lower TC and LDL but higher adiposity and higher risk of obesity. LDL and TC were higher in rural communities and lower in urbanized towns. The significantly higher lipid levels associated with a subsistence diet and indirectly with a subsistence lifestyle indicate the emergence of a significant health problem associated with the social and cultural changes occurring in Yakutia today. These findings underscore the need for dietary modification and promotion of physical activity among those most at risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Moreover, these results differ from those commonly seen in "modernizing" populations, in that elements of subsistence lifestyle are associated with an elevated rather than reduced risk of CVD. Such variable responses to lifestyle change emphasize the need to better understand the distinct social and historical events that may influence health changes among populations in transition.

Adiposity↗

[Not Available].

The investigation of Lenin's brain by the German neurobiologist Oskar Vogt from Berlin and his Russian collaborators in Moscow is one of the most exciting and simultaneously oddest chapters in the history of medicine. With the bizarre claim to be able to detect the material substrate of genius it provoked as much unrealistic expectations in the public as strong criticism by the scientific community of brain researchers. The present paper deals in a brief survey with the history of collecting and measuring the brains of famous persons in general and particularly with the historical, political and social circumstances of the performed investigation of Lenin's brain. In this connection the epistemological and technical prerequisites of architectonical brain research and its means of the topographical representation of complex histo-anatomical and physiological differences in the brain cortex are shortly discussed. The opening of Russian archives after the socio-economic turn of the year 1991 brought up new background facts in Lenin's pathobiography; together with the sources from German archives a rather extensive reconstruction of the historical events between Lenin's death in 1924 and the final report of the Moscow Brain Research Institute (Institute Mozga) to the Politburo of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviki) in 1936 is possible now.

Brain↗

Medical ethics committees in Hungary.

Hungarian medical ethics committees were established at the end of the 1950s. They came into being on the Communist Party's initiative. They could hardly be called "interdisciplinary" since their membership was made up of high-ranking physicians and a few head nurses. Their main task was to counter the practice of "tipping." Medical ethics and "tipping" were practically synonymous. These committees did not confront or try to resolve ethical problems concerning such issues as patient rights, informed consent, refusal of treatment, human experimentation, abortion, etc. These committees - whether it is believable or not - belonged to the Physicians Health Workers Trade Union. They were under the guidance and supervision of this social organization. The public was excluded from their meetings, and the committees' duty was to follow the health laws which were supposed to have given excellent ethical guidance. Even in a textbook on medical ethics used at one of the medical universities, written by a psychiatrist, the health laws were presented and explained back and forth. Of the 88 pages only 23 dealt with morals in general and the Hippocratic tradition. The Hungarian National Health Service as well as its medical ethics committees are similar in many respects to the Soviet and Eastern European countries' health care system and ethics committees. Since radical changes have taken place in these so-called "former" communist countries, it can only be hoped that these committees will eventually develop into groups who will deal directly with the moral questions or medicine and health care.

Communism↗

The demographic responses to famine: the case of China 1958-61.

The author uses recently available official data from China to examine the demographic impact of the previously unpublicized famine that occurred during the period 1958-1961, after the Communists came to power. "Over the four years..., China suffered some 25-30 million more deaths and experienced some 30-35 million fewer births than might have been expected under normal conditions."

Asia↗

Cardiovascular risk factors in the former communist countries. Analysis of 40 European MONICA populations.

MONICA Project findings provide a unique opportunity to compare cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factor levels in a large number of populations living in different political systems. 15 European communist populations had significantly higher age-standardized mortality for age groups 35-64 years from all causes, from CVD and stroke than 25 democratic MONICA populations. The prevalence of systolic and diastolic hypertension in males and females, prevalence of smoking in males and prevalence of overweight in females were significantly higher in communist MONICA populations. In these populations there was tendency to lower prevalence of hypercholesterolemia. In simple and multiple regression analysis hypertension and smoking prevalence had the highest relation with CVD mortality in men; hypertension and overweight prevalence had the highest relation with CVD mortality in women. The combination of 'classical' CVD risk factors could explain only part of differences observed. In communist Europe there was high consumption of spirits, low consumption of fruits and extremely low intake of citrus fruits. Instead of exaggerated anti-cholesterol propaganda emphasis should be given to the prevention of antioxidant deficiencies by the increase of fruit and vegetable consumption and to the decrease in salt, spirit and cigarette consumption in former communist countries.

Adult↗

The politics of physiological psychology. Ivan Pavlov's suppressed defense of scientific freedom and its consequences.

This statement, first presented at a plenary session of the Pavlovian Society on 9 October 1992, in Los Angeles, California, attempts to assess the recently released speech delivered by Ivan Pavlov in 1923, but publicly brought to light only in 1991, on the subject of "Communist Dogmatism and the Autonomy of Science." This speech, noteworthy for the courage of the delivery under adverse circumstances no less than the contents of its remarks, compels a new estimate of the place of science in a totalitarian system boasting an ideology of physiological psychology. It also sheds new light on the Russian Nobel laureate and pioneer in the areas of behavior modification induced by the functions of the higher nervous system. These remarks take an in-depth view of American radical and Marxian appraisals--how they followed the Soviet lead in harnessing Pavlov to the Communist cause, and in attempting to discredit the work of Sigmund Freud. This lethal combination of Communist political needs and ideological proclivities served to rationalize the implementation of slave labor as work therapy during the Stalinist era. The linkage of Pavlov to Makarenko in education and Michurin in biology serves as a case study in the manufacture of tradition. The collapse of the Soviet system permits a recasting of the history of science and Pavlov's place in Russian life. Such new conditions also provide a lesson in the distortive role of ideology in the evolution of modern science.

Communism↗

I.P. Pavlov vs. N.I. Bukharin: the critical mind and the arrogance of power.

In 1923, Pavlov criticized the Marxist theses and the policy of the Soviet regime. In 1924, N.I. Bukharin, a Marxist theoretician and member of the Soviet government, responded to Pavlov's passionate speech with a sarcastic diatribe. I suggest that Pavlov's speech and Bukharin's article represent a conflict between a scientist critical of the Marxist pseudotheory and a journalist's abusive response to the realization that his theory was without much merit.

Communism↗