In India, a country with a vast population and a diverse socio-economic fabric, healthcare remains fraught with challenges including disparities in access. These socio-economic disparities are deep, and they influence health outcomes. It is imperative to bridge these gaps amid the ongoing epidemiological, nutritional and demographic transitions that are bringing …
Living in Delhi these days is a toxic experience. The water is 'filthy. The air is foul. Everybody knows all that but nobody does much. A few weeks ago, I had a chance to address a group of medical scientists at a local medical college, one which serves a relatively …
RESEARCHERS in theus areexcited abouta recent breakthrough which links the BRCA-1 gene to most cases of breast cancer. The finding provides clin- ching evidence that establishes a connection between abnormalities in the BRCA- I and the occurence of breast cancer. just last year the scenario was quite different because scientists …
A GROUP of 270 fiery advocates forming the National Breast Cancer Coalition, has been persistently and successfully lobbying with the government to increase federal funds on cancer research. Fran Visco, a breast cancer survivor in the us leads this Coalition. The government was spending around us $90 million on breast …
EDWARD A Neuwclt and his colleagues at the Oregon 1-iealth Sciences University in Portland have recorded success in transporting potentially therapeutic viruses into the grey matter of rats - a finding that has far reaching implications for the treatment of brain tumours. The shortcomings of surgery and chemotherapy especially highlight …
WHAT is the role of metals in human health? Ten-year-old Salman had blood cancer. Physicians at the New Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences, gave him not more than three days. In desperation, his parents took to him to an ayurvedic physician, who administered a concoction containing mercury, arsenic …
In July this year, a physician called Gary Pearce of the Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society of New South Wales, wrote to Vaidya Baiendu Prakash asking him to immediately stop his metal therapy as it contained proven toxic substances like arsenic and mercury. He said it was folly to confuse the …
Tantric practitioners experimented with achieving physicl immortality. The by-products of these experiments were adopted into ayurvecia as medicines. Kaflali, the black sulphide of mercury which is the basis of a wide variety of Ayurvedic medicines! mentioned in the 7th century treatise Ashfanga Hrdaya by Vagabhata. By the time Sharngadhara wrote …
Metals to medicines is an elaborate affair- For the medicines to be effective. it is important to get the right material. First one has to ascertain the typo and geographical source of the Pro, scribed minerals and herbs. For Instance, an iron are found'in Rajasthan may be more 'potent' than …
China's rising income levels could literally go tip in smoke. A recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association maintains that lung cancer rates for the Chinese population was increasing by 4.5 per cent per annum and that 900,000 people a year could be killed by lung cancer …
The campaign against the US tobacco industry is likely to gain momentum in view of a recent judgement in Californian Court. The jury awarded US $2 million as compensation to o 70-year-old 'man who alleged that he had got cancer (myso- tbehoma) from asbestos in Kent cigarette filters. The company, …
GENETICALLY engineered, unusually tomatoes, which have a protect mechanism against cancer and heart diseases, may come up as the answer to the caloric-conscious'craving for heal food (New Scientist, Vol 147, No 1995) Developed by Peter Bramley any colleagues at the Royal Holloway College, London, these tomatoes contain large amounts of …
A RECENT study carried in the Journal of the us National Cancer Institute in Bethesda says that migrating to a country with a high breast cancer incidence may enhance the risk of dying from the killer disease for immigrant women from traditionally low-risk countries. Enrich V Yliewer of the Australian …
THE fact that mother's milk protects babies from lung and gut infections is well established. While investigating the mechanism of this unique property of breast milk, Swedish scientists recently stumbled accidentally on an unexpected effect of it - the ability to fight cancer, reports New Scientist (Vol 147, No 1992, …
YET another clue has been found which might help unravel the mystery surrounding cancer. Three chemists, working at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, us, have discovered how nitrosamines -- normally inert organic compounds found in cigarette smoke, some processed foods, medicines and cosmetics -- could be activated in the …
After the disappointing performance of Interleukin-2 in suppressing cancer cell growth, scientists have pinned their hopes on its successor -the Interleukin-12 (IL-12). Interleukins are a group of proteins produced by special blood cells that improve immune-system efficiency. Recently, Judah Folkman and his colleagues at Harvard University reported that it eliminated …
Recent research conducted by the scientists of the Shirdi Sai Baba Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, and Kasturba Medical College and Hospital, at Manipal in Karnataka, to study the mortality and incidence of cancer in children under 15 in Bombay, reveals that potential years of life are lost by major …
The Women's Environmental Network in Britain recently coordinated the launch of a National Breast Cancer Coalition, uniting breast cancer groups, health professionals, researchers, sufferers and survivors. Coalition members feel that the disease is, to a large extent, preventable, but has so far only figured on the agenda of some charities …
WHILE localised prostate cancer is not fatal, its metastatic spread - occurrence or development of secondary foci of cancer at a distance from the primary site - is invariably fatal. Researchers have long been plagued by the question - what dictates molecular changes in metastatic prostate cancer making it life-threatening? …
American researchers say that a gene believed to be overactive in most types of cancer can be silenced in the mouse by using a stretch of designer DNA. Once the gene has been sabotaged, say researchers led by Yoon Cho-Chung of the US National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, the …
Ever since Rachel Carson's famous expose of pesticides, chlorine and its chemical allies have been on the hit-list of environmentalist. DDT was banned in 1972, followed by PCBs in 1978. Two decades later, CFCs were sentenced to a phase-out for violating the sacred ozone-space. And now, with the recent US …
