Males' Later-Life Mortality Consequences of Coresidence With Paternal Grandparents: Evidence From Northeast China, 1789-1909.

In this study, we investigate the effect of early-life coresidence with paternal grandparents on male mortality risks in adulthood and older age in northeast China from 1789 to 1909. Despite growing interest in the influence of grandparents on child outcomes, few studies have examined the effect of coresidence with grandparents in early life on mortality in later life. We find that coresidence with paternal grandmothers in childhood is associated with higher mortality risks for males in adulthood. This may reflect the long-term effects of conflicts between mothers and their mothers-in-law. These results suggest that in extended families, patterns of coresidence in childhood may have long-term consequences for mortality, above and beyond the effects of common environmental and genetic factors, even when effects on childhood mortality are not readily apparent.

Beyond water, beyond boundaries: spaces of water management in the Krishna river basin, South India.

As demand and competition for water resources increase, the river basin has become the primary unit for water management and planning. While appealing in principle, practical implementation of river basin management and allocation has often been problematic. This paper examines the case of the Krishna basin in South India. It highlights that conflicts over basin water are embedded in a broad reality of planning and development where multiple scales of decisionmaking and non-water issues are at play. While this defines the river basin as a disputed "space of dependence", the river basin has yet to acquire a social reality. It is not yet a "space of engagement" in and for which multiple actors take actions. This explains the endurance of an interstate dispute over the sharing of the Krishna waters and sets limits to what can be achieved through further basin water allocation and adjudication mechanisms ­ tribunals ­ that are too narrowly defined. There is a need to extend the domain of negotiation from that of a single river basin to multiple scales and to non-water sectors. Institutional arrangements for basin management need to internalise the political spaces of the Indian polity: the states and the panchayats. This re-scaling process is more likely to shape the river basin as a space of engagement in which partial agreements can be iteratively renegotiated, and constitute a promising alternative to the current interstate stalemate.

A history of ethics and law in the intensive care unit.

Because they provide potential benefit at great personal and public cost, the intensive care unit (ICU) and the interventions rendered therein have become symbols of both the promise and the limitations of medical technology. At the same time, the ICU has served as an arena in which many of the ethical and legal dilemmas created by that technology have been defined and debated. This article outlines major events in the history of ethics and law in the ICU, covering the evolution of ICUs, ethical principles, informed consent and the law, medical decision-making, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining therapy, legal cases involving life support, advance directives, prognostication, and futility and the allocation of medical resources. Advancement of the ethical principle of respect for patient autonomy in ICUs increasingly is in conflict with physicians' concern about their own prerogatives and with the just distribution of medical resources.

Los «diputados médicos»: clínica y política en la disputa por los recursos públicos en Buenos Aires (1906-1917) / Medicall deputies: clinics and politics in the dispute for public resources in Buenos Aires (1906-1917)

En junio 1906 el diputado conservador y médico Eliseo Cantón presentó en el Parlamento argentino el proyecto de «un gran hospital policlínico», que ocuparía cuatro manzanas, se ubicaría frente a la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Buenos Aires y estaría integrado por 20 institutos con capacidad de 80 camas cada uno. La disputa alrededor de este proyecto faraónico, que se extendió hasta 1917, puso en el centro de la escena a un grupo de «diputados médicos» que utilizaron la tribuna política como espacio para la definición de aspectos centrales del dispositivo hospitalario. La polémica desbordó el Parlamento y alcanzó la esfera pública. La fastuosidad del proyecto en vísperas de los festejos del Centenario o la opulencia de una Buenos Aires que aspiraba a ser París fueron asociadas en el plano simbólico a los progresos de la medicina local y a sus aspiraciones a un lugar en la arena médica internacional. El caso analizado ayuda a comprender las modalidades en que una controversia esencialmente política, que desplegó argumentos tanto económicos, como éticos y cognitivos, intervino en el proceso de construcción del lugar socioprofesional de la práctica médica hospitalaria (AU)

In June, 1906, the conservative deputy and doctor Eliseo Cantón submitted in the Argentinian Parliament the project of a «big polyclinical hospital», which would take up four blocks, would be located in front of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires and would be made up by 20 institutes with a capacity for 80 beds each. The dispute over this huge project, which lasted until 1917, placed in the middle of the scene, a group of “medical deputies” who used the political platform as a space to define the main aspects of the hospital system. The controversy went beyond the Parliament reaching the public sphere. The lavishness of the project on the eve of the Centenary public festivities or the opulence of a Buenos Aires which aspired to be like Paris were related, in a symbolic view, to the progress of local medicine and its aspirations to be included in the international medical arena. The analysed case helps understand how an essentially political controversy —which led to economical, ethical and cognitive discussions— intervened in the process of bulding up a socio-professional space of the hospital medical practice (AU)

Intrafamilial resource competition and mate competition shaped social-group-specific natal dispersal in the 18th and 19th century Krummhörn population.

We describe the natal dispersal patterns of the Krummhörn population as the outcome of intrafamilial competition. Depending on the affiliation with a specific social group and the sex of the individual, this competition is driven by different factors and obeys a different functional logic: The dispersal patterns of the daughters of landless workers allow a mate competition scenario to be detected, whereas the dispersal behavior of the children of farmers (especially of the sons) is driven by a resource competition scenario.

["Medical Deputies": clinics and politics in the dispute for public resources in Buenos Aires (1906-1917)]. / Los <>: clínica y política en la disputa por los recursos públicos en Buenos Aires (1906-1917).

In June 1906, the conservative deputy and doctor Eliseo Cantón submitted in the Argentinian Parliament the project of a <>, which would take up four blocks, would be located in front of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires and would be made up by 20 institutes with a capacity for 80 beds each. The dispute over this huge project, which lasted until 1917, placed in the middle of the scene, a group of "medical deputies" who used the political platform as a space to define the main aspects of the hospital system. The controversy went beyond the Parliament reaching the public sphere. The lavishness of the project on the eve of the Centenary public festivities or the opulence of a Buenos Aires which inspired to be like Paris were related, in a symbolic view, to the progress of local medicine and its aspirations to be included in the international medical arena. The analysed case helps understand how an essentially political controversy - which led to economical, ethical and cognitive discussions - intervened in the process of building up a socio-professional space of the hospital medical practice.

A case of Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus? the BMA Nutrition Committee 1947-1950 and the political disengagement of nutrition science.

During spring 1947, there was a controversy about the consequences for health of food rationing in Britain; among the issues at stake being the accusation that government departments were failing to release relevant data. The British Medical Association (BMA) responded by establishing a Nutrition Committee to investigate the effects of rationing. Leading members of the BMA expected the committee to intervene decisively in the debate, presenting the medical profession as protectors of the people. The committee, however, was dominated by officials and others who were concerned with presenting the government's record in a good light. Furthermore, by the time the committee reported, the food situation had improved. In the event, the BMA's Nutrition Report was deemed a success if it was received quietly by the press. The deliberations of the committee had involved the controlled release of government data to interested parties, and took place during a period of transition in the government's work in nutrition, from comprehensive emergency intervention toward routine peacetime surveillance. By providing a new set of standards that were used for measuring the adequacy of diets as revealed by the annual National Food Survey, the report contributed to the establishment of the postwar modus operandi of nutrition science and the peacetime system for monitoring the health of the nation.