Rumi Nations

We often fail to appreciate the marvels of modern medicine. What would have been considered "miracles" once upon a time are now merely   routine . That magic combination of Ethambutol, isoniazid, pyrazinamide, and rifampicin worked for me just fine as it does for   millions . No need to go for Second Line or Third Line therapies. Ordinary housewives are living ordinary lives taking care of their kids while having been a patient with CML for over a decade. And they have no obvious external physical indicators of their being cancer patients. The miracle medicine is of course Glivec. Patients are routinely cured from acute leukemia through the use of bone marrow transplants. Former U.S. Congresswoman from Aizona Gabby Giffords was shot point blank and had a bullet pass through her brain but modern trauma care including   craniotomy   saved her life. Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with   ALS   in his early 20s and doctors told him that he would ...

When people are ‘lucky’, they tend to reflect on their good luck and tend to thank providence profusely for it and reach conclusions such as “Life is Beautiful.” I always wonder if life is indeed beautiful – and, even more pertinently, how valid an argument it is to reach that conclusion when one happens to get “lucky” by chance. I recall numerous instances of people who survive natural disasters thanking the Lord for letting them live while others died. Without citing any particular incident, let us just think for a moment how fair that is – to thank God for letting you live. How about the others who died? Were they at fault somehow and deserved to die? The recent serial blasts in Jaipur killed many people. Did the good Lord decide that these people were unworthy of living and so deserved to die and so the terrorists were in fact agents of God. So, why spend so much resource in trying to find them and punish them? The September 11, 2001 attacks in the US were carried out by pe...

I wish I had the voice of Homer To sing of rectal carcinoma, Which kills a lot more chaps, in fact, Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked. Yet, thanks to modern surgeon’s skills, It can be killed before it kills Upon a scientific basis In nineteen out of twenty cases. I noticed I was passing blood (Only a few drops, not a flood). So pausing on my homeward way From Tallahassee to Bombay I asked a doctor, now my friend, To peer into my hinder end, To prove or to disprove the rumour That I had a malignant tumour. They pumped in BaS0 4 .

Alzheimer's is a strange disease yet to yield to modern medicine. Cancer can be pretty devastating in its own way but Alzheimer's exacts quite a different toll by stripping a person of his or her personality. It's quite odd and perhaps impossible really to imagine what it would feel like to lose memory slowly and inexorably to a point where one no longer recognizes one's closest family members or friends. I do not even know how to analyze this disease ... where does this fit in in the story and context of human evolution for example. And why is it that this scourge is only rearing its ugly head now and not before in our civilization's history. Well, that's perhaps simple. The average human life span is increasing thanks to modern medicine and that unfortunately creates other demons that were so far latent — from cancer to heart disease to Alzheimer's. Well, humanity has seen and come to terms with other challenges and I hope we'll deal with this challeng...

Gina Kolata talks about the less than expected rates of success of some medicines that might help 'deter' some forms of cancer here ... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/health/research/13prevent.html?_r=1&em Cancer is a strange beast ... there is still an enormous amount of misinformation and fear in the public's mind about the disease and what it is. Some people have an irrational amount of fear of the disease and think that it's a sort of a death sentence. That's far from the truth. 80 percent of patients suffering from childhood leukemia are cured. Enormous strides have been made in the treatment of other forms of cancer such as Chronic Myelogeous Leukemia (CML) and prostate cancer and breast cancer. It remains a difficult challenge nevertheless for medical science. Our increasing insights into the structure of the human genome will help tame a few more types of cancer over the years. But ultimately cancer will win. It's simply a basic premise of the des...

It's a bit perplexing to see so much coverage being provided to stars' birthdays ... not to mention other aspects of their lives such as their love affairs, marriages, divorces and what not! This is the kind of brainless entertainment that people prefer and enjoy instead of "serious" stuff. Who wants to understand the complexities of space exploration when one can simply enjoy some gossip about the latest twists and turns in some star's love life? Who bothers about the complexities of biological sciences and the complex nature of the battles that scientists are fighting with diseases such as cancer and AIDS? Better to just listen to the sacharine sweet advice of some God man who advises that all is well with the world and there's an Almighty and benevolent and watchful God watching over all our actions. I wish of course that people would tire of inanities some day and focus on the real issues and realize that our destiny is shaped by the actions we take and is...

One year is an age in politics. As President Obama nears one year since his historic win, I wonder if anyone is still hopeful of revolutionary change in Washington. The New York Times article that looked at the Obamas' marriage provides instructive insights as to who they are as individuals. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/magazine/01Obama-t.html As far as the issue of bringing revolutionary change to Washington is concerned, that's a different issue ... We live in this media saturated world where every little issue is maginfied out of all proportions. So, if anything truly revolutionary were to take place, people who are affected would react so vociferously to it that the media would project that as if Armageddon was at hand. For example, I believe that "Wall Street" should be a backwater of America and the industrial heartland of Detroit and Flint and the many factory townships across Pennsylvania and the Mid-West should be the true prioneers and leaders. Everyone...

Some extraordinary human stories that cancer brings into shart relief have been highlighted by Gina Kolata's story about the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/health/research/25anderson.html?em The battle continues - between medical science and cancer. Who will win? That is probably not going to be decided in my lifetime ... Humans have won occasional battles - some miracle drugs that cure some forms of cancer and other forms of treatment that manage to keep cancer under control ... The war continues ... I was just wondering why is it that it's only our spcies that suffers from this scourge - what about all the other thousands and millions of animal species? Why don't they suffer from cancer? Or, may be, they do, but evolution ensures that they don't survive and are thus weeded out.

Researchers have urged WHO to "publicly condemn homeopathy as a treatment for serious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria." The researchers are concerned as some patients have reportedly paid with their lives as a result of choosing homeopathy over more effective treatment options. Homeopathy may not be the only culprit of this nature — one wonders how many Indians take the nonsense propounded by sadhus/yogis and other varieties of Godmen seriously. These self-proclaimed "learned" folk don't hesitate to propound remedies to all sorts of diseases — whether it be AIDS or cancer or any other life-threatening or serious condition. These claims are never put to a scientific scrutiny — the kind of scrutiny that every drug goes through before getting to the market. These Godmen are allowed to escape scot-free no matter how many people might have died as a result of following their hair-brained advice. People of India are of course very fond of " miracle cu...

Researchers have found a connection between excessive drinking of alcohol and the incidence of bowel cancer in that population — apparently, more than seven drinks per week leads to a 60 percent greater probability of acquiring the disease. The ill-effects of smoking are of course too well known to need any repetition whatsoever. One is likely to acquire — or the probability of one's acquiring increases — about 50 different types of cancer on account of smoking. With all the links that researchers have found between smoking and disease in particular, one would have thought that non-smokers would be immortal. But that doesn't seem to be the case apparently . . .