The Butcher’s Line: Why I Can No Longer Be a "Walking Head"

The last few nights, some images have been returning with terrifying clarity.

Even during the day, they demand to be processed.

They take me back to my time as a PhD researcher at KU Leuven (2008-2013).

They take me back to the slaughter line.

I see the pigs and chickens being electrocuted.

The horses and cows stunned by a bolt gun.

I remember the sound of the carotid arteries being slashed, the blood gushing from their necks while their bodies shiver with the last tremors of life.

I remember the smell of death,

the clanking of the chains,

and the guts falling out as the bodies were sliced open.

And then there were the human sounds.

The workmen making sexually intimidating jokes.

I remember trying to catch gushing blood in a small lab tube while dodging a penis thrown in my direction by a worker—an attempt to knock over our freshly collected samples on the cold slaughterhouse floor.

Research vs. Reality

To be clear: this wasn't even my own PhD project.

My doctorate was about the genetics of summer eczema in horses.

My own experimental work was relatively mild—mostly taking blood samples from live horses (and the occasional 5mm skin biopsy under anesthesia).

But in our department, "collegiality" meant helping out on everyone’s projects.

That’s how I ended up at the slaughter line for others, or holding a pair of blunt scissors to decapitate one-day-old chicks to collect their blood.

At the time, I told myself: "If you want to be a researcher in animal production, you have to be able to look at the suffering." 

I had created a partition in my neck.

My head was a researcher;

my body was switched off.

I was a "walking head."

I convinced myself that staying "professional" meant not feeling a thing.

The Erosion of the Wall

It surprises me that these memories are surfacing so sharply now, but it shouldn't.

For the past two years, I’ve been training myself to feel again.

Through meditation, yoga, and somatic healing, I’ve been dismantling that partition.

A year ago, I became vegan. It has become second nature.

The idea that no animal has to suffer to sustain my life feels aligned.

But as the connection between my head and my body grows stronger,

I’m starting to look at my current research in health data with those same critical eyes.

New Friction, New Questions

I still love research.

I still dream of a world where data improves healthcare.

But my inner compass is feeling a new kind of resistance.

My "walking head" wants to follow the academic system,

but my body is whispering critical questions:

• Why more evidence? Why do we keep proving the same insights (like "prevention works") if they don't lead to change? Should we shift our energy to how we actually make change happen in real life?
  

• The hidden cost: What is the climate impact of the massive data infrastructures we build for AI? Is the gain always worth the environmental price?
  

• The human screen: If healthcare is about human connection, how does our technology affect that bond? I keep seeing the image of a doctor and patient literally separated by the computer screen I helped build.
  

Beyond "Publish or Perish"

My ego tells me to keep going:

develop more AI algorithms,

win more funding,

collect more data.

That is what the "publish or perish" system demands.

But my intuition tells me something else:

Don’t be a walking head. 

Only when body, mind, and soul are aligned can you do research that truly matters.

Perhaps the nightmares of the slaughterhouse are here to remind me of that.

They are a brutal warning of what happens when we disconnect our feelings from our actions in the name of "science."

A Call to My Network

I want to give a voice to what I feel,

even when it’s uncomfortable.

If these critical questions about the impact and ethics of our technology have ever crossed your mind (or your body), let’s talk.

We don't have to stay "just" walking heads.