Indian Guinea Pigs.

We Indian Guinea Pigs Say Oink, Oink.

Do we look like this to you ???

 Have you ever seen an Indian guinea pig? No, it’s not a newly discovered species of guinea pig. You have known it all along - just take a look into the mirror and there it is staring back at you. Yep, you are IT. And before you start getting angry at me for calling you a guinea pig when you think of yourself as a human being- please take a look at this article from the respected medical journal Lancet. As per the article the respected medical journal is immensely worried that a new law which makes compensation compulsory in case of side effects when testing new drugs on humans for the first time- will drive drug companies away from spending their research dollars in India. I mean, if gods forbid the drug company has to test it on Americans or Europeans and something goes wrong with the new drug, what will happen? Won’t they have to pay millions of dollars as compensation? But Indians have a billion plus population and if a few hundreds of the surplus population dies in the noble search for new drugs to cure diseases well it’s all for the good of humanity isn’t it?

Let me re-iterate again in this post- for those reading my blog for the first time that I am one of you- an on-again and off-again scientist myself and am not against research or development or progress in science. But as an Indian/Asian, the Hypocrisy of some of these Western scientists really sickens me. The HPV vaccine (Gardasil) which is being touted as the answer to all of America's sexually transmitted diseases problems has an ugly history of being tested on illiterate tribal girls (pre-teens with no sexual contact history) who were informed that they were getting Vitamin injections for good health. A Standing Committee of Parliamentarians has severely indicted the western company who sponsored the research and its local Indian counterpart which did the actual research on behalf of the American company - for a few dollars more, a few tainted, dirty dollars more.

And let’s not forget that it’s not only Big Pharma which exploits the illiterates and unfortunates as human guinea pigs- even the American Government is complicit in this exploitation. The National Institutes of Health which are federal institutes funded by American Taxpayers also outsource their clinical trials on patients to third world countries like India. Refer above article where the Lancet quotes the NIH of stopping 40 clinical trials in one month- July - isn’t it a whopping number for just one month? I am sure most American Tax payers are ignorant of where their tax dollars finally end up- in the hands of Biotech companies in Bangalore- for supporting unethical human research among the poor and illiterate. I am not blaming the common people of America, they are as much innocent of any of this as common Indians are- it’s the middlemen who are exploiting this situation of outsourcing clinical trials to third world countries- to make quick profits.

The Indian biotech community has its hands steeped in the proverbial 30 pieces of silver. But that is no surprise to us Indians, is it? I mean, we have a long and fruitful history of foreign collaboration. That is how a few hundred Englishmen of the East India Company were able to rule and loot India for two centuries. And our Clinical trial companies would indeed lament even the smallest degree of governmental oversight as it would cut into their profit dollars and reduce their yearly bonuses, god forbid. Hence they are conducting a massive disinformation campaign against the new law on compensation for Drug Trials.

And the respected medical journal Lancet has now joined the chorus of fear mongers in threatening to move away clinical trials from India into countries with even lesser regulatory oversight- maybe in the Asia Pacific or maybe in Sub-Saharan Africa? Where a tame dictator or two will accept their drug dollars and look the other way? Anyhow, the people of India will not lament that the multinational drug companies are taking their research dollars away. Good riddance is what the average Indian will feel. And if a few Biotech companies in Bangalore have to slash their budgets- well it’s all for the best - let them do in-country research on some disease which will actually be of interest to the people of our country.

And as for all those bleeding hearts who bleat about how this will retard the exploration of new cures for diseases, well let me speak as a common Indian citizen when I say that we Indians are glad to join the global mainstream at least in this- and wait for drugs which have already been tested somewhere and approved for use. Let us not be on the front line, the firing line of new drugs. This is one innovation we will gladly forgo and sit on the sidelines watching and applauding the brave heart pioneers. For when we look in the mirror we see only human beings - the same human beings like in America, in Europe and everywhere else in the world. So why do you see us as pigs?

How to Spot a Fake Doctor

How to Spot a Fake Doctor

Fake or Real? How to tell?

 

Last Sunday on a sudden whim I went to the gym - well maybe not that sudden a whim- for on Saturday my favorite pair of pants had failed to button itself onto me and so to assuage my guilty conscience about my expanding waistline and also due to the multiple phone calls from the gym trainers threatening to close down my membership if I did not put in an appearance at least occasionally. Once there I got down to it with gusto and at the end of a ten minute walkathon on the treadmill was totally exhausted and decided to take a water break.

As I stood there by the water fountain waiting my turn for the drink that revives, an old acquaintance, one of those regular iron pumpers who live for the gym, wandered over to  say "hi" to me. After making the usual jokes on my nonexistent washboard abs and irregular gym visits he introduced to me someone standing beside him as "this guy is a doctor too". I turned and said a polite "hi" to the stranger and that would have been an end to that if only the water fountain had been free but unfortunately the crowd around the water hadn't diminished yet and I found myself in the awkward position of having to make small talk with the new acquaintance.

