Questions that haunt...

What is life? - Abilty to procreate ? Ability to think ? Ability to feel ?

Would a robot or a computer who has been trained to feel, have life ?

What is consciousness? Would such a computer be conscious ?

The famous Chinese room thought experiment by J Searle !

What is thought?

“What’s the most resilient parasite? An Idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules.” (dialogue spoken by the character Dom Cobb in the 2010 film “Inception” . . . written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan)

What is a dream ? And what is reality ?

Is the world real ? Are you sure you are not living in a dream ? How are you sure ?

Who is to say that we are all not living a dream ?

What makes your dream more real than mine ? What makes your reality more real than mine ?

"Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say more of life?" - Havelock Ellis.

A hopeless skeptic...

What does one do when the worst comes to pass ? When what you dreaded for all those days, actually manifests ? When you have to stand at the periphery, helpless with your hands tied, watching your precious relationship drifting away….

What do I do when I see the people I love, giving up and going down… What do I do when people lose the spirit of life in them? When they choose inaction over action, submission over passion, fear over courage, obedience over defiance and tolerance over resistance ??

Can I interfere ?

Its their life and it has to be their decision. Its not my choice to make and so I have to stay away.

And so, with my hands tied, I stand at the periphery watching her give up… I scream and yell, wave my hands, but she can't see me. She is probably blinded by her tears. Her vision is probably blurred or maybe she has given up indeed. Away she goes from the dreams she hadn't yet dreamt of and the life she hadn't yet lived…

only because she refused to resist and she refused to dare.

What do you do when at such times, your heart tells you "I told you so"… when your mind refuses to accept that such irrationality can exist in the world…

When you feel cheated by hope and want to give up on it… I have always had a "love-hate" relationship with hope… It comes ever so easily into my life as if it were a lost soul mate visiting after many years… A chance encounter becomes a lovely affair as I fall in love with it all over again. My mind chooses to ignore the warnings of the heart as it lets hope rule… only till the day that reality hits back and I find myself hopeless and alone all over again…

I don’t mind hopelessness. Its brutal but its honest. It spares me the disappointment of failed hopes. It prepares me for the worst. It’s a companion for life. It stands by my side through the turmoil and does not leave me, as hope often does. It keeps me grounded for life as I take every step with caution avoiding every fall and hurt that might litter my path. It walks steady with me and holds on to me.

But then I find my will and my spirit only when hope is around. With her by my side, my labors feel lesser and my burdens lighter. My heart dares to fly only to hit the ground again but, for those few moments, it finds the wind beneath its wings and it flies. It soars above the sorrows and the miseries as it hopes for the best. It finds its spirit and its will. It dares to fight because it hopes for the change it wants.

And so my mind becomes a victim of my heart as it vacillates between hope and hopelessness.

Does Faith have a role in a judicial protocol ???

The entire country was gripped in anticipation of the Ayodhya Verdict for the last week or so...

A couple of days before the verdict was due to be announced, there was another uncertainty introduced as an appeal was filed in the Supreme court to defer the announcement of the Verdict by the High court. In view of the huge stakes on hand and the troubles facing the Central government due to the common wealth games, the law and order issues etc... this seemed like a golden opportunity to postpone the entire issue for a while !

And I had strongly expected that the Government and the Supreme court would impose an injunction on the announcement of the Verdict keeping the entire situation and the possible repercussions in mind. This was not the right thing but this was what i expected... as a populist measure to maintain law and order and to avoid any adverse consequences for the country. But then, the Supreme Court's "verdict on the verdict" came and lo and behold, i was left happily speechless... The courts had done the logical, rational thing, unmoved by the social or governmental concerns. It allowed the high court to go ahead with the decision especially since the verdict was ready and the entire issue was already under jurisdiction for far too long. Amazing indeed !! This only made me appreciate the judiciary for taking a bold step out of sheer logic and rationality. Coming as it was in the wake of the supreme courts' commentary on the wastage of surplus food grains in the country while millions starved (due to policy decisions by the government), the supreme court and the judiciary had a new found respect in my eyes.

This of course was a rather short lived state as within the next two days, the Allahabad high court announced its verdict on the Ayodhya / Babri Masjid issue.... With an earlier experience with the Supreme Court, I had high hopes from the judiciary in the High court but the verdict seemed like a safe and populist decision.

While, I was still gathering the facts and formulating my thoughts on the verdict, I came across the brilliantly written article in "The Hindu". An opinion by Mr S Varadharajan on the Ayodhya verdict. I find complete resonance in the article and would therefore like to use this article as a means to express my views too... I don't know how many people can see the points being made disparate from their emotional and religious feelings but the fact is that this decision could set a very bad example for the future. The court has accorded an important place for "faith" and "beliefs" in making its decisions. This is a very dangerous precedent and only opens a Pandora's box for the future. How much of a history do you extend to decide the claim for a piece of land - the current owners, the last decade or two, half a century, a century, the British east India company, the Hindu rulers, the afghans, the Buddhists, the Aryans ... ??? How far back in time do you go ? Where does one draw a line ? Can feelings, faith and beliefs be a criteria for settling property disputes or anything else for that matter ? Is this justice ?

