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 …
THE US government is considering charging Imclone Drugs Inc, a biotechnology firm for deluding investors about the status of their cancer drug, Erbitux. Company officials revealed that they have received a 'wells notice' from the Securities and Exchange Commission. This notice is issued when the staff of the panel is …
No one who reads a newspaper, however cursorily, could miss the news that Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Zoology at Harvard University, died of lung cancer on May 20, 2002. He had fought his way out of another cancer, a rare form of abdominal cancer, 20 years ago. His reaction …
by the 2030s, climate change could become the main factor leading to ozone loss, surpassing even industrial products such as chlorofluorocarbons (cfcs), says a new National Aeronautics and Space Administration (nasa) study. While attributing this to changes occurring in water vapour and temperature in the upper atmosphere due to rising …
breathing toxic chemicals exposes all us citizens to a lifetime cancer risk at least 10 times greater than the level considered acceptable under us federal law, shows a recent assessment of the us Environmental Protection Agency (epa). The epa assessment has been based on emissions data from 1996 because inventories …
The memories of Belgium's 1999 dioxin crisis were revived with Germany shaken over feed grain contaminated by nitrofen, a cancer-causing chemical banned in the European Union (eu). Even though thousands of organic chickens were slaughtered, it was feared that infected meat and eggs had already entered the food chain. Consequently, …
Waterborne diseases, caused by the intake of chemicals and contaminated water, affects around 3.4 million people globally. In India, around 563,000 people are affected annually, one fourth of which are children, according to the Union ministry of health and family welfare. Water gets contaminated due to sewage from households, industrial …
Paediatricians are worried about rising cancer rates among children. Like Anupam Sachdeva and A K Dutta, head of department of paediatrics at Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi. They have been witness to a rise in the incidences of brain cancer and acute lymphocytic leukaemia, commonly found among children. In …
Indians are at great risk of lifestyle diseases. Inactivity alone claims two million lives globally every year, warns a recently-published who report. Indians, particularly the younger generation, are increasingly facing problems due to overweight, blood pressure, stress, high cholesterol and diabetes, all of which are a fallout of physical inactivity. …
Some chemicals can affect brain development and function. They also have serious effect on children's learning and behavioural abilities. Compared to other organs, the human brain develops over a long period of time
Open the recent National Human Development Report (nhdr), or any glossy document of the World Bank and its ilk, and it will reveal how the world is a much better place. Death rates have declined, people live longer, fewer children are dying and incomes are increasing. Of course, forget the …
safe inside the warm womb of the mother, a child kicks and turns. This is the third time that Sarah Connell is pregnant, but she has never reached her second trimester of pregnancy. She aborted twice earlier. This time she has moved houses, cleaned up her home, and taken every …
Radiation from cellular phones is a well-known risk. Now there is another type of pollution from the wireless device which has raised a wave of worry. A study conducted by Inform, an environmental research organisation, says that within three years the us will discard about 130 million cellular telephones a …
stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionary theorist at Harvard University, usa, whose pioneering work put paleontology back on the academic high ground, died on May 20, 2002, of cancer. He was 60. One of the most influential evolutionary biologists of the 20th century, his theory of punctuated equilibrium evoked as much …
scientists have accomplished a feat that could one day lead to better treatments for cancer. They have sequenced the genome of the bacterium, Streptomyces coelicolor. This feat is expected to aid the development of several new antibiotics as the bacterium S coelicolor and its relatives are sources of nearly two-thirds …
workers in the wooden furniture industry are susceptible to cancer because of constant exposure to wood dust, reiterates a new study. The adverse health effects of wood dust are well known, but there is very little documentary evidence to support this knowledge. The study was conducted by a team of …
Iraq has accused Britain and the us of not only causing cancer but also blocking medical supplies crucial to the treatment of cancer to its people. In a letter to un secretary-general Kofi Annan, Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri said depleted uranium ammunition used by the us-led forces during the …
a potential counter threat to white blood cells (wbcs) has been recently uncovered. The wbcs are rendered irreversibly powerless after a brief exposure to triphenyltin (tpt), a compound found in some agricultural pesticides and fungicides. This was discovered during a study conducted by researchers from Nashville-based Tennessee State University. Tests …
The data is so old it is almost obsolete. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has brought out its report on the incidence of cancer five years too late. For all that it is worth, the "Consolidated Report of the Population Based Cancer Registries' provides information on the incidence …
The Indian Council of Medical Research (icmr) has recently released the National Cancer Registry, presumably under pressure from an article in Down To Earth (Read: 'Faceless figures'). Thank you, Sir. The report is evidently a rush job as it offers data only till 1996, while most of the registries have …
