Cultivating a grassroots scientific temperament

October 14, 2023

Given the ever-evolving nature of knowledge creation and curation, the long-term and broader societal expectations from that knowledge undergo continual mutations. Consequently, social, economic and cultural development of a nation are steered through varying means and modes of knowledge and technology transfer to the community at large. This transfer presupposes...

Ethical, legal, scientific, and spiritual perspectives of life, death and beyond

February 14, 2023

The proposition of accepting death when life seems futile is largely controversial given its ethical, legal, scientific, and spiritual connotations. The legal perspective is the most furiously debated around the difficult question: Should we allow active euthanasia or not? In the Indian legal system, only passive euthanasia is permissible, which...

NGT order on cigarette, bidi butts sensible, timely

January 26, 2023

Did you know that cigarette and bidi butts are environmentally hazardous? Recently, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) passed several recommendations for the safe disposal of this tinty, but ecologically dangerous waste.Every day, millions of cigarettes and bidis are smoked and the butts thrown. You can see these eyesores on the...

Benefits of Stress on Wound Healing

January 8, 2023

Over the past few years, we have developed an excessive level of anxiety associated with the effects of stress on our lives. While much has been discussed about stress and stress management, it is essential to remember that stress can be good and help us in several ways. Hans Selye,...

Scalpel and intuition

July 12, 2022

Scalpel has always been defined by science and never by intuition. If one broadly looks at the tenets and principles of surgery, the art and science of it have always been spoken about, but the role of intuition has not been emphasised much. In my formative student years, I used...

Passive smoking is an active and acute problem

December 28, 2021

Secondhand smoking or passive smoking is the inhalation of a combined smoke from the burning end of a cigarette, as also the smoke exhaled by smokers. Secondhand smoke contains more than 7000 chemicals of which over several hundred are toxic and over 70 of them can cause cancer. Contrary to...

Passive smoking is an active and acute problem

December 28, 2021

Secondhand smoking or passive smoking is the inhalation of a combined smoke from the burning end of a cigarette, as also the smoke exhaled by smokers. Secondhand smoke contains more than 7000 chemicals of which over several hundred are toxic and over 70 of them can cause cancer. Contrary to...

Karmic carcinogens and cancer: A surgeon’s perspective

December 10, 2021

As a surgeon, I find absolute discordance between the biology of cancer and the outcomes of cancer treatments. At times, early-stage cancers go bad while advanced stages record good recovery. Although science maintains a standard staging system, it has not been able to crack the Da Vinci code of cancer....

ROBOTICS HEAD & NECK SURGERIES: A VERITABLE GAME-CHANGER

October 19, 2021

Head and Neck cancers comprise nearly 30% of the overall cancer incidence in India, which is roughly about 10 lac cases per year. In other words, one out of every three cancers pertains to the head and neck region. In the 70s and 80s, surgery was the main way of...

PANDEMIC IN PERSPECTIVE: EMERGENCY BEYOND EDITORIALS

June 4, 2021

In April 2020, the United Kingdom faced an exceptionally bleak scenario. With over 100,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases and more than 14,500 fatalities, it became the sixth-worst affected nation in the world. The real numbers were allegedly higher, even as the country struggled with shortages of protective equipment and test kits....