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Category: Editorials
July 01, 2009
One of the biggest epidemics of Hepatitis B in India occurred in February-March 2009. The centre of the outbreak was Modasa taluka in Sabarkantha district, Gujarat. Within a few weeks, nearly 240 people were reported to have been affected by Hepatitis B and over 70 succumbed to the disease. The N...
April 01, 2009
Every year, students joining professional colleges all over India start classes with the excitement and trepidation that accompany a new venture, particularly one that will shape their lives. However, very often, the initial euphoria of getting admission into a coveted course gives way to feeling...
April 01, 2009
In August 2008, a report in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation on ethical concerns about clinical trials in India quoted CM Gulhati, editor of the Monthly Index of Medical Specialities, as saying: "Fewer than 40 ethics committees in India are properly constituted and functioning." Whil...
April 01, 2009
Recently, hospitals in Sri Lanka and Gaza were bombed. In January 2009, a week after being declared a United Nations Relief and Works Agency area for humanitarian goods for displaced Palestinians in Gaza City, the facility was bombed by the Israeli military. This bombing killed civilians in a dec...
January 01, 2009
Only eight years after a major revision of the Declaration of Helsinki (DoH), this highly egarded document providing ethical guidance for research involving human beings has now undergone another revision . This prompts the question why the World edical Association (WMA), which issues the Declara...
January 01, 2009
In 2007, the ethical landscape surrounding medical male circumcision (MC) suddenly lurched and shifted when the World Health Organization and UNAIDS declared unequivocally that the "efficacy of male circumcision in reducing female to male transmission of HIV has been proven beyond reasonable doub...
October 01, 2008
The secular public discussion on abortion in India has generally been centred around the need to prevent sex selective abortion because of its social consequences. Abortion has also been discussed in the context of maternal health, where it is feared that contraception use is substituted by re...
October 01, 2008
The broad goal of teaching forensic medicine to undergraduate students is to produce doctors who are well informed and capable of making observations and inferring conclusions, by logical deductions ,to set enquiries on the right track in criminal matters/medico-legal cases. This requires know...
July 01, 2008
A recent news item reported on the Indian Medical Association’s decision to endorse the Tropicana brand of fruit juices and Quaker brand of oats. The director of the Centre for Science and Environment, Sunita Narain, has objected to the association’s actions, calling them “advertisement tricks”.
July 01, 2008
The dispute between the country’s minister for health and the director of its premier institution for medical education highlights the immaturity of our institutions which are used for personal battles instead of public policy. We should consider whether these men, and the institutions that they ...