New Jersey,cruisey Parks

Un mondo senza carne?

A note to the article by Louis Bignami Repubblica.it published on July 23, 2010 entitled 'A world without meat: it is said to be "cleaner"'. I apologize for the brevity of my remarks, the result of a more immediate reaction to reading the article that the weighted analysis, which, given its subject matter, would need a much broader articulation of what I can give here.

I was struck by the superficiality of the piece of Bignami on eating meat. In particular, I would like to point out two heavy omissions that seem significant to a certain way of affrontare la questione del vegetarianesimo.

1. L'autore descrive un aspetto molto importante della scelta vegetariana, ossia la sua 'motivazione verde', ignorando completamente l'aspetto morale della scelta vegetariana (esso stesso non facilmente riducibile al solo 'non far soffrire gli animali'). L'autore potrebbe rispondere che l'intento del suo articolo è quello di concentrarsi solo sul primo aspetto ma non sul secondo. Tuttavia uno degli 'argomenti forti' del suo ragionamento pro-carne (o comunque di quello di cui si fa portavoce) è che le popolazioni povere della terra vivono di allevamento di piccole dimensioni e, se tutti diventassimo vegetariani, cosa ne sarebbe di loro? Di cosa vivrebbero, vista la loro già povera diet and their small market? How do you decide who can continue to breed animals (to eat of course, because the idea of \u200b\u200btaking care of animals for any other reason is not even considered), and on what basis? These are moral considerations, that the article is presented as a dilemma, and as such difficult to face, when they should be part of our cultural debate, if not be taught as part of our civic education (and, above all, moral). Not too difficult to make decisions because I do not think a line of argument convincing, especially if these are not decisions taken at the expense of 'simple', namely absolute and absolutist as 'eating the flesh or all or none', which is proving to be rough as short-sighted for the resolution of such sensitive issues. And the author does not save even a vague mention of the so 'all eat less meat', which merely shift the problem if they are not characterized nor 'all' or the 'eat less'. The author seems to me much more interested in the only 'meat' view of the cooking series which launches in the second part of the article.

2. The message is that you can pass a single analysis that shows the permessibilità (moral and social) of a certain choice: the cost-effectiveness. However, this analysis is poor which is part of the environmental problem of eating meat. The considerations the CBA are presented as the only ones to be taken into account, ignoring a very interesting debate about what is necessary, the desirability of such a model of decision making in these areas. Specifically, being a vegetarian can not be reduced to an optional cost-effectiveness, as it is associated with a lifestyle choice, and then wrapped considerations and scruples of a different nature, not easy to reduce nor reducible to mere utilitarian considerations (utilitarian in non-technical sense, since utilitarianism understood as theoretical position about the moral discourse has some internal resources to account certain aspects of personal choices that are not intended directly or indirectly in the quantitative maximization of utility).

final consideration. The reservations that I wanted to express here are logical in nature, even before the ethics seems to me that the article is deficient in terms of argument, more than the moral. I think the kind of 'scientific' that the author Squaderno are so shortsighted as they are harmful, primarily for our democratic coexistence, which draws its lifeblood from the public debate on these issues so delicate, and not the victim of force underestimated when 'science' (be it statistics, chemistry or environmental) it imposes solutions from analysis of data passed off as neutral but implicitly moralizing, thus taking away from the moral discussion of the various actors involved, the only, in my opinion, we should cure ourselves. Since this is a lifestyle, rather than a choice based on raw data, vegetarianism Read more deserves a debate that involves both the experts (scientists with their data and their projections, economists with their studies, geo- politicians) are all the protagonists of these choices with their personal experiences, their readings and their ways of seeing things. In addition, if the issue touches a very sensitive question as thorny as that of the future of the people of third world and Their criticism is vital conditions related to meat consumption directly (their growth) and indirect (the theft of resources that could be allocated to NGOs, which are used to subsidize the food of the rich countries), a satisfactory solution can not be some articulated in terms of a cost / benefit but should be articulated through an imaginative effort to try to imagine situations other than those present in which these persons can meet their needs and develop a lifestyle that requires or less being a vegetarian.

Too often and easily vegetarianism has been accused of elitism, when in fact this has a tremendous impact on the lives of people distant from us, and motivations rooted in the care of his conduct in relation to the other, as well as that of animals and the environment. Being vegetarian is right, among other things, have some scruples to animals, the environment and people affected by our choices about eating meat, and therefore its permissibility can not be reduced to a mere numerical calculation, which can only quantify the pros and cons of a certain status quo, because what we need is to change the way we think, act and live. A change in our way of life must necessarily pass through a more profound and complex than the analysis of some data about the greater efficiency and convenience of the lamb than beef we can offer. An examination of the outcome of which will be not only a decision about whether or not to eat meat, but rather a change in the way of representing the same animal, and morally tolerate the description of living things in terms of efficiency and convenience. The world, or almost entirely, horrified at the thought of speaking in these terms of human beings. Vegetarians are horrified at the thought that this scruple interests and only a part of living beings. And there is no trace of this can be either in the data on the cost-effectiveness with which the author concludes in favor of a so cheap 'Certainty': best chicken and pork. Certainly not for them.

