Editorial

In a recent survey of centre of learning, among the top institutions of the country for engineering, medical research and management are private institutions. They did better than many IIT's. We were happy that at last there will be no dearth of good centres of higher studies. Now when some institutions were found to be demanding 6 to 20 lakhs of rupees for a medical seat and a crore or two for a post graduate seat, not only it is a serious corruption but its direct result is creation of doctors who have to make a few crores very fast. After all they have also to educate their children. This 'donation' will also be insurance for getting good marks because if a single student who paid this donation fails in his exam, the institution will never get other students who are ready to pay. Corruption breeds corruption. The referees in more...

Recently it was reported that a two year old child in Spain was found to have more 10 than Einstein. The intelligence coefficient is derived by dividing an individuals mental age by his chronological age multiplied by hundred. One is not yet able to explain whether the property of being a genius is inherited or it is developed. How do we explain that fact that some persons who have not only undergone the same training and also got lower marks than others were found to be far ahead of their colleagues in research? Human development is function of multiple factors with their inter-correlations. Development is a function of up bringing, inherent nature which changes according to his own willingness to learn and develop himself, lucky coincidences of having grand masters, meeting great scientists or other great people who kindle the fire inside, reading the books written by the great and more...

Since ancient times many medicines are extracted from deadly poisons. Cobra venom, night shade, belladona, cocaine and mercury are only some of them. One has only to see the pharmacopoeia of ayurveda, homeopathy and allopathy to have an idea of the exotic sources of the medicines. The insulin making DNA is spliced into a common one celled bacterium E.coli, which is normally the culprit and causes severe problems in the stomach- The bacterium combined with DNA produces insulin in huge vats and is harvested in plenty. Antibiotics are obtained from fungi which also act as poison. In Indian system as the medicines are tested for generations, their effects and antidotes are well known. To avoid reaction, right from food  to sleep all activities are strictly controlled when treatment is given. This is so in all traditional systems. In allopathy, there is a constant research to discover new medicines. This research more...

Applications of ideas from physics to study situations in biology are not new. Pauling, Crick and Watson and other scientists right from Einstein had been applying physics to solve biological problems. However, since The structure of the genes was studied by X-rays, a host of the latest applications ranging from electron microscopy, NMR, ESR to laser and fibre optics have become quite common to study medical problems, Quantum theoretical applications are new to biology. Electrons moving through a green leaf as well as a green sulphur bacterial bloom have been observed to be effectively performing a quantum "random walk to seek the optimum path to solar energy. A parallel can be sought in the "random walk" of the conduction electrons choosing a particular path in an integrated circuit changing according to conditions- After all Einstein's earlier work was on Brownian motion. The olfactory bulb of an adult mouse may provide more...

About 200 CSIR scientists and the department Ayush of the union health ministry have achieved the compilation of the world's first Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, They have documented over two lakh medical formulations of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani translating Hindi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Urdu, Arabic and Persian into English, Japanese, French, German and Spanish, This has 30 million pages of information. To prevent pilferage of patents, India has signed an agreement with European Patent Office which had given patents for the use of 285 Indian medicinal plants including pepper, ginger and tulsi. Under the agreement, the data base is given for consultation but not for disclosing the contents. It appears that In the past we have lost 15000 patents for Indian medicines. Have the patents been lost or hijacked by some country to give away somebody else's property? We should not recognise any patent for Indian traditional medicines or any other more...

The government is considering a proposal to have partnership with private companies under Public-Private Partnership model to encourage opening of medical colleges. This is expected to make up for the acute shortage of doctors in India. This is a very laudable proposition. What is discouraging is the small print- to tax the profits. The only way that educational institutions can make a profit is to charge heavily the students. It there is no bar for the fees and the motive of the government (or the additional motive) is make profit by taxing the profits, we are going back to the laissez faire - the doctrine of unrestricted freedom in commerce, especially for private interests, Ms principle has already been rejected long time back even by the so- called capitalist countries such as USA, Canada and European countries. They have converted themselves to welfare societies. At all levels, education for their more...

The latest application of nano-technology is to understand the DNA damaging agents, by putting sensors right inside the cells As a bonus, this method can also be used to deliver the drugs inside the cells. This is a boon to detect the specific toxins which cause cancer. Tying bells to sheep or cows to find out their presence in dense fog in the mountains is a well-known practice. To find a black cat in a dark room, instead of tying a bell, a small torch is still better. This is the radioactive tracer technique. What Dr. Michael Strano of MIT has been able to achieve is to detect the nano of nano particles, the DNA by putting fluorescent sensors right inside. Nano carbon molecules, thousands of times smaller than a human hair are now used by many research groups. Strano's team carefully coated specially shaped nano carbon tubes with DNA more...

Proteomics is the advanced study of genomics. In genomics. The functional correlation between the new sequence of genes and the earlier available data are studied. In proteomics, it is the protein that is studied rather than DNA. There are many proteins, each one associated with one function which varies with the nature of the tissue and the state of development of the disease. The effect of drugs are different on different proteins. The work of the recent Nobel Prize winners of being able to colour different proteins to study simultaneously their functions will give a tremendous push to the study of proteomics. This study is aimed at the study of the effect of medicines for the same diseases on various individuals depending on the variation of their proteins. This is to say that disease specific medicines will not be dispersed but according to the individuals' Response to various medicines. This more...

Our congratulations to Professor Madame Francoise Barre-sinoussi, Professor Luc Montagnier and Professor Harald Zur Hausen, who won This year's Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. Every year, scientists all over the world salute the Nobel Prize winners because they are symbols of excellence who uplift the spirit of man to greater heights. Barre-Sinoussi and Montagnier isolated the HIV virus in 1983. This could greatly help in identifying and screening contaminated blood. Identification is the first step. Next is the discovery of the vaccine, Zur Hausen "went against current dogma" where he found that some kinds of human papilloma virus or HPV caused cervical cancer. He realized that DNA of HPV could be detected in tumours. Professor Zur Hausen also uncovered a family of HPV types only some of which cause cancer. The discovery led to the understanding of how HPV causes cancer and the development of vaccines against HPV infection. more...

The study on the behaviour of twins is quite old in U.S.A. Now that the studies are also based on genes or inherited qualities, the discussions on nature versus nurture is becoming acute. It is also because of the overtones of cultural differences in the different countries of the world, that the results are also hotly debated. Recently, Nancy Sega!, psychologist, has conducted a research on virtual twins or unrelated children born within nine months of each other but brought up by the same family. They were compared with siblings in the same family. The conclusion is drawn that nature is the more important than nurture- The study forgets that many families who also adopt other children, will automatically or unknowingly differentiate between them by being either overprotective towards the adopted children or discriminating against them. How this affects the children is another matter. Studies on cotton have shown that more...