Danish? Dutch? Film? Accuracy?
Thanks for the nice article in Friday’s Bruin about the Dutch
Film Festival currently in progress at Melnitz. However, why on
earth the photocaption on Page 56 about a DANISH movie when your
article concerns DUTCH movies? That’s like confusing tennis with
badminton. Since the picture shows folks eating herring precisely
the way they do in Holland, I suspect that the editor somehow
confused Dutch with Danish. If this turns out to be true, please
send him or her to a remedial geography class by last Thursday. In
the interim, assuming that you have indeed made an error, I’ll
remain happy that none of you newspaper folks have decided to make
a career out of neurosurgery (Oh, it was the left lobe you wanted
removed! Sorry!).
Robert Kirsner Professor of Dutch and Afrikaans
Department of Germanic Languages
Chemical castration works
I read the article on chemical castration while on the
stairmaster and formulated this response with much
perspiration.
In the Sept. 27 edition of the Daily Bruin an article by Brian
Campbell was published which espoused the ACLU’s position on
chemical castration. Along the way he notes that in Europe, where
chemical castration is being used, the recidivism rate among child
molesters has fallen from 100 percent to 2 percent. What more
information is necessary? He then states that chemical castration
is not effective. The only argument he uses to back that assertion
 a theoretical one at that  is that people can rape
without a penis. Perhaps that is how the 2 percent of molesters who
managed to repeat their offense despite the chemical castration
accomplished their crime.
I wonder how Mr. Campbell would feel if his daughter, niece or
other loved one became a victim of a child molester. Sometimes the
root problem is in fact a difficult one to solve. An interim
solution is often necessary and is not in and of itself bad. For
instance, in some forms of congenital heart disease a temporizing
operation needs to be performed before the child is old enough and
strong enough to survive the final, corrective procedure. If one
more child would have become the victim of a repeat molester then
the price for waiting for the perfect solution would have been too
high.
Mr. Campbell also argues that the child molester still has a
right to his body, but that does not give them the right to any
child’s body. That is of course what would happen, since in
pre-chemical castration Europe we saw that the molesters were
essentially all repeat offenders. Sometimes the gangrenous toe has
to be sacrificed for the well being of the rest of the body.
In our topsy-turvy society the victims of crimes like these do
not have advocates as vociferous or as powerful and resourceful as
the ACLU. What parent would offer up their victimized child to the
media? These crimes are therefore suffered in private all too
often. They have a life-long effect and as yet we have no perfect
solution, no perfect cure for that either.
Samuel Ong Fellow in Emergency Medicine Olive View UCLA
Medical Center
Lungren interview misses point
Daily Bruin reporter Phillip Carter really pinned down
California Attorney General Dan Lungren in his Sept. 23 interview
 not a single interesting question, not a single revealing
response. And there was no mention of Lungren’s midsummer publicity
stunt, the storming of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers’ Club.
Carter should have asked the enthusiastic drug warrior "What kind
of asshole raids medical-marijuana clubs for kicks? What do you
have against AIDS and cancer patients that you would deny them
self-treatment?" Maybe then we would have seen what a shithead the
guy really is.
Cosmo Wenman Fifth year Economics
Biased ad does not belong in Bruin
I was disappointed yesterday to find the "Human Life Alliance"
advertising supplement inserted into the Registration Issue of the
Daily Bruin. It is extremely unfair to present such a quantity of
one-sided and inflammatory information to our students. In an
effort to garner funds, the Daily Bruin neglected its
responsibility to us. I am deeply concerned, and I wanted to let
you know.
Kevin Heslin Graduate Student School of Public
Health