Here is the article in question:

"Force of faith trumps law and reason in Ayodhya case

Siddharth Varadarajan

If left unamended by the Supreme Court, the legal, social and political repercussions of the judgment are likely to be extremely damaging

The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has made judicial history by deciding a long pending legal dispute over a piece of property in Ayodhya on the basis of an unverified and unsubstantiated reference to the “faith and belief of Hindus.”

The irony is that in doing so, the court has inadvertently provided a shot in the arm for a political movement that cited the very same “faith” and “belief” to justify its open defiance of the law and the Indian Constitution. That defiance reached its apogee in 1992, when a 500-year-old mosque which stood at the disputed site was destroyed. The legal and political system in India stood silent witness to that crime of trespass, vandalism and expropriation. Eighteen years later, the country has compounded that sin by legitimising the “faith” and “belief” of those who took the law into their own hands.

The three learned judges of the Allahabad High Court may have rendered separate judgments on the title suit in the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi case but Justices Sudhir Agarwal, S.U. Khan and Dharam Veer Sharma all seem to agree on one central point: that the Hindu plaintiffs in the case have a claim to the disputed site because “as per [the] faith and belief of the Hindus” the place under the central dome of the Babri Masjid where the idols of Ram Lalla were placed surreptitiously in 1949 is indeed the “birthplace” of Lord Ram.

For every Hindu who believes the spot under the central dome of the Babri Masjid is the precise spot where Lord Ram was born there is another who believes something else. But leaving aside the question of who “the Hindus” referred to by the court really are and how their actual faith and belief was ascertained and measured, it is odd that a court of law should give such weight to theological considerations and constructs rather than legal reasoning and facts. Tulsidas wrote his Ramcharitmanas in 16th century Ayodhya but made no reference to the birthplace of Lord Rama that the court has now identified with such exacting precision five centuries later.

The “faith and belief” that the court speaks about today acquired salience only after the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bharatiya Janata Party launched a political campaign in the 1980s to “liberate” the “janmasthan.”

Collectives in India have faith in all sorts of things but “faith” cannot become the arbiter of what is right and wrong in law. Nor can the righting of supposed historical wrongs become the basis for dispensing justice today. In 1993, the Supreme Court wisely refused to answer a Presidential Reference made to it by the Narasimha Rao government seeking its opinion on whether a Hindu temple once existed at the Babri Masjid site. Yet, the High Court saw fit to frame a number of questions that ought to have had absolutely no bearing on the title suit which was before it.

One of the questions the court framed was “whether the building has been constructed on the site of an alleged Hindu temple after demolishing the same.” Pursuant to this question, it asked the Archaeological Survey of India to conduct a dig at the site. This was done in 2003, during the time when the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government was in power at the Centre. Not surprisingly, the ASI concluded that there was a “massive Hindu religious structure” below, a finding that was disputed by many archaeologists and historians.

The territory of India — as of many countries with a settled civilisation as old as ours — is full of buildings that were constructed after pre-existing structures were demolished to make way for them. Buddhist shrines made way for Hindu temples. Temples have made way for mosques. Mosques have made way for temples. So even if a temple was demolished in the 16th century to make way for the Babri Masjid, what legal relevance can that have in the 21st century? And if such demolition is to serve as the basis for settling property disputes today, where do we draw the line? On the walls of the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi can be seen the remnants of a Hindu temple, perhaps even of the original Vishwanath mandir. Certainly many “Hindus” believe the mosque is built on land that is especially sacred to them. The denouement of the Babri case from agitation and demolition to possession might easily serve as a precedent for politicians looking to come to power on the basis of heightening religious tensions.

Even assuming the tainted ASI report is correct in its assessment that a Hindu temple lay below the ruins of the Babri Masjid, neither the ASI nor any other expert has any scientific basis for claiming the architects of the mosque were the ones who did the demolishing. And yet two of the three High Court judges have concluded that the mosque was built after a temple was demolished.

From at least the 19th century, if not earlier, we know that both Hindus and Muslims worshipped within the 2.77 acre site, the latter within the Babri Masjid building and the former at the Ram Chhabutra built within the mosque compound. This practice came to an end in 1949 when politically motivated individuals broke into the mosque and placed idols of Ram Lalla within. After 1949, both communities were denied access though Hindus have been allowed to offer darshan since 1986. In suggesting a three way partition of the site, the High Court has taken a small step towards the restoration of the religious status quo ante which prevailed before politicians got into the act. But its reasoning is flawed and even dangerous. If left unamended by the Supreme Court, the legal, social and political repercussions of the judgment are likely to be extremely damaging.

