RESEARCH

________________ Surajit Dasgupta ________________ ( Click on the headline for details of cognitive behaviour therapy for hypochondriasis by the Journal of the American Medical Association ) The reproduction of this article in this blog has been provoked by a frequent topic of discussion at this writer's workplace: health profiles of the respective speakers. It amuses me, hailing as I do from a small town where I grew up leading a carefree and yet disease-free life, as to why the people living in big cities are often unduly worried about their health Asukh: This film by Rituparno Ghosh showed how the mere thought of a disease can wreck a family ( Published first in The Pioneer on 1 October 2007 ) E ver since The Pioneer published the story, "Indian woman stripped of her job for wearing nose stud in UK" (September 19), I have been trying to eat with my nose and figure out how it could possibly affect my hygiene and that of the people whose company I keep. Jokes apart, wh

( Click on the headline for a surgeon's prescription describing genuine cases of appendicitis ) _________________ Surajit Dasgupta _________________ Anywhere in India, if someone suffers from stomach pain, the ailment could be anything. If it's West Bengal, and it's a woman, chances are high she will be diagnosed with 'appendicitis'. How reliable is this diagnosis? Background: This article was written in December 2004. However, none of the two newspapers I worked with during the period September 2004-March 2008 had enough space to accommodate it, even as it's difficult to do away with any of its technical details. The Pioneer had published an abridged version (about 800 words) of this exposition in 2006; the article was not uploaded on to the newspaper’s Internet version. Four years after writing this article, as I heard last week from friends and acquaintances from Kolkata and its suburbs and the towns Burdwan, Durgapur and Asansol, the scourge of doctors presc

We are close to figuring out what we are made of, or are we? _____________________ Chaitali Bhattacharjee _____________________ W hat makes a human a human? Why are we so different from all other animals? What is it that makes us tick? These are questions that intrigued the human mind always. However, the answer kept eluding us till a series of momentous discoveries led one to believe that the answer lay in the unique genetic composition that every organism had. Finally, an extremely ambitious project was undertaken — that of mapping the whole human genome (the entire hereditary information of a given organism encoded in its DNA). What that meant was that one would exactly know every bead that formed the DNA of a human being. The task was (technically) completed amid a lot of excitement in the year 2000. Though the whole genome got mapped, the result turned out to be a lesson in humility rather than a moment of exultation. There were approximately 30,000 odd genes that were identified

Illicit trafficking in human organs is shocking news. But there's a much older racket that is thriving - unnecessary Caesarean section for childbirth. I expose a nine-month long conspiracy to create a medical situation that leaves women with no choice N ot only to medical practitioners, but also to the huge population of lay people who must see a doctor for the treatment of apparently routine to dangerous diseases, the recent arrest of five kingpins, including a doctor, in a kidney trade racket should come as no surprise. This is not because many tend to presume that organ trade must be thriving "somewhere out there", but because when it comes to manipulation of patients, including those who are highly educated -- education serves no purpose when at the eleventh hour your doctor turns livid and says, "You may go to any other doctor if you don't trust me!" -- it has perhaps become fait accompli. Never mind if you are a PhD in cryogenic technology; anybody who

Government is once again displaying its shocking lack of preparedness to prevent bird flu from entering the country and containing its spread among poultry thereafter. If people have not been infected so far, thank luck, not authority A s this article is being written, an Associated Press report filed at 5.30 pm, Saturday, January 19, informs that Government officials in West Bengal, despite accepting that the disease they are trying to fight and control is avian influenza, are "still waiting for test results to determine whether it is the H5N1 strain of the virus, which has been blamed for the deaths of 217 people worldwide since 2003". This shocking laggardness of the health department, which could -- let's pray it does not happen -- lead to the deadly virus crossing the species barrier to infect human beings, is unpardonable. "If some initial sign, initial indication a pandemic happens, we have to immediately pick up, detect this initial sign or signals and imple