Demographic, pathologic, and toxicological profiles of 127 decedents testing positive for ephedrine alkaloids

The relative toxicity of ephedra-containing dietary supplements is disputed. In order to ascertain the magnitude of the problem, we reviewed all autopsies in our Medical Examiner's jurisdiction, from 1994 to 2001, where ephedrine or any its isomers (E+) were detected. Toxicology testing results were tabulated and anatomic findings in E+ cases were compared to those in a control group of drug-free trauma victims. Of 127 E+ cases identified, 33 were due to trauma. Decedents were mostly male (80.3%) and mostly Caucasian (59%). Blood ephedrine concentrations were <0.49 mg/l in 50% of the cases, range 0.07-11.73 mg/l in trauma victims, and 0.02-12.35 mg/l in non-trauma cases. Norephedrine (NE) was present in the blood of 22.8% (mean of 1.81 mg/l, S.D.=3.14 mg/l) and in the urine of 36.2% (mean of 15.6 mg/l, S.D.=21.50mg/l). Pseudoephedrine (PE) was present in the blood of 6.3% (8/127). More than 88% (113/127) of the decedents also tested positive for other drugs, the most common being cocaine (or its metabolites) and morphine. The most frequent pathologic diagnoses were hepatic steatosis (27/127) and nephrosclerosis (22/127). Left ventricular hypertrophy was common, and coronary artery disease (CAD) detected in nearly one third of the cases. The most common findings in E+ deaths are those generally associated with chronic stimulant abuse, and abuse of other drugs was common in those with CAD. There were no cases of heat stroke or rhabdomyolysis. In most cases, norephedrine was not detected, suggesting it plays no role in ephedrine toxicity.     

Political Ethnography: What Immersion Contributes to the Study of Power

Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union. With Appendices by Herbert Block and W. Seth Carus. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983. 241 pp.

Bogdan Mieczkowski and Oleg Zinam, Bureaucracy, Technology, Ideology: Quality of Life East and West. Charleston, Ill.: Association for the Study of the Nationalities in USSR and Eastern Europe, 1984. xiii, 463 pp. Paper.

Theodore Freedman, ed., Anti‐Semitism in the Soviet Union: Its Roots and Consequences. New York, N. Y.: Freedom Library Press of the Anti‐Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith, 1984. 664 pp.

Alexander Orbach, New Voices of Soviet Jewry : A Study of the Russian‐Jewish Press of Odessa in the Era of the Great Reforms, 1860–1871. Leiden: Brill, 1980. xiv, 289 pp.

Victor Zaslavsky and Robert J. Brym, Soviet‐Jewish Emigration and Soviet Nationality Policy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983. vii, 185 pp.

Jakub Blum and Vera Rich, The Image of the Jew in Soviet Literature: The Post‐Stalin Period. New York: Ktav [for the Institute of Jewish Affairs, London], 1985. 276 pp.

Jack Miller, ed., Jews in Soviet Culture. Transaction Books: New Brunswick and London, 1984. 325 pp.

Rex Wade, Red Guards and Workers’ Militias in the Russian Revolution, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984. 391 pp.

Michael Bruchis, Nations — Nationalities — People: A Study of the Nationalities Policy of the Communist Party in Soviet Moldavia. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, New York, 1984. 230 pp. Distributed by Columbia University Press.

Ukrainskyi istoryk [The Ukrainian Historian]. U piatdysiatelittia smerty M. Hrushevskoho [On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Death of M. Hrushevskyi]. New York, Toronto, and Munich: Ukrainian Historical Association. 1978. Vol. XXI, nos. 1–4 (81–84). 316 pp.

Teresa Rakowska‐Harmstone, ed., Communism in Eastern Europe, Second edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. viii, 391 pp. Paper.

Michael J. Sodaro and Sharon L. Wolchik, eds., Foreign and Domestic Policy in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983.265 pp.

John F. N. Bradley, Czech Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century, Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1984. 200 pp. Distributed by Columbia University Press.

Bogdan Szajkowski, Next to God ... Poland: Politics and Religion in Contemporary Poland. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983. x, 264 pp.

Alex N. Dragnich. The First Yugoslavia: Search for a Viable Political System. Stanford: California: Hoover Institution Press, 1983, 182 pp.