Sarin Marchetti

ps just now read the original article (that is, popular science) referenced in the piece of Bignami. I must say that there is much difference between the two (eg Bignami omit the parts of the original in which they propose some alternatives to harmful practices such as intensive farming that maybe it was worth mentioning, as the most interesting part of ' article). My reservations against the proposed line of argument, common to both the original article that his 'Italian version,' remain, even if the article in the New Scientist is much more serious and objective of what came out on the Republic. If nothing else, notwithstanding the myopia of the principle of the dialectic and adopted, the original article compares the views of pro-and anti-vegetarianism in a more sober and less hurried than the Italian.

You can read the original article by Bob Holmes, you

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727691.200-veggieworld-why-eating-greens-wont-save-the-planet.html

Coach Outlet In Syracuse

Veneto: niente trapianto per i disabili mentali

In March 2009 the junta Galan (PdL) of the Veneto Region has issued guidelines (DGR 851/09) which totally excludes from solid organ transplant patients who have an IQ (IQ) of less than 50
http://www.regione.veneto.it/NR/rdonlyres/59C5DF90-C4D0-49F7-8D1E-5662F8EF2B5B/0/DGR851_09Allegato.pdf.
The case remained in the shadows until in 2010 two nephrologists Catholic University of Rome, N. Panocchia and M. Bossola, published an article in the American Journal of Transplantation (10: 727-730) in which he accused the measure of the Veneto Region to be unconstitutional, contrary to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and unjustifiable from the medical point of view. The reference to Article
. 32, paragraph 1 of the Republican Constitution:
"The Republic protects health as a fundamental right of the individual and collective interest, e garantisce cure gratuite agli indigenti”
è tuttavia scentrato perché, posto che tutti i pazienti abbiano diritto all'organo di cui hanno bisogno, non ci sono abbastanza organi per tutti e quindi occorrerebbe dirimere il conflitto che si apre fra i loro rispettivi diritti. Nei trapianti nessuna spesa pubblica (dato che non esiste un mercato degli organi) può consentire di ridurre le liste di attesa, con la conseguenza che il lessico del diritto alla salute non trova applicazione.
Più appropriato il lessico della non-discriminazione, anch'esso usato dagli autori.
Per quali ragioni un ritardato mentale dovrebbe essere messo in secondo piano nell'allocazione degli organi?
Ceteris paribus, una persona con ritardo and a person without mental retardation have the same legitimate interest to be treated and then it seems that neither of the two patients should have priority over any except those arising from who is writing the first of the waiting list.
However, the international guidelines of the American Society of Transplantation and the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation consider mental retardation a contraindication to transplantation, although only relative and never absolute because it is believed that the mentally ill is not able to follow the complex post-transplant immunosuppressive therapy. Since you do not follow the therapy involves the loss of the organ, transplant patients are unable to follow treatment tantamount to wasting a precious resource. Nevertheless, the guidelines state that must be assessed case by case basis if the patient with mental illness to be able to follow the therapy or not, and not as a criterion generalizing that of IQ. In addition, the authors argue, recent studies have shown that more than IQ, what is important for the success of immunosuppressive therapy is the presence of family members or nurses who take care of the recipient. This refutes the main argument in favor of discrimination of mental retardation in transplantation.
But there are other issues: 1
the mentally retarded, eg. patients with Down syndrome have a lower life expectancy and thus derive a minor beneficio dall'organo rispetto al paziente non-disabile;
2 i ritardati mentali non sono in grado di capire che cosa sia il trapianto;
3 i ritardati mentali non beneficiano del trapianto in termini di qualità della vita, contrariamente alle persone con un normale sviluppo mentale.
Quanto al primo argomento, gli autori replicano che è normale trapiantare persone non-disabili con età superiore ai 65 anni e che i malati di sindrome di Down arrivano a 50-55 anni di vita. Dunque un disabile per trisomia 21 di 30 anni e un non-disabile di 65 anni hanno circa la stessa speranza di vita, con la conseguenza che quest'ultima non può essere usata per differenziare i disabili dai non-disabili.
Quanto al secondo argomento, gli autori argue that it applies to all forms of medical treatment and for all those who are unable to give informed consent, such as children. According to this argument should not transplant the children, which would be contrary to common medical practice. If the injunction barring disabled, informed consent would be granted by a guardian, just as they do for children and their parents.
The third argument, recent evidence suggests that transplantation improves psychological well-being of patients with mental retardation and their families. However, the authors failed to demonstrate that the mentally retarded can come through the transplant at the same level of quality of life to which a patient can get non-retarded. This unfortunately is a crucial point, because the allocation of medical resources based on the QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Years) that provides a one-year life of a person with low self worth less than a year of a person's life with full autonomy. So, assuming for example. an organ can be transplanted to 5 years of extra life to a non-disabled completely independently or 5 years of living in a mentally retarded little self QALY under the system we should give the organ to non-disabled person, because both its 5 years of life are worth more QALY of five years of life of disabled people, and secondly because the system is based on maximizing QALYs obtained with the same financial outlay. Rebus sic stantibus, if you accepts the system as ethically acceptable QALY (obviously the point is not discussed and I side in this regard), there is a reason for giving an organ to a patient, preferably non-disabled person rather than a disabled patient, provided that certain circumstances occur (difference in quality of life post-transplant, the same number of years of life gained with surgery, the same cost of the transplant, etc.).
However, the fact remains that the decision of the Veneto Region is ethically indefensible, because it allows an individual assessment and provides an absolute exclusion. Thomas Bruni

