Half of what a doctor knows today will be proven wrong, within a decade. Doctors rely on incomplete knowledge to make many medical decisions. When it comes to predictions about disease, patients should not expect too much of our doctors!’
Author: <span>Anil C. Anand</span>
Current COVID-19 pandemic has pushed into relative obscurity, another pandemic that has been raging for over one decade. By confining people to their homes, COVID-19 may make that pandemic of obesity worse. So any simple treatment that promises a dramatic benefit, evokes great excitement. A Recent paper published in a popular journal dealt with one such simple measure-intermittent fasting. It also brought back some forgotten memories from my childhood.
During the last few months, COVID-19 pandemic has turned the world upside down. There is one question that bedevils every mind, ‘when will this pandemic end?’ or ‘when will we go back to normal life?’ Can we answer these questions with any degree of certainty with existing knowledge?
In the absence of any ethical guidelines, corporate hospitals are like unbridled horses. How to utilise them for public good during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some time back (November 2019), our institute had organized an international workshop on ‘Clinical Research Ethics.’ It was an agenda setting workshop for our institution and had representations from several other institutes such as the Department of Bioethics, National Institute of Health (NIH), USA, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Niti Ayog and Drug Controller (India), CDSCO. We were informed that ICMR is the watchdog of bio-ethical practices in clinical research in India and had formulated guidelines as good as anywhere else in the world. ICMR had placed mechanisms to guide institutional ethical committees in matters of research if required. There were also discussions about special situations such as research on vulnerable populations such as children, tribal and the underprivileged.
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