Demonstration of anti-laminin antibodies in the serum of healthy subjects

Antibodies directed against laminin, a glycoprotein of basement membranes, have been sought for in the sera of 347 healthy subjects by a method relying on the agglutination of laminin-coated latex particles. Fifty-five subjects (15.9%) hae been found to be positive, 37 with a titre of 2, 14 with a titre of 4 and 4 with a titer of 8. Applied to 106 patients whose a renal biopsy had been examined by immunofluorescence, the test yielded positive results in 91% of patients with linear deposits as compared to 10.3 and 15.4% respectively in patients presenting with and without granular deposits along the glomerular basement membrane. The titers in anti-laminin antibodies observed in these patients ranged from 2 to 8. The discovery of circulating anti-laminin antibodies in serum from subjects without clinical or subclinical sign of renal impairment rises several questions regarding the pathogenicity of these auto-antibodies and their possible association with genetic or environmental factors

Biomonitoring de populations infantiles exposées à différents niveaux de pollution en Province de Hainaut (2007-2009)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Biomonitoring de populations infantiles exposées à différents niveaux de pollution en Province de Hainaut (2007-2009)

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Biomonitoring Study of Children Exposed to Different Levels of Pollution in the Hainaut Province

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Pollutants and Childhood: Sanitary study of children exposed to different levels of pollution in the Hainaut province

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Total War and Limited Government: the German Catholic Debate at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age

The chapter recovers the debate among German Catholics over North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO’s) introduction of tactical nuclear weapons into the new West German army (Bundeswehr). Young Catholic scholars Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde and Robert Spaemann forcefully opposed nuclear weaponry in debate with German theologian Gustav Gundlach. The arguments turned chiefly on natural law and papal authority, less so on theology. The chapter reconstructs the argument and recasts it in terms of political theology, a category that seems well suited for thinking about an issue of such gravity and finality (nuclear apocalypse being the ultimate Schmittian exception) and which the authors knew but avoided because of its discrediting under Nazism. The birth of a critical political theology in the 1960s enabled thinking about creation and divine sovereignty that could argue the case and exploit Catholicism’s global standing without lapsing into pre-critical biblical interpretation and philosophical methods ill-equipped to think about nuclear war