Mens (dood of levend) of dier? Attitudes over en morele implicaties van orgaanverwerving

Dit rapport is het verslag van een verkennende studie naar attitudes met betrekking tot orgaandonatie, en de morele implicaties hiervan. Psychologisch en ethisch onderzoek vullen elkaar in dit rapport aan. Er wordt aandacht geschonken aan twee ontwikkelingen op het gebied van orgaanverwerving: de toename van orgaandonaties bij leven, met name bij donatie van nieren en de verminderde interesse in de ontwikkeling van xenotransplantatie. Het psychologische deel van het rapport valt uiteen in literatuurstudie en eigen empirisch onderzoek. In dit deel wordt zowel de attitude van patiënten als de psychosociale belasting beschreven voor xenotransplantatie en voor nierdonatie bij leven. Patiënten zien nierdonatie bij leven in het algemeen als een wenselijk alternatief voor de wachtlijstsituatie, terwijl men in dit opzicht een stuk terughoudender is ten aanzien van xenotransplantatie. Om te bepalen welke rol van overheid, zorgverleners en onderzoekers gepast is, is het van belang te begrijpen hoe persoonlijke overtuigingen worden gevormd en kunnen veranderen. In het ethische, tweede deel van het rapport wordt dan ook meer aandacht besteed aan de verschillende motivaties voor orgaandonatie. Bij postmortale donatie worden vooral waarden als vrijwilligheid, anonimiteit en altruïsme genoemd. Bij familiedonatie doen begrippen als vanzelfsprekende solidariteit, morele plicht en lotsverbondenheid hun intrede, maar ook begrippen als eigenbelang, afhankelijkheid en wederkerigheid. Onderzocht wordt hoe de verschillende donatievormen zich tot elkaar verhouden, teneinde te bepalen op welke motivaties voor orgaandonatie we als maatschappij een beroep willen doen. Op dit punt wordt expliciet ingegaan op de rol van de overheid. Tevens is er een meer losstaand hoofdstuk gewijd aan commerciële orgaandonatie

Killing happy animals : Explorations in utilitarian ethics

The Total View and the Prior Existence View are two coherent utilitarian views on whose welfare to take into account in the aggregation of welfare. Total Utilitarianism considers the welfare of all actual and all possible beings. Prior Existence Utilitarianism takes into consideration the welfare of all actual and all necessary beings. These are those that do already exist and those that will definitely exist, independently of the moral choice that is contemplated. Prior Existence Utilitarianism does not take into account the welfare of contingent beings, i.e. those possible beings whose existence depends on the moral choice that is contemplated. Total Utilitarianism and Prior Existence Utilitarianism in principle yield different verdicts about the permissibility of killing animals that could otherwise have had a pleasant future. Killingsuch “happy animals” is usually implied by the production of meat, dairy and eggs, even in so-called “animal-friendly” animal husbandry systems. Killing “happy animals” is also part of aquaculture, sports hunting, sports fishing, and the breeding of animals for animal experimentation. In those practices, animals that could otherwise have had a pleasant future are routinely killed on a massive scale. It is typical for those practices that other animals replace the animals that are killed. What is more, those latter animals would not exist if the other animals were not killed. Furthermore, the lives of the newly created animals are at least as pleasant as the future lives of the killed animals would have been. How do Total Utilitarianism and Prior Existence Utilitarianism evaluate such practices of killing and replacing animals? When considering whether it is permissible to kill an animal that could otherwise have had a pleasant future, Total Utilitarianism takes into account the effects of that choice on the welfare of the existing animal, which one considers to kill. It also takes into account the effects of the choice on the welfare of the possible future animal that would be brought into existence if and only if the other animal would be killed. Provided that the life of this newly created animal contains at least as much welfare as the future life of the killed animal would have contained, killing and replacing the animal yields as much welfare overall as letting the animal live. In such a case, Total Utilitarianism would in principle allow for the killing and replacement of an animal. Prior Existence Utilitarianism, in contrast, does not take into consideration the possible welfare of the contingent animal that might live if and only if the other animal will be killed. According to Prior Existence Utilitarianism, bringing into existence another animal cannot compensate for the welfare loss that is caused by the killing of an animal. Thus, those different utilitarian views on whose welfare to consider in the aggregation of welfare have different implications concerning the permissibility of killing

Recovery of oils and antioxidants from olive stones

The olive oil industry generates enormous amounts of olive stones each year, which have the potential to be used as a biofuel but have high oil content, which negatively impacts the combustion process. In addition, olive stones contain high-value antioxidants, and their exploitation can provide additional revenues for the biofuel industry. In this work, we report the effect of different extraction solvents on the extraction of antioxidants and their activity. In addition, in vitro gastrointestinal digestion was used to evaluate the content and antioxidant activity of the olive stone extracts after gastrointestinal digestion. The extracts obtained by aqueous ethanol solvent (50% vol) exhibited the highest antioxidant activity with the DPPH IC50 of 1.27 mg mL−1 and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) of 6.33 mg AAE g−1. After in vitro digestion composed of gastric and intestinal processes, the antioxidant activity of olive stones decreased: DPPH IC50 value increased three times (a higher value of IC50 indicates lower antioxidant activity) and FRAP decreased almost five times with respect to the values obtained for original extracts. Furthermore, both phenomenological and shrinking core models were used to fit experimental oil extraction kinetics data and showed good agreement. Thermodynamic analysis showed that the extraction process is endothermic and irreversible while spontaneous and thermodynamically favourable for all conditions except for oil extraction from olive stones of 3.10 mm particle size at 20 °C. The calculated value for temperature coefficient is in good agreement with the previously reported values for the oil extraction from similar biomass