.............................................................................................."

At the same time while I was not fully in sync with the rationale behind the decision, I do appreciate the sentiments behind it. I also love the fact that there were no adverse reactions from the masses. I loved the fact that the media was also a tad more responsible when giving out its breaking news and that the politicians had their tongues in check... I loved the fact that the country as a whole seemed to behave a lot more responsibly... Maybe because there was still another chance for an appeal at the Supreme court or maybe because no of the petitioners were really left out....

So, while this entire episode smacked of political correctness than justice, the episode also seems to mark the evolution of the Indian public and media as a whole.

Secular ramblings of an emerging mind...

Secularism is a word we often hear. A quality that is advocated as the solution to most of the current world problems. Websters defines it as indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations. Wikipedia defines Secularism as the concept that government or other entities should exist separately from religion and/or religious beliefs. In one sense, secularism may assert the right to be free from religious rule and teachings, and the right to freedom from governmental imposition of religion upon the people within a state. In another sense, it refers to the view that human activities and decisions, especially political ones, should be based on evidence and fact unbiased by religious influence.

Interestingly however, the concept of secularism has an inherent duality. There is one brand of secularism as was advocated by Mohandas K Gandhi, the father of our nation. He was a deeply devout Hindu, and simultaneously was profoundly respectful of other faiths. His secularism never entailed a denial of faith. Instead it demanded equal respect for every faith (including indeed the absence of faith). There is however another form of secularism which entails a complete disconnect between faith and the government. This is the idea which is frequently being invoked all over the world these days. For example, today in France and many parts of Europe, these ideals of secularism are currently being invoked to ban women from wearing veils in schools and public places. Elsewhere Sikhs are barred from wearing turbans. But the secularism that we learnt from Gandhi required the opposite: to defend the right of each person to follow their religious and cultural persuasions. This 'Indian' ideal of secularism is at variance even with hardline atheism, which is again intolerant of the faith of others. I may personally choose to reject faith, but equally I must respect the faith of others. There are however, the likes of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris who denounce this right and are fighting for the cause of atheism. Their stance is determined by the inherent perils of religion, as manifested by the ideals of christian conversions, Islamic jihad, the hindutva policies and the societal conflicts arising out of each of these.

This duality makes me wonder as to where I stand?

Do I believe in faith and religion and in letting them be a personal guide map for an individual's life...? Do I agree with Gandhi when he says that everyone should have a right to their faith and their cultural practices... ? Well, to start with, I did... I believed in this league of secularism but that also seemed to be giving an implicit nod to laws based on religion. A Hindu or a muslim personal law are the result of such secularism where each individual was allowed to practice his/her faith without any interference from the state. But what ensued was differential/disparate treatment of the people based on their caste, creed, religion, social strata etc. In addition to these religion specific laws, the Indian state got deeply entrenched in the caste based prejudices through the imposition of reservations. Thus, the Indian state was mired in controversy which ended up questioning its truly secular status. The problem with these religion specific personal laws, instead of a universal law is that the line between faith and the social repercussions of the same becomes blurred and murky with time. The Shah Bano incident was a case in point where the muslim personal law came at loggerheads with the constitutional rights of an individual. There are many such cases in point and they make me question if this form of secularism is the right approach?

On superficial consideration, the other form of secularism would seem like the right approach but then it impinges on the freedom of individuals and can act as the harbinger of cultural collapse. Several cultures have their own identities - the turbans of the sikhs, the burqas for the muslims, the tilak or the bindis of the hindus, the cross of the christians.. these are cultural identities which are rooted in religious beliefs too. A strict enforcement of the more radical form of secularism would endanger these diverse cultures and it also goes against the very fiber of individual freedom.

However, not being a person of religious faith, does not make me an ardent supporter of hardline atheists like Dawkins or Sam Harris. I see that in their strong opposition of religion, these people have become founders of another brand of religion characterized by the absence of a diety but carrying the same fervor and a similar hardened fundamentalist approach. Atheism is fast transforming itself into just-another cult. What is needed instead is a rational, free thinking approach, where religion is accepted to be only a part of one's existence. People need to be able to delineate their personal commitments to their religious beliefs from their social obligations for the benefit of mankind at large. Now this is a slippery slope and it requires rational thinking by every person involved.

What we need to achieve in the coming generations, is the ability to think independently in full view of the consequences of their actions so that they can view their beliefs and their desires in disconnect from the empty rhetoric of religious fanatics and mindless politics.

I realize that I have not provided any answers in all this rambling, but the truth is that I do not have any answers! The answer lies in each one of us making a personal conscious choice, free from pride and prejudice, in cognizance of the fact that we are all humans and that's all there is! We need to make a decision to respect an individual's personal choices as long as they do not impinge on the right/freedom of another, in any way, shape or form.

