Health in Africa : a medical handbook for European travellers and residents, embracing a study of malarial fever as it is found in British Central Africa

by David Kerr Cross

A critical assessment of the National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Program against the eras which shaped it

This research study offers a critical assessment of NIH's Consensus Development Program (CDP), focusing upon its historical and valuative bases and its institutionalization in response to social and political forces. The analysis encompasses systems-level, as well as interpersonal factors in the adoption of consensus as the mechanism for resolving scientific controversies in clinical practice application. Further, the evolution of the CDP is also considered from an ecological perspective as a reasoned adaptation by NIH to pressures from its supporters and clients for translating biomedical research into medical practice. The assessment examines federal science policy and institutional designs for the inclusion of the public interest and democratic deliberation.^ The study relies on three distinct approaches to social research. Conventional historical methods were utilized in the interpretation of social and political influences across eras on the evolution of the National Institutes of Health and its response to demands for accountability and relevance through its Consensus Development Program. An embedded single-case study was utilized for an empirical examination of the CDP mechanism through five exemplar conferences. Lastly, a sociohistorical approach was taken to the CDP in order to consider its responsiveness to the values of the eras which created and shaped it. An exploration of organizational behavior with considerations for institutional reform as a response to continuing political and social pressure, it is a study of organizational birth, growth, and response to demands from its environment. The study has explanatory import in its attempt to account for the creation, timing, and form of the CDP, relative to political, institutional, and cultural pressures, and predictive import thorough its historical view which provides a basis for informed speculation on the playing out of tensions between extramural and intermural scientists and the current demands for health care reform. ^

The high spontaneous mutation rate: Is it a health risk?*

The human mutation rate for base substitutions is much higher in males than in females and increases with paternal age. This effect is mainly, if not entirely, due to the large number of cell divisions in the male germ line. The mutation-rate increase is considerably greater than expected if the mutation rate were simply proportional to the number of cell divisions. In contrast, those mutations that are small deletions or rearrangements do not show the paternal age effect. The observed increase with the age of the father in the incidence of children with different dominant mutations is variable, presumably the result of different mixtures of base substitutions and deletions. In Drosophila, the rate of mutations causing minor deleterious effects is estimated to be about one new mutation per zygote. Because of a larger number of genes and a much larger amount of DNA, the human rate is presumably higher. Recently, the Drosophila data have been reanalyzed and the mutation-rate estimate questioned, but I believe that the totality of evidence supports the original conclusion. The most reasonable way in which a species can cope with a high mutation rate is by quasi-truncation selection, whereby a number of mutant genes are eliminated by one “genetic death.”

Questions and answers on health insurance for the aged. Medical and related aspects of the new program and how it will operate.

Cover title.

Tobacco, and its effect upon health and character of those who use it /

Mode of access: Internet.

A radical and expeditious cure for a recent catarrhous cough : preceded by some observations on respiration, with occasional and practical remarks on some other diseases of the lungs ; To which is added a chapter on the Vis Vitae, so far as it is concerned in preserving and reinstanting the health of an animal ; Accompanied with some strictures on the treatment of compound fractures /

Mode of access: Internet.

A radical and expeditious cure for a recent catarrhous cough : preceded by some observations on respiration, with occasional and practical remarks on some other diseases of the lungs ; To which is added a chapter on the Vis Vitae, so far as it is concerned in preserving and reinstanting the health of an animal ; Accompanied with some strictures on the treatment of compound fractures /

Mode of access: Internet.

The history of health, and the art of preserving it, or, An account of all that has been recommended by physicians and philosophers ... /

Mode of access: Internet.