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October 01, 2008
India is a vast country of immense diversity. This diversity is seen at its most extreme in people’s access to health care. The poor and marginalised sections of society, the people in remote rural regions of the country and those at risk of disease due to an unhealthy environment and inadequate ...
October 01, 2008
For ages medicine has been practised as an art of healing. Over the last century, however, it has undergone a revolution, augured by parallel advances in science and technology, and the definition and concept of "grading" a physician has evolved accordingly. In earlier times the yardstick for ass...
July 01, 2008
Dr Kumar Bastia's article . focuses on one of the important components of patient-physician interactions – ensuring that consent by a competent patient for therapy or surgical intervention is given voluntarily and after provision of relevant information that has been clearly un...
July 01, 2008
Caesarean section is a life-saving procedure firmly ensconced in obstetric practice. With the advances in anaesthetic services and improved surgical techniques, the morbidity and mortality of this procedure have come down considerably. This has, albeit wrongly, emboldened obstetricians to perform...
July 01, 2008
The late Arthur C Clarke, well-known science-fiction writer, said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Indeed, there would be no arguing about the magical abilities of the tools at our disposal today. There appears to be no slowing down, either, of the pace at ...
July 01, 2008
In this comment I propose to share my personal views on the ethical crisis facing the orthopaedic profession. I believe that this crisis is due to a serious collapse of the moral sphere that had sustained it for many generations.
July 01, 2008
Human tissues have always been used in medical institutions for research and teaching purposes. Until recently research and teaching were considered "altruistic" activities, and research projects at most passed through an institutional ethical clearance. However, with the growing biomedical indus...
July 01, 2008
Her grin couldn't get any wider. The 4-year-old pressed the toffee to her mouth, wrapper and all, and did not seem inclined to remove it from there. As I quickly took my cue and started examining her while she was thus distracted, her mother gently tried to explain to her that the wrapper had to ...
July 01, 2008
I did not know Dr Ramanadham personally, though he was active at the same time when I was also very active in the trade union and human rights movements. His work inspired many of us, for the involvement of medical professionals in doing something progressive is quite rare in India. Amongst su...
April 01, 2008
The accession to TRIPS post-2005 is a milestone in the history of India's pharmaceutical industry whichever way you look at it. Easy access, through reverse engineering, to innovator drugs marketed abroad has been stopped. Indian industry, if it still wants to make drugs under international paten...