I don't know if we can ever achieve this dispassionate view of existence, unbiased by religious beliefs, but i hope we do. At the same time, as some people say, i cannot choose to eliminate these hardliners and dissenters, simply because i think they are wrong, because such an approach is mired with subjectivity and only makes me one of them. In such a scenario then, i have just prepared myself to pay the price for the foolish actions of others and bear the brunt of such religious fundamentalism.

Ethics and morals….

The Oxford English dictionary defines ethics as a set of moral principles.

Morals, on the other hand are defined to be concerned with the goodness or badness of human character or behavior, or with the distinction between right and wrong. They are also concerned with accepted rules and standards of human behavior.

But why am I talking about them ? Well, a talk and a resultant discussion sparked this chain of thought in my head and the resulting thoughts have only been crystallizing into words over the next few days.

This talk, given by an eminent Indian scientist was aimed at highlighting the increasing role of ethics in science and our daily lives.

First and foremost, this gentleman began by stating that ethics and morals are different. This is a point of contention for me as I do not see any difference between the two. A bit of prodding made me see his point which was that doctrinal ethics which are based on a religious code of conduct are actually morals… Although, I see his point of view, I am not quite convinced, however the distinction between ethics and morals (if any !!) is not of much consequence to the following subject and therefore, I am going to leave it to subjectivity…

But the interesting points made in this talk, are very pertinent and are in fact relevant to our world today.

Sample this…

Dolly was cloned i.e., she was a product of inserting the genomic content of an adult cell (From say Polly) into the enucleated egg of another sheep (From say Molly) and the resultant reprogrammed egg was then implanted into the uterus of another sheep, the surrogate mother (say Holly, for convenience's sake)… now, the tricky question arises … who is the rightful mother to Dolly ? Polly who gave the DNA, Molly who gave the egg or Holly, who carried the fetus for the entire term of pregnancy.. ? This is not an easy question to answer but a lot of people might say that Holly should be rightful mother… But imagine extrapolating the same to the case of us, humans. I am sure the problem doesn’t escape you!!!

This is just one of the problems presented to us in the course of the talk…

Imagine being asked about:

Capital punishment….

The ethics behind animal research, using animals for experimentation…

The ethics behind non-vegetarianism…

The ethics of "savior sibling", i.e. Having a second progeny with the objective of using his/her organs to salvage the health of the older sibling… Who has the right for it ? Is it ethical, legal ? Can the parents make the choice ?

The ethics of abortion ?

The use of discarded embryos from fertilization clinics for stem cell research ?

The beginnings of life and the ethics of abortion ?

The principles of stem cell research...

Etc etc

There are many such issues, the answers for which are not easy to come up with. These are subjects which have evolved over the years with multiple viewpoints and perspectives… Each person has an opinion and a perspective which varies depending on his moral, social, economic and political background …

With the progress seen in the last decade or two in the field of science and technology, many such questions are increasingly coming under the ambit of Science and Scientists. Researchers need to provide answers to these and many such questions… But how do you answer such questions ? The answers to these questions will evolve with time as the questions also acquire new meanings…

Other than the participation of the scientists, these questions also need to be answered with the involvement of social scientists, anthropologists, social workers, animal rights activists, the general people and the representatives from the various social strata. These are not questions which can be answered easily with a single framework and they require maximum participation between the general public and the specialists all over the world such that the diverse sensibilities can be taken into account…

But this then brings me to the question of how this is to be achieved ? Do we have a frame work for this ? Considering that our religious beliefs and morals can shape these decisions, how do we segregate the two ? For example, "Gay marriages" seem ethically/morally wrong to many people on account of their religious beliefs, but keeping these influences aside, any free thinking individual would support the right of any individual to determine his/her sexual preferences.

So, we need a framework that can fit in people from these diverse backgrounds, present them the problem in light of the past, the present and the future,and get their rational feedback...

This is a challenge indeed and it is high time that India, as a nation aspiring to be on the science and technology fast track, take initiatives to address these questions... through dialogue and discussion... aimed at arriving at a consensus.

A beautiful prose...

"The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land."

- T.H Huxley.

"The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the cosmos stir us - there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

The science and the age of cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy and that knowledge is a pre-requisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

Those explorations required skepticism and imagination both. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere. Skepticism enables us to distinguish fancy from fact, to test our speculations. The cosmos is rich beyond measure - in elegant facts, in exquisite interrelationships, in the subtle machinery of awe.

