Cattle Markets Integration and Price Discovery: The Case of Mali

This article analyses the level of integration in 10 cattle markets in Mali. The results indicate a limited interdependence among markets where, in majority of cases, more than 70 per cent of price variation is due to own-price shocks. However, the Ségou market exhibited a high level of interaction with other markets, behaving mostly as a price information receiver. Some markets behaved as sources of price information, however, without taking a clear price leadership role. This low level of market integration may be attributed to limited access to livestock markets and timely price information.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Turner's turn with the CIA

Stansfield Turner: Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1985,304 p., $16.95.

007s Analysis of KAL's Flight 007

Alexander Dallin: Black Box: KAL 00 7 and the Superpowers University of California Press, Berkeley, 1985, 130 p., $14.95

Oliver Clubb: KAL Flight 007: The Hidden Story The Permanent Press, Sag Harbor, N.Y., 1985, 132 p., $14.95

Knowing who's who

Ernest May: Knowing One's Enemies Princeton University Press, 1985, 561 p., $29.50

British intelligence from A To Z

Anthony Read and David Fisher: Colonel Z: The Secret Life of a Master of Spies Viking, New York, 1985, 264 p., $17.95

Setting the record straight

Nigel West: A Thread of Deceit: Espionage Myths of World War II Random House, New York, 1985, 285 p., $16.95

Unreliable Witness: Espionage Myths of the Second World War In England: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1984, 275 p., £8.95.

The catcher in the lie

Paul Ekman: Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage W. W. Norton &; Company, N.Y., 1985, 320 p., $17.95

The cat's meow

William M. Leary: Perilous Missions: Civil Air Transport and CIA Covert Operations in Asia. The University of Alabama Press, Birmingham, Ala., 1984, 281 p., $22.50

Proceed with caution

Ernest Volkman: Warriors of the Night William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1985, 434 p., $17.95

Beyond what the facts will bear

Walter Laqueur: A World of Secrets: Uses and Limits of Intelligence New York: Basic Books, 1985, 404 p., $21.95     

To recommend or not recommend: That is still the question

The boundaries around what parenting plan evaluators should and should not say in their reports to Courts has been debated in both mental health and legal circles for decades. The controversy about whether parenting plan evaluators should make specific recommendations to Courts regarding access plans and decision-making rights revolves around varied views of the limits of mental health professionals' knowledge about such matters, whether they are socio-moral or psychological in nature, and the benefits to children and society of facilitating case-resolution. In the conversation presented below a seasoned family law attorney and a psychologist who is a frequent critic of the practice of making specific recommendations debate this area of controversy.     

Flaws in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's rationale for supporting the development and approval of BiDil as a treatment for heart failure only in black patients

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) rationale for supporting the development and approval of BiDil (a combination of hydralazine hydrochloride and isosorbide dinitrate; H-I) for heart failure specifically in black patients was based on under-powered, post hoc subgroup analyses of two relatively old trials (V-HeFT I and II), which were further complicated by substantial covariate imbalances between racial groups. Indeed, the only statistically significant difference observed between black and white patients was found without any adjustment for potential confounders in samples that were unlikely to have been adequately randomized. Meanwhile, because the accepted baseline therapy for heart failure has substantially improved since these trials took place, their results cannot be combined with data from the more recent trial (A-HeFT) amongst black patients alone. There is therefore little scientific evidence to support the approval of BiDil only for use in black patients, and the FDA's rationale fails to consider the ethical consequences of recognizing racial categories as valid markers of innate biological difference, and permitting the development of group-specific therapies that are subject to commercial incentives rather than scientific evidence or therapeutic imperatives. This paper reviews the limitations in the scientific evidence used to support the approval of BiDil only for use in black patients; calls for further analysis of the V-HeFT I and II data which might clarify whether responses to H-I vary by race; and evaluates the consequences of commercial incentives to develop racialized medicines. We recommend that the FDA revise the procedures they use to examine applications for race-based therapies to ensure that these are based on robust scientific claims and do not undermine the aims of the 1992 Revitalization Act.     

IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF CHILDREN

In the traditional family law and child protection litigation where the court is asked to make determinations based on the best interests of a minor, the adversarial, rights-based model often fails to serve the interests of children and families and may be more harmful than beneficial to children relative to other possible methods of dispute resolution. This article examines the shortcomings of such an adversarial, rights-based model; briefly highlights the literature on dispute resolution systems design; and then proposes a new approach to better serve the interests of children in family law and child protection cases.     

Preventing the Use of Deadly Force: The Relationship between Police Agency Policies and Rates of Officer‐Involved Gun Deaths

Killings of civilians by police officers have become a matter of intense public concern in the United States. High‐profile deaths, especially those of black citizens, have caused outrage and sparked the Black Lives Matter movement with calls for dramatic changes in how police agencies operate. However, little systematic research exists to answer questions about which policies should be ended or put in place to reduce these deaths. The authors leverage a large data set of gun deaths by police officers in the United States, combined with agency‐level policy data and community demographic data, to examine whether certain policies are associated with lower or higher rates of officer‐involved gun deaths. Findings show that one policy—the requirement that officers file a report when they point their guns at people but do not fire—is associated with significantly lower rates of gun deaths.     

The no-win Mom: motherland in twentieth-century America

The cultural contradictions of motherhood SHARON HAYS, 1996 New York: Yale University Press     

Perceptions and Satisfaction with Father Involvement and Adolescent Mothers’ Postpartum Depressive Symptoms

This study examined the associations between adolescent mothers’ postpartum depressive symptoms and their perceptions of amount of father care giving and satisfaction with father involvement with the baby. The sample included 100 adolescent mothers (ages 13–19; mainly African-American and Latina) whose partners were recruited for a randomized study for fathers only. Controlling for prenatal depressive symptoms and other prenatal and postpartum variables, we found that higher levels of mothers’ satisfaction with father involvement rather than perception of amount of fathers’ care giving was significantly associated with fewer postpartum depressive symptoms. The relationship between satisfaction with father involvement and depressive symptoms was partially mediated by mothers’ sense of parenting competence and not by mothers’ parenting stress. Policy and programs should place greater emphasis on early support for adolescent mothers and their partners, particularly when mothers desire the involvement of the father with his child.