Religión y salud: la intervención pública de agentes religiosos católicos formados en bioética en el debate parlamentario sobre la muerte digna en la Argentina / Religion and health: the public intervention of Catholic religious agents trained in bioethics in the parliamentary debate on death with dignity in Argentina

Desde una perspectiva sociológica, este trabajo aborda una de las aristas de la intervención pública de ciertos sectores del catolicismo en la elaboración y sanción de leyes de salud. En particular se hace foco en el debate en comisiones parlamentarias sobre la llamada ley de "muerte digna" (Ley 26742) en el cual se convocó a un grupo de expertos en bioética para asesorar a los senadores sobre los alcances y límites de la ley. La mayoría de los expertos invitados pregonan la perspectiva de la bioética personalista, un desarrollo teológico de la bioética del catolicismo contemporáneo. En el debate no participaron representantes de otros credos consolidando la ampliamente estudiada imbricación entre el catolicismo y lo político en Argentina.

This paper discusses from a sociological perspective one of Catholicism's fronts of public intervention in the development and enactment of health legislation. In particular we analyze the debate in parliamentary committees on the so-called "death with dignity" law (No. 26742), for which a group of bioethics experts was convened to counsel senators regarding the scope and limits of the law. The majority of the invited experts advocated a personalist bioethics perspective, which is a theological bioethics development of contemporary Catholicism. In the debate no representatives of other faiths were present, reinforcing the widely studied overlap between Catholicism and politics in Argentina.

The Ca2+ pump inhibitor, thapsigargin, inhibits root gravitropism in Arabidopsis thaliana

Thapsigargin, a specific inhibitor of most animal intracellular SERCA-type Ca2+ pumps present in the sarcoplasmic/endoplasmic reticulum, was originally isolated from the roots of the Mediterranean plant Thapsia gargancia L. Here, we demonstrate that this root-derived compound is capable of altering root gravitropism in Arabidopsis thaliana. Thapsigargin concentrations as low as 0.1 µM alter root gravitropism whereas under similar conditions cyclopiazonic acid does not. Furthermore, a fluorescently conjugated thapsigargin (BODIPY FL thapsigargin) suggests that target sites for thapsigargin are located in intracellular organelles in the root distal elongation zone and the root cap, regions known to regulate root gravitropism.