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes, or, at most wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. Some part of our being known this is from where we came. We long to return. These aspirations are not, I think, irreverent, although they may trouble whatever Gods may be. "

"The earth is a place. It is by no means the only place. It is not even a typical place. No plant or star or galaxy can be typical, because the cosmos is mostly empty. The only typical place is within the vast, cold, universal vacuum, the everlasting night of intergalactic space, a place so strange and desolate that, by comparison, planets and stars and galaxies seem achingly rare and lovely. If we were randomly inserted into the cosmos, the chance that we would find ourselves on or near a planet would be less than one in a billion trillion trillion. In everyday life such odds are called compelling. Worlds are precious.

From an intergalactic vantage point we could see, strewn like sea froth on the waves of space, innumerable faint, wispy tendrils of light. These are the galaxies. Some are solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters. Huddling together, drifting endlessly in the great cosmic dark. Before us is the cosmos on the grandest scale we know. We are in the realm of the nebulae, eight billion light years from the earth, halfway to the edge of the known universe. "

---- Carl Sagan, Cosmos.

Superbugs, Bugging news and Buggers galore

Events in our life are indeed connected in weird ways.... as one leads to another.... it is almost like a chain reaction which extends far beyond the realm of one's imagination.

As a result of a discussion with a friend over a cup of coffee, i decided to write a blog about the "superbug" controversy sometime ago. Reading this blog, I was invited to extend the small blog into aan article for a students' magazine at IISc which is my home for now... And this collaboration resulted in the following article... written by A and me...

And thats how a lot of stories begin.... over a cup of coffee... :-)

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It all started with dramatic news flashes such as “Superbug from India?”, and “bacteria spreading from India to UK?” and by the next morning, the prominent newspapers had their theories up on the first page. Finally, it seemed that at least one piece of the daily quota of “breaking news” was indeed interesting (and alarming) and would get some rightly-deserved focus over the next week. However, it was only a matter of time that yet another “breaking news” came along and the primary issue was reduced to rubble and its true significance chucked off to the bin!!

For someone who has not been following the news regularly, the recent reports will only lead to complete and utter cluelessness due to the mind numbing rhetoric. It thus makes sense to first address the question of what the furore was all about. Briefly, the reputed journal LANCET had published a collaborative work, involving several groups from India, Pakistan the UK, which claimed that a bacterial gene that confers resistance to practically all the β-lactam antibiotics was widespread across the subcontinent. Furthermore, riding on carriers and patients, this “superbug” was traveling to other continents. Since most antibiotics, including the frontline carbapenems were ineffective against the bacteria that harbored this gene, it seemed to be an unstoppable medical crisis. This resistance conferring gene is mainly carried on plasmids (small, autonomous DNA molecules which can “jump” from one bacterial species to another) and was called the New Delhi β-lactamase (NDM-1).

While a fact based, dispassionate analysis of what ensued was necessary to gain some perspective on the matter, and it was exactly the component that was missing in the entire reportage! The media and the government were quick to denounce the findings of the report. It was labeled unscientific and unacceptable in addition to being the handiwork of a pharmaceutical lobby! The panel discussions on TV had doctors, bureaucrats and politicians, but rarely a microbiologist or an epidemiologis. The consensus seemed to be that the entire work smelt of a conspiracy. A treacherous plot by the west to destroy our burgeoning “medical tourism industry”! What is Medical Tourism? Well, a large numbers of Westerners come to India every year for various medical treatments ranging from cosmetic surgery to dental treatments as a cheaper alternative destination. This was also encouraged at the national level as an effective strategy to cut down on the expenses for the NHS (in UK) and other such health care providers in the west. Now, if these “tourists” could be dissuaded from travel by the fear of infection, then the medical tourism industry and consequently the influx of foreign exchange would be hit. This report was thus portrayed as an attempt by the Occident to paint a dirty and disease-spreading image of India, the rising economic power. Hence, it was implied, that it is the duty of every patriotic Indian to protest to this “national insult” towards restoring the “India shining” image.

Here, we try to present the issue as we see it with our limited perspectives, based on reading the LANCET paper and couple of other reviews and some of the more rational and balanced news reports. As researchers who have a clearer understanding of field, it is horrifying specter to see how the issue has been completely blown out of proportion and the crux of the research has been conveniently sidelined.

For the uninitiated, it must be stated that the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria is not a new phenomenon. The development of resistance to conventional antibiotics in bacteria from clinical and non-clinical settings is not a new phenomenon and has been a potential problem for a long time. Since the bacterial life spans are short the development of resistance in bacteria was always well anticipated and this never ending arms race with the humans developing newer and more potent antibiotics and the bacteria developing newer means of resistance is the fundamental feature of biological evolution. It has been known for 50 years now, and academic and industrial research has always been on the lookout for newer antibiotics. A decade ago, there was a surge of concern about the Meticillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA), a gram-positive bacterium notorious for causing nosocomial/hospital acquired infections. Today, there is a lot of worry about how to tackle the several multi-drug-resistant gram-negative bacteria that pose the greatest threat to public health. Resistance genes spreading across different species either by piggybacking on plasmids (as in the case of NDM-1) or by horizontal gene transfer are increasingly considered dangerous as we run out of potent antibiotics. Human air travel and migration are at an all-time high and are naturally contributing to the spread of resistant bacteria.