Where Does Holly Willoughby Buy Her Clothes

Sperimentazione a pagamento. Che c'e' di male?


survey of La Repubblica Today, edited by Michael Bocci (http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2010/07/16/news/inchiesta_farmaci-5618527/?ref=HREC1-3), reveals that a growing number of Italian citizens subjects to test experimental drug in Switzerland, France and Austria in exchange for money. This is mostly healthy individuals who choose to spend own three or four days in a clinical setting and to take drugs in Phase 1 testing. The purpose of Phase 1 is as well described in the article, to test the toxicity of the molecule contained in the product. In exchange for the willingness to participate in the research, subjects receive a refund of about € 200/250 per day and play a check-up medico completo e gratuito. I rischi connessi alla partecipazione ci sono, ma sono bassissimi, e la struttura clinica si assume l’onere di eventuali cure dovute ad effetti collaterali del farmaco sotto sperimentazione.
Bisogna ricordare che questa attività di ricerca farmacologica segue la ricerca cosiddetta di base condotta in laboratorio e la sperimentazione pre-clinica su animali non umani. I test di cui si occupa l’inchiesta sono dunque il primo, indispensabile passo del lungo iter che porta i ricercatori a verificare l’efficacia farmacologica di una nuova molecola. Senza questo tipo di sperimentazione su soggetti sani, non potremmo sperare di avere nuovi farmaci a disposizione in futuro per combattere più efficacemente la malattia and to intervene on diseases currently untreatable from a pharmacological point of view.
While these considerations are clearly present in the mind of the author of the piece (which in fact talks about it in the article), the title - "The forced medication and the business of human guinea pigs" - and the general tone of the investigation are alarming and derogatory towards the activities described. It is not easy, and is likely to be ungenerous, groped to criticize a text written by its tone. But as is normal for a journalistic text, is the tone to give color to this piece. So I will try to bring out and criticize some considerations that (unfortunately) flutter soltanto nell’articolo, più che essere sostenute da una chiara linea argomentativa.
Innanzi tutto: perché coloro che si sottopongono a sperimentazioni farmacologiche vengono chiamati “forzati del farmaco”? Chi li forza? Chi li costringe? Dall’inchiesta si evince che la motivazione economica è l’unica a sostenere la scelta di soggetti sani di partecipare alle ricerche in questione. Questa ricostruzione è senz’altro plausibile, ma per quale motivo dovrebbe rappresentare una forzatura? Perché una persona non può decidere di accettare denaro e un check-up medico in cambio di una prestazione niente affatto onerosa da un punto di vista psico-fisico e solo moderatamente rischiosa da un punto di vista doctor? I do not see why such activity should be deemed incompatible with the exercise of personal autonomy (hence the name of "forced"). In exchange for money, often little money, people agree to engage in activities far more dangerous and stressful, such as working on a construction site, or driving trucks. But no one would dream of saying that these activities limit the autonomy of the workers who take, although in my opinion, a person is generally more good reasons - both prudential and social - to participate in a clinical trial not to carry vegetables on the highway or build yet another house duplex.
The other part that I would like to say a word, is the aura of mistrust with which they are represented pharmaceutical companies ("the business of human guinea pigs", as the title). Without doubt the market of pharmaceutical research is not without moral hazard of great significance. However, the research, testing and marketing of drugs are strictly regulated, the economic incentive is in fact a regulatory framework rightly severe, the best way to ensure the availability of more effective medications. Evoking scenes of conspiracy against morality of research subjects seems therefore unjustified, given the current legal safeguards to protect these individuals, and distracts the reader's attention from the need, increasingly insistent, a reinvigoration of the public and private sources of funding for biomedical research.
seems that, in the eyes of some commentators, the presence of economic incentive for those who produce drugs and who decides to test them in person, represents an element of degrading moral value of these activities. But it is precisely these activities that you expect a great return to morality in terms of effective treatment and lives saved.
In conclusion I would say that, although altruism does not seem to be the predominant motivation or by whom you test Phase 1 (as is clear from the interviews of the investigation), nor by the pharmaceutical companies, as the activities of each other, providing a valuable moral content, that the economic presence of the incentive does not affect in any way. In reality, the economic incentive seems appropriate recognition to the efforts required to make available an active ingredient and should be encouraged rather than viewed with suspicion.
Moreover, as claimed by the English philosopher John Harris, the enormous importance of scientific research results in a positive moral duty to support it and also to attend in person (see http://jme.bmj.com/content/31/4 / 242.full).

