Death in the dental chair

Death during dental anesthesia is relatively rare. Review of eight such cases which occurred in our county, including the different anesthetics used, revealed one apparent basic pattern that prevailed...a need for awareness that something might go wrong and recognition of the fact that it was going wrong.     

Risks,predictions and other optical illusions: Rethinking the use of science in social decision-making

This article examines two examples of what has been called mandated science - risk analysis and long-term energy demand forecasting - with a view to disentangling the implicit assumptions underlying their use in public policy debates and in the policy process. In both fields, there has emerged a growing and very similar challenge to traditional views of the role and status of mandated science in informing decision-making. This challenge has led to the reformulation of some of the attributes of the standard view, without however causing changes in the underlying view of the nature of the problem or the role of science in principle. A deeper critique suggests that mandated science is inherently value-laden, producing conclusions that are strongly affected by theoretical presuppositions that in turn reflect underlying values (e.g., about rationality, knowledge or the role of technology). Thus a sharp separation of science and policy is untenable and amounts to a hidden policy bias in favor of the business-as-usual policies supported by conventional science. There is a need for a new concept of science, one that is more integrated into the policy context, more contextual and openly value-laden, less oriented to mastery over natural and social processes, and more accessible to the public at large.     

Black on black crime

He has published extensively on health and social welfare policy issues and is coauthor of Urban America and Public Policiesand The Chronically-Limited Elderly: The Case for a National Policy for In-Home and Community-Based Services.     

Reviews

Leslie Holmes, Post‐Communism: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997, xiv + 384 pp., £14.95.

Stephen White, Richard Rose & Ian McAllister, How Russia Votes. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1997, xx + 332 pp., £14.95.

Matthew Wyman, Public Opinion in Postcommunist Russia. London: Macmillan, 1997, xiv + 269 pp., £15.99.

David Kotz with Fred Weir, Revolution from Above: The Demise of the Soviet System. London: Routledge, 1997, xiv + 302 pp., £16.99.

F. Barry (ed.), Douze Etats indépendants issus de l'ex‐URSS, special issue of Le Courrier des Pays de l'Est. Paris: La Documentation Francaise, March‐April 1995, 225 pp., abstracts in English.

Jeffrey Kopstein, The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany, 1945–1989. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997, xii + 246 pp., $39.95.

David Childs & Richard Popplewell, The Stasi: The East German Intelligence and Security Service. London: Macmillan, 1996, xii + 253 pp., £40.00.

Eric Solsten (ed.), Germany. A Country Study. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1996, xlix + 642 pp.

Valery Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union: The Mind Aflame. London: Sage, 1997, xv + 334 pp., £14.95.

Aleksandar Pavkovi?, The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia. Nationalism in a Multinational State. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, xii + 222 pp., £40.00.

David A. Dyker & Ivan Vejvoda (eds), Yugoslavia and After: A Study in Fragmentation, Despair and Rebirth. London, Longman, 1996, xi + 268 pp.

Tanya Renne, Ana's Land: Sisterhood in Eastern Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997, xi + 240 pp., £13.50.

Carol Skalnik Leff, The Czech and Slovak Republics: Nation versus State. Nations of the Modern World. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997, xvii + 295 pp., $22.95.

Dennis Deletant, Ceausescu and the Securitate: Coercion and Dissent in Romania, 1965–1989. London: Hurst, 1995, xxxii + 403 pp., £39.50 h/b, £16.50 p/b.

Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996, xxvi + 784 pp., £56.00 h/b, £26.00 p/b.

Leokadia Drobizheva, Rose Gottemoeller, Catherine McArdle Kelleher & Lee Walker (eds), Ethnic Conflict in the Post‐Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xv + 365 pp., $69.95.

Edgar O'Ballance, Wars in the Caucasus, 1990–95. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, xxviii + 238 pp., £42.50.

Leokadia Drobizheva, Rose Gottemoeller, Catherine McArdle Kelleher & Lee Walker (eds), Ethnic Conflict in the Post‐Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xvi + 365 pp., $69.95.

Garry Rodan (ed.), Political Oppositions in Industrialising Asia. London: Routledge, 1996.

Diane P. Koenker & Ronald D. Bachman (eds), Revelations from the Russian Archives: Documents in English Translation. Washington. DC: Library of Congress, 1997, xxv + 808 pp., £69.95.

Theresa C. Smith, in collaboration with Thomas A. Oleszczuk. No Asylum. State Psychiatric Repression in the Former USSR. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, xi + 290 pp., £40.00.

Stephen E. Hanson, Time and Revolution. Marxism and the Design of Soviet Institutions. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997, xv + 258 pp., $45.00 h/b, $18.95 p/b.

Dmitry Shlapentokh, The French Revolution in Russian Intellectual Life 1865–1905. Westport, CT, London: Praeger, 1996, viii + 202 pp., £46.50.

N. E. Andreyev, To, chto vspominaetsya. Tallinn: Avenarius, 1996, Vol. 1. 336 pp., Vol. 2, 320 pp.