Pharmaceutical companies decide––what research is done, what results will be shown and what will be published. They also decide what guidelines will say!
Author: <span>Anil C. Anand</span>
“The mother of goodwill is free will, if untainted by evil.” ― Christian Hunt, The Dawn of Grace
Meet Professor DS
Prof DS and I work in the same hospital.
He is senior to me and I respect him for his quest for evidence based medicine. He retired nearly 12 years back from a Government Medical College as Senior Professor of Gastroenterology and was popular among his students as well as patients for his sincerity and forthrightness. These were also the qualities that drew me to him. After my retirement from Services when I came to work in this corporate hospital, I often used to turn to him for advice on various occasions.
“The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” –Voltaire (a French author, humanist, rationalist, and satirist; 1694 – 1778)
A newspaper story as trigger
On the morning of 20th Jan 2016, I was reading a newspaper story that said, “Young Jains shun good life to become monks” with a subheading “IIT-M girl leaves for Himalayas.” (See Figure below)
Something flashed in my mind – a conversation I had with AJ a few months back. And I urgently wanted to talk to him.
COVID-19 vaccine has been approved recently for emergency use authorisation. This is possibly the first vaccine that is being lauched without ascertaining its safety and efficacy to any degree of certainity. Government plans to administer it to the health care workers first. Are you ready to be the guinae pig?
A recent report has revealed that the universe is conscious. There is a long scientific and mathematical logic behind this assertion called Integrated Information Theory. Isnt it interesting that same knowledge has been taught by Vedanta for thousands of years.
Never lived, Merely survived. A scripted life full of sighs, and sugar coated lies, Read the epitaph of the young old man, Who died. ---Anonymous
An unusual question
DS1 asked an unexpected question, “AC, which of the two sayings is more true in your opinion? The meek shall inherit the earth or Veer bhogya vasundhara?”
References
| ↑1 | Names of the characters in this conversation are imaginary, though every fact stated is real |
“I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde.” Robert Louis Stevenson in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
In the queue
I was standing in the queue for a RT-PCR test to be done. I looked down and gazed at the round markings drawn on the floor. Were they really one meter apart? One could easily talk to the person ahead or behind in the queue. The person ahead of me was in a wheelchair with two attendants. The person behind me was a middle aged lady busy on her mobile.
"Everything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening."1
Coffee has been one of the most commonly consumed beverages in the world. More recently, the ‘quarantine’ coffee, or its more fanciful name ‘the Dalgona Coffee’ has taken the world by storm. It looks stunningly beautiful and eminently instagrammable. It has a texture and taste like silky ice-cream. But I hate to shatter your dreams. It may not match up to the real thing. Yes, I am talking purely from the health perspective.
References
| ↑1 | There is some question as to the origination of this quote. It has been attributed to Alexander Woollcott, W. C. Fields, Frank Rand. According to The Quote Investigator(https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/09/fattening/), the first known instance of the expression was used on Woollcott’s radio program and attributed to an individual named Frank Rand. |
"Authors do not choose a story to write, The story chooses us."
Richard P. Denny, Author1
Once in a while, I get a phone call from my old students, asking about my welfare in this pandemic. News reports in the media on escalation of SARS-COV-2 infection among healthcare workers could be a reason.2,3 The concern expressed by them gives me a warm feeling. It also allows me a peek into the mind of this generation.
References
| ↑1 | https://www.idlehearts.com/1648311/authors-do-not-choose-a-story-to-write-the-story-chooses-us |
| ↑2 | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-nurses/over-90000-health-workers-infected-with-covid-19-worldwide-nurses-group-idUSKBN22I1XH |
| ↑3 | And Nguyen LH, Drew DA, Joshi AD, et al. Risk of COVID-19 among frontline healthcare workers and the general community: a prospective cohort study. Preprint. medRxiv. 2020;2020.04.29.20084111. Published 2020 May 25. doi:10.1101/2020.04.29.20084111) |
Often a physician is placed in a situation where his ethics is in conflict with his morality. How does he or she deal with this situation?
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