Anti-ScienceFeminismQuickiesReligionSkepticism

Global Quickies: Bad Judgement, Catholic Antivaxxers, and a Dictator’s Quest for Longevity

NIGERIA
Dr Adadevoh is being widely praised for helping prevent a more devastating Ebola outbreak in Nigeria, now declared free of the virus. She diagnosed and kept in the hospital a Liberian ebola patient who constantly wanted to flee to seek help from a so-called miracle Pentacostal pastor. Dr Stella Ameyo Adadevohand 11 other hospital workers were infected.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
A Dubai Sharia Court granted a divorce to a man after he discovered that his wife was possessed by a djinn and refused to have sex with him.

UK
Legal reforms were announced to try to stop FGM, including seizing the passports of girls at risk of being taken abroad to suffer the procedure, and mandatory medical examination of girls in danger and require potential victims to live at a named address so that the authorities can check on their well-being.

NORTH KOREA
Kim Il Sung’s personal physician talks about her research at a “Longevity Center” set up to help in Kim’s quest for a longer life. One of the treatments was blood transfusions from chosen citizens in their twenties who were fed special nutritious food beforehand. He died at 82.

CANADA
“Judge says forcing aboriginal girl to stay in chemo is to ‘impose our world view on First Nation culture’. With chemo, childhood leukemia now has a survival rate in the range of 90%, and remains a likely death sentence without it, experts say.”

SOUTH SUDAN (Trigger Warning)
There has been a sharp rise in the number of sexual assaults in South Sudan since fighting between two ethnic groups, the Dinka and the Nuer, erupted in December.

IRAN
“At least four women in Iran’s cultural capital were attacked with acid this week. Although police have arrested four men in connection to the acid-throwing, about 2,000 protesters marched on the department of justice in Ifsahan to decry the crime, which is relatively rare there.”

NIGERIA
While still expecting the 200 abducted girls to be freed as part of a ceasefire negotiations between Boko Haram and the government, dozens of women and girls from two villages were abducted this week by suspected Boko Haram militants.

KENYA
“Kenya’s government has dismissed allegations made by the country’s Catholic Church that a tetanus vaccine can cause sterility in women.”

Featured image: Iranian protesters- AP

Daniela

Born and raised in Mexico City, Daniela has finally decided to abdicate her post as an armchair skeptic and start doing some skeptical activism. She is currently living in Spain after having lived in the US, Brazil and Italy. You can also find her blogging in Spanish at esceptica.org.

Related Articles

One Comment

  1. Well, the girl has a point. No, not about rejecting mainstream medicine. What I mean is, she has a point about consent (which, of course, forcing her to take chemo would be a violation of). Though making Indians look like fools in the process is bad.

    Seems like a pretty cut-and-dried case of medical ethics. Something like vaccines, where noncompliance is demonstrably harmful to others as well, is far muddier, yet we still bend head-over-heels to accommodate antivaxxers.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to top button