So perfunctorily I asked the other doctor where he had studied. He hesitated a bit and dropping his voice in a shifty way said something like "in shankhurrah naturally". I thought I had misheard and asked him to repeat again and he murmured the same in an even quieter voice than before. I was genuinely puzzled for the name he gave me was the name of an eye hospital and not of any medical college. As far as I know, and I do know a few   things, a medical college is where you study and a hospital is where you work, you cannot study at an hospital anymore than you can work at a college (or maybe you can- if you already have a degree from somewhere else).

Something was definitely not right here or maybe it was my just my nasty suspicious nature, so I decided to go for broke and asked him right out "So, are you an ophthalmic surgeon?” He took his time weighing his answer and so to help him along with the process I volunteered with a "I probably know a couple of doctors there- colleagues of yours I presume?" that made it clear to him he had had it and could no longer dissemble and it was better to tell me the truth, so he mumbled "I am an optometrist". Ha-ha, I thought that explains it, so why couldn't he have come straight out and confessed this in the beginning and saved himself all the trouble. Anyway, not being an insensitive type who humiliates others, I decided to go along with his story and so said a loud "thank you, nice meeting you doctor" in front of the others and then I moved away from there to go and lift my burdens (for my sins) from the weight rack.

And now for those  wondering what was it all about -an optometrist is a technician who examines the eye for defects in eye power- just like a lab technician or a x-ray technician or an ecg technician - what we call a  para-medical staff and definitely not a real doctor qualified to do eye surgeries. But in a worrisome new trend a few greedy corporate hospitals have started short term Para Medical courses where they train people to assist doctors and to make more money by cheating the poor trainees they inform them that at the end of the course they may call themselves as doctors, which is strictly not true.

But in our country where anything goes we have quacks everywhere and anyone who has assisted a doctor for a couple of years or for that matter anyone who has read half a dozen health related articles on google- considers themselves a medical expert. So doctors are dime a dozen and it is up to each patient to identify if the person they are seeing is a real doctor or not. The best way to make sure- is to ask to see their original degree certificates but as most doctors mortgage this certificates with their banks to get loans for establishing their clinics we need a better way to judge if its a real doctor or just a pretend doctor, so i have taken the trouble to offer you a few hints on how to identify fakes

Hints to spot a fake doctor

1) I know OT but OR?

   If he/she says OR instead of OT - he/she is a fake. In India or for that matter anywhere else in the world except in the US of A where they do things perversely just to be different (don’t they even drive on the other side of the road?) - Any surgical operation is conducted inside an Operation theatre and not in an Operation room. We have places called M.OT- minor Operation Theater, G.OT - general operations theater or S.OT- specialty Operations Theater or doctors just generally refer to it as "the theatre". So if your doctor says "take the patient to the OR" run from there without looking back for he has seen too many episodes of the American Medical Sitcoms like Scrubs or House MD-  where they use the fictional term "OR"  when they meant to say "OT". So anyone who says OR and not OT is a TV doctor who got his degree watching the TV serial Grey's Anatomy which brings me immediately to my next red-flag.

We call it a Theater

2) Is it Gray or just Grey?

      If ask your doctor to spell the word gray’s anatomy and he uses the "E" instead of the syllable "A" for Gray then again run from him for he is just a TV doctor. The name in question "gray" originally refers to a very famous (and very dead) anatomist called Dr.Gray who wrote a big fat book of anatomy called Grays Anatomy- a book which will always stay on the library's dust laden shelf- for who (except body builders) will have the strength to lug around a 5000 page giant sized book when slimmer versions of recent authors are available. They call gray’s anatomy the bible of anatomy for a reason- like the bible it is only read by preachers or pastors- and never by the laity. So that’s about Gray with an "A's" anatomy. If your doctor refers to the other Grey's anatomy with an "e" rest assured the only anatomy he studied is the body of a female sitcom actresses called grey from the TV serial.

The Original Gray with "A"

The TV series with "E"

3) The Wiki-warrior aka the Google-worshipper

      This is someone who thinks that he knows medicine better than doctors because he owns a desktop, a laptop, a tablet and a phone with Internet connection. These people will astound you with facts and figures pulled straight out of recent research papers and offer gratuitous advice to all ailments, even unasked and they won’t stop dosing others with their medical opinions until they finally kill someone with their advice. Be aware that they are just well intentioned idiots who don’t set out to deliberately cheat you but do it only out of ignorance trusting to their half-baked understanding of medicine gained from reading questionable online medical websites.

Remember there is a reason that a medical education takes so many years to complete- doctors literally can kill you with their wrong (or even well intentioned) advice- so are you going to trust someone who read a few medical articles on Wikipedia yesterday and offers free advice on social media today? Real doctors rarely speak about such hot medical news because they don’t go by the most recent internet reports - they wait for the treatment or medicine to become standardized and widely accepted (however long it takes) and then only will they recommend it - making sure that even if the treatment doesn’t work as hyped at least their patients don’t get to die. So if someone starts with a "you know what, i read just yesterday in google/pubmed ...." just close your eyes and delete that chat thread.

Is this your Doctor ?