Theodore George Tatsios, The Megali Idea and the Greek‐Turkish War of 1897: The Impact of the Cretan Problem on Greek Irredentism, 1866–1897. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1984. ix, 302 pp. Distributed by Columbia University Press.

Justin McCarthy. Muslims and Minorities. The Population of Ottoman Anatolia at the End of the Empire. New York and London: New York University Press, 1983. $35.00.

M. Mark Stolarik, Growing Up On The South Side: Three Generations of Slovaks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 1880–1976 Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1985, 129 pp.     

INTERNAL RESETTLEMENT IN LAOS

In this response to an article by Holly High, “The Implications of Aspirations: Reconsidering Resettlement in Laos,” published in Critical Asian Studies in December 2008 (vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 531–50), the authors do not dispute the notion that many people in Laos have aspirations for modernity and development. However, they are at odds with High in two key ways. First, she only presents a selective reading of authors who have written critically about highland to lowland resettlement in Laos, thus misrepresenting some of their ideas. Second, the empirical evidence High provides is insufficient or inappropriate to support her argument that people who are being resettled from the uplands to the lowlands in Laos are supportive of these state-sponsored schemes because they fit with their aspirations for modernity. The authors are concerned that High's article may inadvertently serve to justify the views of those who advocate and fund centrally planned resettlement of ethnic minorities in Laos and who believe that non-participatory and top-down resettlement is acceptable if increased funding is available and better planning is conducted, even when those targeted for relocation would rather not move.     

K2 Toxicity: Fatal Case of Psychiatric Complications Following AM2201 Exposure

Limited forensic and clinical experience and the lack of confirmatory testing strategies for synthetic cannabinoids (SC) prevent adequate characterization of SC toxicity and the potential impact on public health. A statewide surveillance system identified a fatality involving a 23‐year‐old man found with a large stab wound to the neck following use of a SC product suspected of containing AM2201. Analytical testing for common SCs, SC metabolites, routine drugs of abuse, and over‐the‐counter medications was performed on heart blood obtained at autopsy. Additionally, assays were performed on the SC raw material and drug paraphernalia found on the decedent. High concentrations of AM2201 were detected in all samples. AM2201 metabolites were detected in postmortem blood. Other than a trace amount of JWH‐073 found in smoke residue, no other substances were detected. Psychiatric complications including self‐induced, lethal trauma can occur after the use of SC products.     

Remarks on the theoretical significance of Marx's Grundrisse

In recent years much play has been made with the significance of the Grundrisse for the reinterpretation of Marx's thought. The text has been represented as a vindication of those who have treated Marx's work as a relatively direct development from the early writings of 1843 and 1844, and a rebuttal of those who have sought to establish that Marx's later works constitute a radically distinct project from that of his youth, the two projects being separated by an epistemological break. This paper examines the theoretical structure of the Grundrisse, the kind of concepts that it contains and the objects constructed by these concepts. I argue that the result of such an examination demonstrates that the latter of the two positions outlined here is the correct one. The Grundrisse is shown to be an incoherent, transitional work, and its ambiguities an index of the presence of a number of theoretical obstacles.     

On the production and structuring of scientific knowledges

Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has contained within it a series of discrepancies, which combine to render impossible the actual theorising of changes in scientific knowledges, and their foundation in a break with a previous theoretical ideology. This paper is a close textual investigation which shows the precise nature of these discrepancies, how they mutually support each other in a discourse founded in a positivist epistemology continually undermined by attempts to theorise discontinuity in knowledges. The outcome of this is that changes in scientific knowledges appear irrational, for Kuhn presents no means with which such shifts can be thought.     

Economic property and the theorisation of ground rent

The theory of capitalist ground rent that Marx develops in CapitalVol. III is customarily regarded as either unproblematic, or susceptible to technical improvements. This paper argues that there are profound difficulties in Marx's theorization of ground rent and the relation of landed property to capitalist production in agriculture, and draws attention to the concepts of 'property' and 'commodity' that Marx deploys. The persistence of a philosophical anthropology in the later works of Marx emerges clearly in the deficiencies of these concepts when used in the analysis of capitalist agricultural production.