With this background, it might make you wonder like we did about what the hue and cry in the media was all about?

Firstly, NDM-1 - a “bad” gene named after the nation’s capital is being considered a national insult! The media was whipping up a frenzy by capitalizing on this as an issue of national pride. But, naming a new organism or enzyme after its source, site-of-first-identification or discoverer is part of scientific convention, specifically, with regard to this particular group of enzymes! More than50 β-lactamases have been identified between 2000 and 2006 and thus it is not surprising, as one review says, that “β-lactamase nomenclature has been nothing if not creative”. And, anyways, we have so many other examples all around. The banyan tree is named as Ficus benghalenesis. One of the most virulent of pathogens, the causative agent for TB, is called Mycobacterium tuberculosis Beijing. A new frog species found in Sahyadari (Western Ghats) has been named Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis. In 1961, a dinosaur was named as Barapasaurus tagorei as its discovery coincided with the birth centenary of Tagore. There are other bacterial pathogens christened as Clostridium botulinum strain Alaska and Anaplasma centrale strain Israel. Further, the restriction enzymes such as EcoRI and BamHI, which are the scissors of molecular biology, have long been named after their source organism. Does anyone recall any protest from Beijing when the TB causing pathogenic train was named after it? Did we shout when we had a cute little frog and the majestic tree named after our lands? No, we probably clung to that reflected glory just as we did when Prof. Venki Ramakrishnan got the Nobel (and as a token of gratitude, jammed his e-mail inbox!). Resistant bacteria arise all over the world, and no matter how much we consider ourselves to be superior to the rest of the world, we cannot deny the fact that India is still on planet Earth. So, why is there a problem in accepting that an enzyme has been named after it was first identified in a Swedish patient who had been treated at a hospital in New Delhi, and probably acquired the infection there?

Frankly, the hyper-emotive response shows how pathetic we are with respect to “science as a way of life”. Also, it is possible that by projecting it as an “identity crisis” it becomes a case of “India versus non-Indians” and then the main issue can be deliberately and conveniently sidelined. In fact, it is not too difficult to counter-postulate that, those who are “protesting” have vested interests in the medical tourism business. The recent “paid news” scandals have only further exposed such forms of corruption.

The important thing however which deserves all the attention is the prevalence of such deadly antibiotic resistant strains in our hospitals and that issue has been completely sidelined. This study shows that such NDM-1 harboring bacteria are present in patients in all parts of the country, not only Haryana and Chennai and also in Pakistan (most likely, they’ll spread after the recent floods, and cross the LoC undetected). Additionally, this is not the first or only study of NDM-1 in the country. In March 2010, another paper showed that 22 cases of NDM-1 positive patients were identified in 3 months in a single Mumbai hospital. The LANCET article, however, has provided the spotlight to the subject. It also says that most of the patients have “community acquired urinary tract infections, pneumonia and blood stream infections”. Is India that spotlessly clean and hygienic? Are our sanitation and waste disposal systems the most efficient? A lack of statistical analysis is a drawback of this paper. But, if indeed 17 out of 37 NDM-1 positive UK patients (46%) had been recently admitted to hospitals in India, isn’t it possible that these could be nosocomial/hospital-acquired infections? With this of course, one can just pause and wonder that if the hi-fi hospitals catering to foreign patients are a source of these infections, then how bad is it in the real India of the aam admi? Don’t we have high incidences of so many infections – TB, HIV, diarrhea, malaria, and dengue? We all know that our health system is appalling. And while bacteria don’t give a damn to caste and class, many pathogens certainly thrive in unhealthy conditions and pass on their plasmids and resistant genes such as NDM-1.

Questions have been raised about the role of funding agencies. The paper categorically states, as we all do when we write our own, that the funders had no role in study design, etc etc. Is there any strong data to doubt this? Then, we have to doubt the ways we ourselves write our manuscripts. And in the “conflicts of interest”, the authors are honest about their travel grants and their interaction with the industry. All over the world, including in India, academics are increasingly becoming part of the industries. Wouldn’t denouncing the LANCET authors result in slandering almost the entire scientific community? And misreporting can go to such ridiculous levels That the National newspapers consistently referred to the “Welcome trust” as a pharmaceutical giant till the trust finally came out with a clarification. The fact of the matter is that the media is trying to blow up a story without an accurate understanding and this is only diverting the public focus from the more important issue of the development of resistance in microbes to the other peripheral issues of private funding, national pride etc etc.

