Ideology, class and the National Health Service

Since the start of the British National Health Service, disputes between the government and the medical profession have become formalized battles with well-recognized rules. But between 1974 and 1976 the consensus underlying the conflict was challenged by the Labour Government's policy on private practice and pay beds. This paper examines the course of the conflict and analyzes the factors underlying the eruption of this issue. It draws attention to the role of the trade-unions in activating the Labour Party's latent ideological commitment on private practice. Although the issue appears to conform to a class-conflict model, this simple symmetry becomes blurred on closer analysis. In conclusion the paper argues that while socio-structural factors extrinsic to the health service explain the appearance of private practice on the political agenda, it is factors endogenous to the NHS which explain the outcome of the dispute. In turn, however, these endogenous factors have little to do with the fact that the NHS is delivering a commodity called "health." Instead, what is important is that the NHS is a complex organization and, as such, depends on the co-operation of a variety of groups--ranging from the medical profession to laundry workers. The analysis, therefore, concludes that the power of the medical profession derives not from its elite status but from its position as an organized group in a complex industry.     

C6-polymorphism of the sixth component of complement: application to paternity cases (author's transl)]

The results of a study of the polymorphism of the sixth component of human complement by means of isoelectric focusing in polyacrylamide gels with subsequent C-dependent lysis in an agarose overlay containing C6 deficient rabbit serum are reported. The allele frequencies obtained (C6A = 0.613, C6B = 0.379, C6R = 0.008) are in good agreement with those previously published. The mode of inheritance in 47 families with 173 offspring as well as 26 mother-child combinations is in agreement with a formal genetical model: "C6A, C6B, C6A1 and C6B1 at an autosomal locus". The inclusion of this system into a blood group expertise in Germany can be recommended.     

The effect of ethanol and antabus-antabus-alcohol-reaction on histamin and mast cell. Contents of the lung (author's transl)]

Alcohol--orally given in concentrations from 1 to 4 g/kg body-weight--leads to a reduction of mast cells in the guinea pig lung. At the same time a minor decrease of histamine concentration was observed. The incompatibility reaction with alcohol after disulfiram intake (DAR) shows an additional degranulation oft mast cells of the lungs and decrease of histamine-content. So far, there seems little difference between the influence of disulfiram alone and the DAR. Besides thrombocytes and basophile leucocytes, the mast cells of the lung are responsible for the release of histamine and serotonine during higher alcohol concentrations and alcohol-disulfiram-reactions. We think that the intolerance phenomena of humans after alcohol--f.e. in form of flush-reaction--is at least partly related to the concomitant influence oft mast cell-substances.     

Book reviews

A. L. Meiendorf, Optimizatsiya khozyaistvennykh reshenii: metod analiza prirashchenii. Series: Aktual'nye problemy sel'skogo khozyaistva. Moscow: ‘Ekonomika’, 1976.

Oliver H. Radkey, The Unknown Civil War in Soviet Russia. A Study of the Green Movement in the Tambov Region, 1920–21. Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution, 1976. xiv+457 pp. $12.95.

Roy and Zhores Medvedev, Khrushchev—The Years in Power. London: OUP, 1977. xi+198 pp. £3.95.

Daniel F. Calhoun, The United Front: the TUC and the Russians, 1923–1928. Cambridge: CUP, 1976. 450 pp. £10.50.

Gabriel Gorodetsky, The Precarious Truce. Anglo‐Soviet Relations 1924–27. Cambridge: CUP, 1977. 289 pp. £9.00.

Herbert S. Dinerstein, The Making of a Missile Crisis: October 1962. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. 302 pp. $14.95.

Donald R. Kelley, Kenneth R. Stunkel, Richard R. Wescott, The Economic Superpowers and the Environment: The United States, The Soviet Union, and Japan. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co., 1976. 335 pp.

Fred Singleton (ed.), Environmental Misuse in the Soviet Union. New York and London: Praeger Publishers, 1976. xvii+103 pp. $13.50. £8.80.

Peter H. Juviler, Revolutionary Law and Order. Politics and Social Change in the USSR. New York: The Free Press, and London: Collier MacMillan, 1976. xii+274 pp. £11.05.

Richard Szawlowski, The System of the International Organizations of the Communist Countries. Leyden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1976. 322 pp.

Jürg Meister, Soviet Warships of the Second World War. London: Macdonald & Jane, 1977. 348 pp. £7.95.     

Book reviews

David Granick, Enterprise Guidance in Eastern Europe. A Comparison of Four Socialist Economies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1976. xvi+505 pp. £17.20 or £6.10 (paperback).

A. Zauberman, Mathematical Theory in Soviet Planning (Concepts, Methods, Techniques). London: OUP for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1976. xiv+464 pp. £17.00.

H. Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia's Interrupted Revolution. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1976. 924 pp. £31.30 or £10.50 (paperback).

Alex Pravda, Reform and Change in the Czechoslovak Political System: January‐August 1968. Sage Research Papers in the Social Sciences, vol. 3, series No. 90–020 (Contemporary European Studies Series). Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1976. 96 pp. £1.30.

R. G. Gidadhubli (ed.), Fifty Years of Soviet Power—a Study of Social, Economic and Political Developments. Centre of Soviet Studies, University of Bombay, 1976. 295 pp. 29 rupees.

Occasional Papers, Centre for Soviet and East European Studies, Jawalharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Nos. 2 and 3, 1976 (mimeographed).

Adam B. Ulam, A History of Soviet Russia. London: Martin Robertson, 1976. viii+312 pp. £5.00.

Olga A. Narkiewicz, The Green Flag: Polish Populist Politics 1867–1970. London: Croom Helm, 1976. 314 pp. £7.95.

Jacques Levesque, L'URSS et la révolution cubaine. Montreal: Presses de 1'Université de Montréal, 1976. 221 pp.

John B. Dunlop, The New Russian Revolutionaries. Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1976. 344 pp. $18.50.

Brian Hunter, Soviet‐ Yugoslav relations 1948–1972: a bibliography of Soviet, Western and Yugoslav comment and analysis. New York and London: Garland, 1976. 223 pp. $20.00.