AJT celebrates the remarkable life of Jean Dausset, who won the Nobel Prize for his contributions to the discovery of HLA.
Warum warfen die Amerikaner im August 1945 Atombomben auf die japanischen Städte Hiroshima und Nagasaki ab? „Um einen fanatischen Gegner zu einer schnellen Kapitulation zu zwingen und weitere große Opfer auf beiden Seiten zu vermeiden,“ lautete die offizielle und in den ersten beiden Nachkriegsjahrzehnten weitgehend akzeptierte Antwort. „Falsch!“ hieß es hingegen in dem von Alperovitz erstmals 1965 veröffentlichten Urteil: „Um mit einer Horrorvision die Sowjetunion in dem aufkeimenden Kalten Krieg einzuschüchtern und sich diplomatische wie militärische Vorteile zu verschaffen, zu einem Zeitpunkt, als Japan ohnehin schon geschlagen war.“2 Der Autor traf damit in den Vietnam-Jahren den Zeitgeschmack, konnte aber für sich in Anspruch nehmen, im Gegensatz zu anderen „revisionistischen“ Verfassern sein Werk auf eine wohldokumentierte Grundlage gestellt zu haben. Er löste damit nicht nur eine langanhaltende wissenschaftliche Kontroverse aus, sondern fand auch ein Thema, das ihn für sein ganzes Leben zu beschäftigen scheint. Er trug, um seine These zu erhärten, immer neues Material zusammen und legte mehrmals erweiterte Studien vor, bis das nun in deutscher Übersetzung vorliegende fast eintausendseitige Opus entstand. Die Grundbehauptung blieb dabei unverändert. Wer aber auf komplizierte Fragen einfache, einleuchtende und durch keinerlei Selbstzweifel getrübte Antworten vorlegt, fordert zumindest den advocatus diaboli auf den Plan. Wissenschaftliche Gegner hat Alperovitz ohnehin zuhauf, andererseits aber auch viele Anhänger. An ihm scheiden sich die Geister. Daß die amerikanische Öffentlichkeit immer noch an die unmittelbar nach Kriegsende abgegebene Begründung glaubt, führt der Autor auf die großangelegten Täuschungsmanöver von Regierungsseite zurück. Selbst der ehemalige Kriegsminister Stimson verleugnete seine frühere Opposition gegen einen Atombombeneinsatz ohne vorherigen Friedensversuch und unterstützte die Truman-Administration propagandistisch. So spricht dann auch der englische Originaltitel des vorliegenden Werkes von „the architecture of an American myth“. In Wirklichkeit, so Alperovitz, hätten die USA alle japanischen Friedensfühler bewußt ignoriert. Hätte man auf die Ratschläge vieler ziviler Persönlichkeiten – z.B. Kriegsminister Stimson und Staatssekretär Grew im State Department – wie Militärs gehört, hätte man leicht eine Einigung erreichen können, wenn man z.B. eine Garantie für den Weiterbestand der Monarchie oder eine deutliche Warnung vor dem Abwurf der Atombomben abgegeben hätte. So aber wurden die Japaner im Ungewissen gelassen und liefen in ihr Verderben. Nicht nur leichtfertig, sondern vorsätzlich, so Alperovitz' Einschätzung, wurden dabei Chancen zu einem schnellen Friedensschluß verspielt. Es ist erfreulich, daß der Autor als Motiv hinter der Passivität nicht etwa die Entschlossenheit sieht, „die schönen teuren Atombomben“ nach der langersehnten Fertigstellung nun auch am lebenden Objekt auszuprobieren, sondern „nur“ den Abschreckungseffekt gegenüber der UdSSR, um deren Machtausweitung – vor allem in Osteuropa, aber auch in Fernost – zu begrenzen. Die Rücksichten auf die öffentliche Meinung der USA, wo man den Tennô am liebsten hätte hängen sehen und Garantien für den Weiterbestand der Monarchie dagegen verübelt hätte, kommen bei Alperovitz aber wohl zu kurz. Auch scheint die Öffentlichkeit nicht bereit gewesen zu sein, nach dem Sieg über Deutschland noch einen langen und verlustreichen Krieg gegen Japan weiterzuführen. Daß es Truman und seinem
Recent efforts to mobilize support for malaria control have highlighted the economic burden of malaria and the value of malaria control for generating economic development. These claims have a long history. Beginning in the early twentieth century, they became the primary justification for malaria‐control programs in the American South and in other parts of the globe, including British India. Economists conducted none of these studies. Following World War II and the development of new anti‐malarial drugs and pesticides, including DDT, malaria control and eradication were increasingly presented as instruments for eliminating economic underdevelopment. By the 1960s, however, economists and demographers began to raise serious substantive and methodological questions about the basis of these claims. Of particular concern was the role of rapid population growth, resulting in part from the decline of malaria mortality, in undermining the short‐term economic gains achieved through malaria control. Despite these concerns, malaria continues to be presented as an economic problem in the work of Jeffrey Sachs and others, justifying massive investments in malaria control. The methodological basis of these claims is examined. The paper concludes that while malaria takes a dreadful toll in human lives and causes significant economic losses for individuals, families, and some industries, the evidence linking malaria control to national economic growth remains unconvincing. In addition, the evidence suggests that there are potential costs to justifying malaria‐eradication campaigns on macroeconomic grounds.