4) The white coat carriers -

        Doctors wear a variety of dresses but one thing that typifies them is the ubiquitous white coat. But not every doctor wears one all the time. In fact, doctors try not to wear these when not seeing patients. For one thing, wearing white coats in our hot Indian climate, especially over your everyday regular wear, is hot work and you are bathed in sweat all the time. For another the white coat is a dust and dirt magnet and it is so difficult to keep it spotless white all the time- as expected of a dutiful doctor. So when the doctor is not actually seeing a patient the coat is draped over the back of his chair or safely folded inside his locker - to keep it dust free. No doctor or at least no real doctor ever carries the white coat on his shoulders everywhere he goes to show that he is a doctor- only fakes do that even at bus stops and roadsides. Real doctors, by the time they graduate hate wearing those coats so much that only the threat of the chief doctors rounds makes them hurriedly don that coat. So if you see someone walking and showing off a white coat all the time- he is a fake.

Wear it or Fold it....NEVER carry around

5) Scrubs Vs Dress.

        American medical sitcoms often show doctors, all doctors, walking around in what they call scrubs. In India we call it theatre dress, never ever scrubs. And only surgeons get to wear it- not regular doctors who just wear their white coats when seeing patients. And even surgeons never walk around in it all day- for it is supposed to be worn only inside a sterile environment- an operation theatre and not where dust and germs can collect on it. Even the busiest of surgeons don’t actually live in that dress like they show on TV serials- we wear it only on entering the theatre and change out of it when leaving the theatre at the end of the surgery. And male and female doctors (in India) change in separate rooms unlike what they show on TV, which is a pity because the surest way to kill any in-house romance is to see a colleague in their (often weird) undies. So watch out for people who say "Scrubs".

Who wears this ALL DAY?

 So these are just a few of my ideas on how to identify a fake doctor who got his degree from watching TV serials. Please feel free to add your own methods of identification in the comments section below.

Riddick - Film Review

Riddick – The Chronicles of Riddick Part 3

Ok, let me give the verdict right at the beginning, before we go into the review- I give this movie only 3 stars out of a possible 5 - because the first half is awesome but the post interval second half drags.

Riddick is the third part of the sci-fi movie- Pitch Black which was followed by the second part- Chronicles of Riddick, a movie shown so often on all TV channels. If you haven’t see either of them - in Pitch Black the story starts with a prison ship crash landing on an abandoned planet where the guards and the prisoners have to join hands to survive the alien creatures which hunt them in the dark. Needless to say the hero Riddick, who is a prisoner for unspecified crimes, is one of the few to escape alive at the end of the movie.

The second part, Chronicles of Riddick tried to play on the success of the first movie, by building up the character of the lone warrior Riddick as a survivor against all odds and all enemies and trying to re-hash the story of Conan the Barbarian by making Riddick a king - the ruler of his enemies the Necromancers who had attacked his home world Furya earlier- at the end of the movie. And this is where this movie- Riddick-3 begins.

The movie starts with the Lord Marshal of the Necromancers- Riddick trying to reach his home planet Furya. But betrayed by his commanders, he is instead marooned in a nameless planet called Not-Furya. Attacked by his own bodyguards and left for dead, he survives the harsh and hostile environment by his brawn and bravery. The first 30 minutes of the movie has some of the best action scenes seen in recent films. It is one man against alien beast after beast after beast all trying to eat him. There are no dialogues - no one to speak to on that empty world- except for a few mumbled words in typical Vin Diesel style when he challenges the beasts to come and get him.

The CGI is awesome, especially the bizarre scorpion like thing with eyes between its pincers like tail. As the long thin serpent like head rises out of the swamp, we assume that it’s just a slimy serpent like thing, but only when Riddick cuts of its poisonous sting does the rest of the beast, a gigantic all-teeth creature come out of the mud to attack him. Like any sensible spacer, Riddick captures one of its young and inoculates himself and his pet dog with the venom to develop resistance to the poison which ensures that he survives all later attacks from the beast.

An awesome mix of scorpion, snake, lobster and alien

 After the furious first half spent on surviving the vicious planet, Riddick decides to get away from it by attracting a few mercenaries who will be willing to hunt him down for the ransom on his head. As he activates an emergency beacon, two groups of mercenaries land on the planet, one of them with a readymade box to carry Riddick's head. And then Riddick leaves them a message scrawled in blood- take one ship for yourself and leave me one ship if you want o live. The mercenaries ignore the warning, laughing it off and the entire later half of the movie is a remake of Jurassic Park - with a small group of survivors being hunted by a vicious beast- only in this case the beast is the hero of the movie Riddick. In the end the surviving mercenaries do just what he ordered- they flee in one spaceship, leaving him the other- for a possible part 4.

I have been a fan of Vin diesel ever since his Fast and Furious days. He along with Jason Statham makes some of the most uncomplicated action movies in recent days- where the hero doesn’t need to justify his every punch with a cathartic sob story. As such, I have to say I liked this movie too. But if only the second half had been a bit better written I would have loved this movie. If you are looking for a mindless action film with plenty of thrills and chills -this is the movie for you. If you haven’t yet seen this movie, do go - there is nothing better running in theaters now to spend a rainy afternoon in.