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Katrien Devolder’s Posts

Why strongly encouraging or legally enforcing bike helmets is not necesserily a good idea

In Australia and New Zealand wearing bike helmets is compulsory. In the United States, bike helmets are strongly promoted. The message in these countries is clear – not wearing a bike helmet is stupid because it can significantly damage your health. The stigma attached to cycling without a helmet may even be comparable to that… Read More »Why strongly encouraging or legally enforcing bike helmets is not necesserily a good idea

Sustainable Fish Week at Ghent University

This week is ‘Sustainable Fish Week’ at Ghent University in Belgium. All fish on the university restaurants’ menus come from sustainable fisheries or fish farms (with practices that can be maintained without reducing the ability of the target fish to maintain its population and without threatening other species within the ecosystem, for example, by removing their food source, accidentally catching and killing them, or damaging their habitat). Tuna sandwiches will be taken off the menu and a sustainable alternative will be provided instead. Those who take their meal at a university restaurant will receive a free ‘fish guide’ with helpful information for making responsible fish choices at home. Those with strong stomachs may also enjoy the opportunity to taste jellyfish at the university restaurants. The message is that, if we continue to eat unsustainable fish, then soon jellyfish will be the only alternative to fish left on the menu.

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Psychiatric drugs to enhance conformity to religious norms, and conscientious objection

An article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports on the (alleged) frequent use of psychiatric drugs within the Haredi community, at the request of the religious leaders, in order to help members conform with religious norms. Haredi Judaism is the most conservative form of Orthodox Judaism. It is sometimes referred to by outsiders as ultra-Orthodox. Haredim typically live in communities that have limited contact with the outside world. Their lives revolve around Torah study, prayer and family.

In December 2011, the Israel Psychiatric Association held a symposium entitled “The Haredi Community as a Consumer of Mental-Health Services”.  One of the speakers was Professor Omer Bonne, director of the psychiatry department at Hadassah University Hospital. Professor Bonne is claimed to have said that sometimes yeshiva students (yeshiva is a religious school) and married men should be given antidepressants even if they do not suffer from depression, because these drugs also suppress sex drive.

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Is it OK to have an affair if your partner is asexual?

I am desperate to start a sexual relationship with an old acquaintance but his wife, who has no interest in sex, would be appalled if she knew. Does that matter?

I read this in the Guardian’s ‘Life & Style’ section. Every week, a reader can present a dilemma she/he is faced with in her/his ‘private’ life and ask other readers for advice.

The full story goes like this:

I recently reconnected with an old classmate from my teens, and we fell in love almost immediately. We are in our early 50s and both in long marriages to good people whom we love. Leaving our spouses is not an option [….] Despite our desire for each other and the fact that his wife and my husband may be asexual, my friend and I have not slept with each other. My husband has given me permission to have a lover, but my friend’s wife would be appalled if he asked for the same set-up. Shouldn’t someone with no interest in sex and minimal romantic attachment to their spouse (they are like roommates) allow that spouse to fulfil her or his needs for stimulation and affection (discreetly) elsewhere without calling it “cheating”? My friend and I are moral people, but life is short.

Some of the readers’ replies are:

Whose word do we have for it that his wife is asexual?…Oh, only his… What a surprise.

Of course it is ok!  Go and fuck with everyone in sight and don’t bother! 🙂

Fortunately, other replies are more sophisticated. Most people seem to acknowledge the dilemma is real. None of the proposed options are ideal. For example, those who suggest asexual married couples should never have extramarital sexual relationships at the same time acknowledge that this solution is not ideal as sexual frustration may build up and may have devastating effects on the marriage. Those who suggest the individuals who are attracted to each other (henceforth ‘sexual’ individuals) should be honest about it to their partners, and that the ‘affair’ (consented to by all parties concerned) may be justified,  realise this will make their ‘asexual’ partners unhappy, with potentially devastating effects for both marriages. Perhaps some will find it obvious that one of these alternatives is better than the other, but surely we must except that whichever option one chooses, there is some harm, or risk of harm.

Could what Savulescu and Sandberg, in their 2008 paper, have called ‘love drugs’  help resolve the dilemma?

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Belgium: where rapists and muffin thieves are treated alike

Some recent prison sentences in Belgium, as reported in several articles in De Standaard, one of the major Flemish newspapers:

Repeated rape of 13-year old stepdaughter: 2,5 years
Repeated rape of 15-year old girl:2 years
Rape of 2 mentally disabled girls: 2,5 years
Repeated rape of 2 girls younger than 15, making one pregnant: 2 years
Violent rape of a student: 3 years
Rape of 3 boys by a bishop: o years (but he lost his job)
Stealing 2 bags of muffins from a supermarket’s rubbish container: 6 months
(Prisoners are often released after doing half of their sentence)

Is it just me, or is something not right here?

All between the ears? Homeopathy and experimental treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome

On Monday,  Belgian endocrinologist Francis Coucke appeared before the ‘Orde van Geneesheren’, a national body responsible for enforcing standards within the medical profession. Dr Coucke risks a two year suspension from the profession because his treatment (gamma globulines and home TPN) of patients with the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has been deemed non-scientific: it has not been proven to work in large studies. Last year, he and a neuropsychiatrist colleague were required to pay a 635,000 euro fine for prescribing medicines not licensed for CFS to CFS patients. The fine was imposed even though special authorization for the prescriptions had been granted by the medical advisor to the national healthcare service.
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Torture, but do no harm

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration redefined acts that were previously recognised as torture and thus illegal as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (EITs). From then on subjecting detainees to, for example, forced nudity, sleep deprivation, waterboarding and exposure to extreme temperatures could be legal. The line between torture and EITs is a fine one: the classification depends on the level of pain experienced.  

A report issued by the advocacy group ‘Physicians for Human Rights’ has revealed that to ensure that the aggressive interrogation practices conducted by the CIA qualified as EITs they were monitored by doctors and other medical personnel who guaranteed that the legal threshold for  ‘severe physical and mental pain’ was not crossed (NY Times, 6 June 2010).

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