The false memory syndrome: Clinical/legal issues for the prosecution

Early trauma, especially alleged recollected sexual or ritualistic abuse, has dominated both the clinical and legal systems recently. The clinical/legal challenge is to discern between true abuse and false memories. Modern medical technology has provided new insights into the operation of the brain along with the central and peripheral nervous systems and their relationship to the endocrine system. We now have a better understanding of how our system processes trauma and severe anxiety. An understanding of trauma recollection and client's susceptibility to causal suggestions from the neuropsychological perspective is crucial when these types of abuses are alleged.     

The Role of UNEP and UNDP in Multilateral Environmental Agreements

This study examines the role of the UN’s programmes for environment and development (UNEP and UNDP) in the genesis and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). This is set in the wider context of the changing dominant focus of the international agenda, from ‘environment’ at the Stockholm Conference in 1972, to ‘environment and development’ at Rio in 1992, and ‚sustainable development’ in Johannesburg in 2002. UNDP is a development organisation strongly rooted in its country office network. Its role is becoming increasingly normative however, particularly since 2002 when UNDP opted to root most of its activities on the Millennium Development Goals. UNEP, as an environmental organisation has been successful at catalysing MEAs at the global and regional level; but without a significant increase in its budget over 30 years, its capacity has been spread very thinly. Many of the institutional arrangements for MEAs have effectively become independent of UNEP resulting in a very loosely and sometimes poorly coordinated network. Two case studies are used to illustrate the current institutional arrangements: UNEP’s Regional Seas Conventions and Protocols, and the Convention for Biological Diversity. These illustrate the fragmentation of current institutions, the need for strengthened technical and scientific support, the importance of addressing problems at their root causes and the need to increase the devolution of global governance to the regional level. Satisfying the identified needs requires actions within the remit of both UNEP and UNDP. It is argued that current institutional arrangements have not kept pace with the requirements of evolving policy. As part of a reform process, one option may be to merge the two programmes into a single structure that conserves and strengthens vital technical functions but enables a balanced and integrated approach to sustainable development.     

Asian Sexuality or Singapore Exceptionalism?

Is there such a thing as “Asian sexuality”? Do Asians approach sex in particular ways that are uniquely cultural? Some “Eastern” sex manuals published in English cover the “tao” and tantric philosophies of sex, highlighting the pleasures of Asian styles. Yet, any discourse on “Asian sexuality” must be an orientalist one that pits the West versus the East (Asian). In Singapore, there is an official discourse of sexuality that similarly essentializes West versus East (Asian), and this discourse has long served as the rationale or alibi for repressive sexual policies. In particular, these official constructions make “Asians” as sexually conservative. This essay deconstructs the meaning of “Asian sexuality” as used in the Singapore context and shows the contradictions inherent in official policies that adopt Western colonial laws to proscribe certain sexual practices—albeit in the name of “Asian values”.     

A pilot study of the effects of gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist therapy on brain activation pattern in a man with pedophilia

Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists, such as leuprorelin, are recommended in the patients with pedophilia at highest risk of offending. However, the cerebral mechanisms of the effects of these testosterone-decreasing drugs are poorly known. This study aimed to identify changes caused by leuprorelin in a pedophilic patient's brain responses to pictures representing children. Clinical, endocrine, and fMRI investigations were done of a man with pedophilia before leuprorelin therapy and 5 months into leuprorelin therapy. Patient was compared with an age-matched healthy control also assessed 5 months apart. Before therapy, pictures of boys elicited activation in the left calcarine fissure, left insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and left cerebellar vermis. Five months into therapy, all the above-mentioned activations had disappeared. No such activations and, consequently, no such decreases occurred in the healthy control. The results of this pilot study suggest that leuprorelin decreased activity in regions known to mediate the perceptual, motivational, and affective responses to visual sexual stimuli.