Metallic Taste When Breathing Hard

Xenotrapianto e giustizia globale


In 2008, according to The Wall Street Journal, there were more than 80,000 people on the waiting list for a kidney transplant in the U.S.. Of these, 5000 did not arrive alive at the end of the year (http://tiny.cc/76158, 08/01/2010). These data show that the shortage of transplant organs is a major health problem.
A solution could come from practice, still experimental xenotransplantation, the insertion into the body of a human tissue from non-human animals. However, the non-human tissues used contain microorganisms that could in theory change after transplantation and become pathogenic to humans. This phenomenon would generate a Xenozoonoses, that a new human disease caused by a pathogen of an animal-human. As the most accepted theory today for the origin of HIV whether you want to own a certain Xenozoonoses from ape to man, and that HIV infection has killed 25 million since the early eighties to the present The risk of a Xenozoonoses by xenotransplantation can not be underestimated, even if its a priori probability was estimated as very low.
If this problem has long been known in the scientific and bioethics literature on the subject (so that the bulk of biomedical research done today in the field takes care to limit this risk), an interesting article by R. Sparrow appeared alla fine del 2009 su Developing World Bioethics (9, 3:119-127) associa il rischio di xenozoonosi a problematiche di giustizia globale e di consenso informato.
In primo luogo, dato che il rischio di xenozoonosi riguarderebbe inevitabilmente l'intero pianeta a causa dell'alta mobilità della popolazione, la decisione se compiere o meno il primo xenotrapianto (il che comporterebbe di accettare il rischio di xenozoonosi) dovrebbe essere affidata alla comunità globale, in quanto gli interessi di tutte le nazioni del pianeta sarebbero coinvolti nei potenziali esiti della scelta. Tuttavia non esiste un forum politico globale democraticamente costituito in cui rappresentanti di tutte le nazioni del globo possano dibattere in modo informato l'argomento e deliberare. Do you see then who is entitled to express consent of humanity to this decision.
Secondly, and this is where the most interesting part of Sparrow, the risks and benefits of xenotransplantation would distribute asymmetrically in the general population: poor countries with health systems are inadequate are the main victims of any Xenozoonoses pandemic, while rich countries could defend themselves through drugs and timely public health measures. In contrast the benefits of the new therapy would fall almost entirely on the rich countries, given the enormous costs of xenotransplantation, which would require special breeding sterile donor animals, a continuous monitoring del ricevente dopo la donazione e immunosoppressione farmacologica vita natural durante. Quest'asimmetria renderebbe la pratica dello xenotrapianto ingiusta di per sé, stante l'attuale distribuzione delle risorse sanitarie.
La bioeticista Martine Rothblatt (Your Life or Mine, Ashgate 2004) ha proposto, per risolvere questo problema, che il consenso allo xenotrapianto sia un consenso ipotetico (si potrebbe cioè procedere allo xenotrapianto solo qualora fosse ragionevole credere che la pratica riceva un consenso maggioritario da parte di una comunità globale ben informata) e che il consenso vada dato a un pacchetto di misure sanitarie che comprenda, oltre allo xenotrapianto, servizi sanitari di base per i paesi poveri, necessari a monitorare il Xenozoonoses risk.
Sparrow replica Rothblatt that this consent would be morally null and void, because obtained by blackmail (basic health against xenotransplantation) that exploit the vulnerability of poor countries.
Sparrow concludes that the global consensus to xenotransplantation could be given only after it has been settled, whatever you want to introduce new therapy, the gap in global health resources.
This request is valid all the more so given that rich countries are responsible, as former colonizers, the current condition of the poor and that could remedy the wrongs done by sacrificing a very important portion of their purchasing power per qualche anno.