Despite the baseless furore surrounding this whole episode, it is important that this issue is not relegated to the back burners in a week. The situation is critical especially in India since resistance to extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBL) drugs like the third-generation Cephalosporins is between 60 to 70% on average, compared to the less than 15% seen in the developed countries. Thus, a more common way of treating the severe form of ESBL infections in India is through the use of Carbepenem - which becomes the drug of choice as it has (or rather had!) the lowest resistance and the broadest action against gram negative infections. The emergence of resistance against Carbepenem is bad news undoubtedly but for the patients and physicians in India who now have to look for new antibiotics but this is a self created nuisance too. The spread of resistance is not surprising keeping in view the fact that very potent drugs like Carbepenem are overused by the physicians. The easy over-the counter availability of these drugs also makes the problem more acute as patients end up self medicating in sub-lethal doses (For the bacteria of course), thus, leading to the acquisition of resistance. These are problems which have been known to the medical community for a very long time but have not been addressed by the government, the media or the Public. It is easy for us to blame the whole world for our woes. And it is also easy to malign the lead author, a Ph.D student at the University of Madras as a “traitor”. We can also conveniently ignore these scientific data till it is too late to do anything. For our mind however, if the work is a true whistle-blower, then as the national emblem says, “truth alone triumphs” and it shall in this case too. Ignoring this problem only takes us closer to the inconvenient truth of the origin antibiotic resistant, untreated diseases and a resultant death for millions of Indians. Let us hope that the people, the media, the politicians and the health professions wake up and seriously address this not-so-distant crisis.

Publish or perish - a lurking peril !!!

I am a graduate student who has just submitted by doctoral thesis in Molecular Oncology. As someone who has spent 5 years in science, I have come to understand that just like in any other field, in academics too, politics has a big role to play. This is a fact that I have come to accept with great disappointment because one of the primary reasons for my wanting to come to academia was the absence of socio-political machinations where attitude seemed to influence more than aptitude. Research always seemed to be the field where aptitude and merit would solely determine one's success or failure. Now, that was inexperience talking! Today after 5 years in a premier research institute in India, I realize that life in academics too, is plagued with problems and is a place where social skills and contacts can make or break you!

Research in science has come to a stage where "Publish or Perish" seems to be mantra as people are now willing to resort to any means to publish their work. The quality of science has been overtaken by the desire for quantity.

Ever so often these days, one comes across leading scientists from some of the best institutions in the world resorting to fraud, deception, mis-conduct, cover ups and cook ups in their attempt to publish!!! The latest in the league of scientific fraud is of course the Harvard Professor - Mark Hauser, a well known psychologist, scientist and the author of the book "Moral minds" (the irony is inescapable eh ?). After a thorough review of his work by an internal review board at Harvard, Hauser was "found solely responsible... for eight instances of scientific misconduct." He is taking a year's "leave", and his future is uncertain. The current understanding of the nature of the misconduct is also alarming by its sheer magnitude and scale. Unfortunately, there was no official news on what exactly the misconduct was, and how much of Hauser's work is suspect. According to Harvard, only three publications were affected: a 2002 paper in Cognition, which has been retracted; a 2007 paper which has been "corrected" and another 2007 Science paper, which is still under discussion. Cognition editor Gerry Altmann with access to some of the Harvard internal investigation, concludes that Hauser simply invented some of the crucial data in the retracted 2002 paper. Basically, some monkeys were supposed to have been tested on two conditions, X and Y, and their responses were videotaped. The difference in the monkey's behavior between the two conditions was the scientifically interesting outcome. The videos of the experiment however showed them being tested only on condition X. There was no video evidence that condition Y was even tested. The "data" from condition Y, and by extension the differences, were, apparently, simply made up. If this is true, it is, in Altmann's words, "the worst form of academic misconduct." So it seems that either Hauser never tested the monkeys on condition B at all, and just made up the data, or he did test them, saw that they weren't behaving the "right" way, deleted the videos... and just made up the data. Either way it amounts to scientific fraud!!!

Now this is not an isolated incident. Every couple of years there are such major instances of grave scientific misconduct which are caught in action but there are probably also many more which are never discovered. All this is of course happening in the developed countries where scientific expenditure and the quality of infrastructure are several fold higher than in the developing countries like India.... If researchers in the world's top academic establishment like Harvard are culpable to such fraud and misconduct, it really makes me wonder if the entire academic system is rotting from inside ?