This research note is a sequel to an earlier article in this journal (Lesthaeghe and Neidert 2006) in which we documented a strong and robust spatial correlation between the 2000 and 2004 presidential election results on the one hand and the extent to which states and counties had evolved on the “second demographic transition” (SDT) dimension. At that time the critique was voiced that this was an exceptional result valid for the Bush elections only, given the prominence of the “culture war” issues during these election campaigns. This correlation was predicted to shrink substantially if economic issues instead of cultural and life style ones were dominant campaign topics. The 2008 Obama–McCain contest provides a good test for this proposition, since the elections took place at a time when economic issues had risen to great prominence in the debate. In this note we show that the spatial association between the vote for McCain and the county‐ or state‐level values on the SDT dimension remained as strong and as robust as before. Moreover, controls for competing explanations again failed to weaken or eliminate the correlation with the SDT dimension. Instead, anomalies in the correlations in 2004 for several Southern and Appalachian states disappeared in 2008.
Books reviewed in this issue. S tephen C astles and R aúl D elgado W ise ( eds .) Migration and Development: Perspectives from the South C arolyn L. H su Creating Market Socialism: How Ordinary People Are Shaping Class and Status in China E zekiel K alipeni , S usan C raddock , J oseph R. O ppong, and J ayati G hosh ( eds .) HIV and AIDS in Africa: Beyond Epidemiology S teffen K röhnert , I ris H ossman, and R einer K lingholz Europe's Demographic Future: Growing Regional Imbalances M alcolm P otts and T homas H ayden Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World V aclav S mil Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years J ohan S urkyn , P atrick D eboosere, and J an V an B avel ( eds .) Demographic Challenges for the 21st Century: A State of the Art in Demography Z eng Y i , D udley L. P oston , J r. , D enese A shbaugh V losky, and D anan G u ( eds .) Healthy Longevity in China: Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Psychological Dimensions
One of the president's main leadership tools for influencing the direction of U.S. legal policy is public rhetoric. Numerous studies have examined the president's use of the “bully pulpit” to lead policy by influencing Congress or public opinion, or by changing the behavior of public agencies. We argue that the president can use rhetoric to change the behavior of public agencies and that this can have important social consequences. We focus on the disproportionate impact of presidential rhetoric on different “target populations” in the context of the War on Drugs. Specifically, we observe that presidential rhetoric had a greater impact on state arrest rates for African Americans than for whites, even when controlling for alternative explanations. These findings suggest that presidential rhetoric is filtered through social constructions of public policy problems when public officials act on them.
The modern empirical legal studies movement has well‐known antecedents in the law and society and law and economics traditions of the latter half of the 20th century. Less well known is the body of empirical research on legal phenomena from the period prior to World War II. This article is an extensive bibliographic essay that surveys the English‐language empirical legal research from approximately 1940 and earlier. The article is arranged around the themes in the research: criminal justice, civil justice (general studies of civil litigation, auto accident litigation and compensation, divorce, small claims, jurisdiction and procedure, civil juries), debt and bankruptcy, banking, appellate courts, legal needs, legal profession (including legal education), and judicial staffing and selection. Accompanying the article is an extensive bibliography of research articles, books, and reports.
Our woods and forests have been used by man from prehistoric to modern times. They have given timber for our ships and fuel for industry; they have been fenced for medieval deerparks; they camouflaged dumps and depots during World War Two. Traces of these and other activities remain—but they are usually hidden. Peter Crow explains how LiDAR helps archaeologists see through the trees and reveals the hidden landscapes of the past.
Do British soldiers in Afghanistan have enough helicopters, or are their lives being put unnecessarily at risk? Will heavily armoured vehicles become more necessary? And is the campaign against the Taliban winnable? Colonel Clive Fairweather , former intelligence officer, explains what statistics of war can tell us.
The context of military service has changed greatly since the events of 9/11. The forward deployment of service members to active war zones, which involves the issues of separation, time away from home, and eventual reunion, increases the vulnerability of their families to multiple, negative short‐term and long‐term effects. This article explores these issues and suggests a new approach to building support systems to support these military families. To this end, a capacity‐building framework is introduced, and 4 diverse and innovative social action programs consistent with this approach are highlighted. Implications for implementing the community capacity‐building model are presented.