Order of the Supreme Court of India in the matter of Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS & Others Vs Union of India & Others dated 24/02/2025. The Supreme Court (SC), February 24, 2025 has directed all states to file their affidavits addressing concerns raised about antiretroviral therapy (ART) drugs …
LEPROSY afflicts about 12 million people worldwide, of which about a third are in India. Though the bacteria that causes leprosy -- Mycobacterium leprae -- was discovered 100 years ago, it is only recently that Indian scientists at the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) in Bombay and at the National Institute …
Indian lasers among the world's best The Centre for Advanced Technology in Indore is playing a pivotal role in the indigenisation of lasers and making them easily available. SOME OF the world's most advanced lasers, with a wide range of industrial and medical applications, are now being made in India …
When the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus was discovered a decade ago, researchers were confident of finding a way to check its growth. Today, about 13 million people have been infected with HIV, but science is still groping in the dark for a cure for AIDS. NEVER underestimate your enemy. But …
RESEARCHERS are unsure of being able to devise a simple series of shots that would give a person lifetime protection against AIDS. To do that, a vaccine will have to ward off all the current HIV strains as well as any future mutants. Vaccines are basically harmless imposters intended to …
HIV IS fast spreading its tentacles in India. According to the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), more than 300 people have contacted AIDS since the first case was reported in India in 1986. It is feared that by the turn of the century, about five million persons in the country …
• WITH WESTERN governments trying to cut health-care costs and consequently, the pharmaceuticals market becoming more competitive, many companies including Glaxo are keen to move into untapped markets. Glaxo chief executive Richard Sykes insists that to be successful, the company must develop "innovative medicines". "Every week, 3,000 genes are being …
A BHUTANESE princess, Deiky Wang-chuck, was arrested in Taiwan for trying to smuggle 22 Asian rhinoceros horns into the country, in the largest ever seizure of such horns (New Scientist, October 16, 1993). Taiwanese authorities say Wang-chuck admitted she expected to sell the horn -- weighing 14 kgs -- for …
Dense cinchona and silver oak forests covering 3,000 ha in Valparai in the Annamalai hills will be replaced by tea plantations if the state-run Tamil Nadu Plantation Corporation Ltd (TNPCL) has its way. TNPCL was set up in 1976 to rehabilitate Tamil refugees from tea gardens in Sri Lanka. Since …
The drug controller of India is considering banning anti- diarrheal drugs for children because they are increasingly replacing oral rehydration solutions -- the first-line treatment for replenishing lost water and salts in the body. The ban will be part of a plan to ban "irrational" combinations, which is likely to …
Multinational pharmaceutical companies Hoechst and Gist Brocades (GB) have locked horns, through their Indian representatives Ranbaxy and Max India, over a proposed joint venture with the public sector company, Hindustan Antibiotics Ltd (HAL), on penicillin-G, which is widely used for making semi-synthetic penicillin (SSP) intermediates. GB is the world leader …
ONE EXPECTS doctors to refrain from overdosing the patient. But do they really do that? Apparently not, as is evidenced by experiences in some European countries such as France and Italy. The governments of these nations are spending twice as much on medicines per capita than others without any significant …
* PATENT wars are heating up. British drug manufacturer Glaxo has won one patents case against a Canadian manufacturer, but faces a second against another. Both claim Glaxo's products -- stable and unstable forms of Zantac -- are not different enough to justify different patents. Zantac is the world's best-selling …
CANCERS occur when some cells break free from the body's control and multiply prolifically. That's the classical view. But now there is a new way of looking at cancer -- it may be because cells are not dying fast enough. Advocates of this novel view are confident that if death-defying …
DESIGNER science is coming of age. Scientists are combining the growing understanding of processes and structures at the molecular, atomic and subatomic levels with computer modelling techniques to synthesise new products. And, they are now discovering that their theoretical simulations are borne out by reality. Scientists hitherto used trial-and-error methods …
ASPIRIN -- the world's most popular pain-killer -- if consumed regularly, may reduce the risk of cancer of the digestive system, suggests a study undertaken by Michael J Thun and his team from the American Cancer Society and the Emory University School of Public Health in Atlanta. They found a …
In response to the threat posed by multinational companies to the Himalayan yew (Taxus baccata), which yields the anti-cancer drug taxol, the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has launched a conservation programme for the tree. Having depleted yew resources in the US, drug manufacturers have now turned to …
NEXT TIME you buy an Ayurvedic medicine, don't forget to read the list of ingredients used. For all you know, it might be an allopathic preparation being passed off as Ayurvedic medicine. N A Kshirsagar of King Edward Memorial Hospital in Bombay recently found that a mixture of aspirin and …
CULTS are dangerous and the world has never been free of them. But they are not all necessarily religious in nature. The latest in the bandwagon is the herbal cult The herbal cult was born in America -- aren't they all? -- out of a call to return to one's …
DRUG ADDICTION is not a modern age phenomenon for it seems even the ancients knew the pleasures of junkyism, claim scientists (The Lancet, Vol 341, No 8843). Franz Parsche and his colleagues at the Institute for Anthropology and Human Genetics in Munich, Germany, examined hair and tissue samples taken from …
AT A SMALL function in New Delhi in August, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) honoured six of its scientists who had obtained international patents for their inventions. Three scientists had patents registered in the US and the others in Europe. N R Subbaram, adviser to CSIR"s patents …