The problems plaguing science in developing countries like India are many and of a very different nature. A large body of the scientific work here is peripheral in nature aiming to address some of the more mundane problems in science. The fundamentals are still largely being ignored. The focus in these countries is on the most efficient utilization of the public money towards research. But what determines the most efficient utilization? Publications in peer-reviewed journals? With this aim, government agencies and the authorities use "publications" as "the" criteria to dispense funds. Thus, a scientist who intends to be financially competent for carrying out experiments is under immense pressure to maximize his publications. While quality of the publication (as is roughly inferred from the impact factor of the journal) is a criteria, the number of publications does seem to carry more weight with the funding agencies. What is happening thus is a great urgency to publish whatever results that can be put together in a reasonable period of time. The problems addressed are also extensions of previous work and not really fundamental in nature because the risk incurred by the investigators in these fields in much less. The chances of failure are much higher in a more fundamental, untouched problem than in the the usual run-off-the-mill stuff... To compound matters further, the government is increasingly focusing on applied science because that gives them the best excuse for spending the hard earned public money!! And so the researchers are increasingly under pressure to find new and fancy applications for their work. No matter how distant they may be from actual application, scientists are expected to provide possible utilities of their research !! And so basic research in the more fundamental problems takes a back seat as scientists strive for funds to compete internationally. Another question that comes up is about the scientific priorities of countries like India. Should they only focus on problems with an immediate application ? Is fundamental research a drain on the tax payers' money ? I was shocked to realize that a lot of people in the academic community also shared this view that we as a country should focus on application / goal driven research. I would beg to differ. As someone once rightly said, research is only of two types - applied and not yet applied. We as researchers must not work with blinders on and ignore the immense potential of tackling fundamental queries. If India aims to emerge as a superpower, it needs to develop as a knowledge producing economy, not just a services driven economy. We must encourage basic research and then try and look for applications for them in due course. As for the drain on the tax payers money, we all know that as a country plagued with bureaucracy, corruption and inefficiency, there are plenty of other sources for wastage and fundamental research is the last of these. Thus, in developing countries like India, under such competitive environments, quality is likely to be compromised. At the thresholds of being a part of the same establishment and the social structure, I wonder how to combat these problems.

The easiest alternative is of course to give more freedom to researchers and to not judge their contributions to the field in terms of their publications. Publications are after all only "an index" (and not "the index") of the work carried out and there are often long dry periods when one is addressing the more fundamental problems in science. But then giving a free reign to researchers is also not the way forward because taking off all pressure could also inspire lethargy and inefficiency.... Thus, what is seemingly required is periodic monitoring of the scientific progress by a board of competent researchers who are familiar with the nitty-gritties of academic research and are capable to evaluating the scientific work done in an unbiased and effective way.... Now, this sounds good on paper but this is exactly what could lead to the structuring of science and research into a social network.... people would then end up relying on building contacts and inter-personal contacts to navigate through these boards and commissions instead of tackling scientific problems. "You scratch my back and I scratch yours" becomes an unsaid rule!!

So what is the solution ?

Well, I, for now, am clueless !!!

The entire situation for now seems to me like a vicious cycle. Scientists need finances and infrastructure to work. Science is a field where an inspired and active mind is more productive than than an active body. And thus, the scientists need to be given a certain degree of freedom to pursue their work. At the same time, funding either comes from the government or from private companies. While private companies can give one freedom of approach and plenty of money, the stakes are high because the companies expect rapid returns from the research, thus prompting more applied and run-off-the-mill research. The government sponsored research though a tad more restrictive can also be more liberating because immediate applications are not the goal. However, the government is also under immense pressure to justify the ever increasing expenditure of the tax payers money with no clear benefits in sight !!!

At this time I can't but think of a time, not oo long ago, when researchers used to share the credit for any discovery with an open heart and where publication was a means to increase the accessibility of a finding in order to remove redundancy in research. After all every new discovery is made standing on the shoulder of giants and access to all the research happening in a field is vital for future developments. I was amazed when I read of a time in quantum physics when scientists like Carl Anderson were tempted to withdraw their article from Science (detailing the discovery of positrons) because in his mind he didn't have sufficient documentation to claim for the discovery of positrons !!

And a few decades down the line, today we are faced with a situation where top scientists are submitting cooked up results to premier journals in a desperate attempt to get published!!! The problem becomes more severe when additional theories and experiments are based on these fraudulent reports and then when young researchers start to question the veracity of every published result !!! That is indeed a sorry state of affairs in one of the fields where integrity was exemplary and the aptitude of a person was solely determinant of future success than his/her social skills.

I don't know where life takes me and I don't know what the future holds for the field of research which has charmed me since childhood, but, I do hope that these cases are only a few rotten apples who have been removed before greater damage has been inflicted. I hope that science, academics and research remain for a very long time untouched by the vile market forces that push researchers towards committing scientific fraud and misconduct. I hope that students today stop viewing science and research as just another career option but enter the field with a sense of passion and purpose. Because, for as long as I can see, science is driven forward by ingenuity and passion than by diplomacy and sycophancy.

For now, I seem to agree with Piet Hein when he talked of The Paradox of Life:

A bit beyond perception's reach
I sometimes believe I see
that Life is two locked boxes, each
containing the other's key.

Piet Hein, Danish mathematician, physicist, philosopher, writer and creator of puzzles and games.