Prof. B. M. Hegde,
Science
and the scientists are the ones that are supposed to take this world and
mankind forward according to the conventional thinking. This talk tried to take
one through the whole gamut of this presumption from the time the scientists
jump with joy and proclaim to the world-Eureka-“
I have discovered the new truth,” to the time that science and scientists
have become a menace to mankind on this planet. If allowed to go on unaudited
it might even make man follow on the path taken by the dinosaurs! Many among
the lay people have a feeling that scientists are the ones that have invented
all our comforts and are the ones that make life easy for us on this planet.
This needs a serious re-look and the whole arena needs to be audited once in a
way lest we should become complacent. The truth, however, seems to be
different.
There
are two concepts that one needs to clarify, Dr Hegde said, before going any
further. There is nothing like the truth in science, it could, at
best, be a truth for the time being and could always become false with
the next discovery. Every scientific
hypothesis is true only until it is disproved by the next hypothesis. No
scientist ever invents anything new in this universe. He/she only discovers one
more secret of Nature each time he/she is lucky. Gravity was not invented by
Isaac Newton when an apple fell on his head from the tree. That day he
understood one of the fundamental principles of Nature’s working that every
object is attracted towards the earth and the speed of its fall depends on its
mass. Of course, when Chance knocks at our door we should not be in the toilet
and lose that opportunity. Only a sharp and alert brain could derive mileage
from such serendipitous happenings.
The
apple falling on Newton’s head is the chance that Newton got without any effort
on his part. This is called serendipity.
Again chance played a large part in this drama. Isaac Newton suffered from not
so rare an abnormality which doctors label as obsessive compulsive neurosis. He
used to go round every lamp post and/or tree on his way. This might have
facilitated the apple to fall on his head to give him the chance to become
famous thereby. Real serendipity indeed!
From
then on other ramifications of any serendipitous discovery follow. The talk
mainly concentrated on the course that a pharmaceutical molecule takes after
its serendipitous discovery. He took penicillin as an example. Although
Alexander Fleming noticed Penicillium Notatum fungus capable of destroying his
staphylococcal culture in 1928, he almost forgot about it, until it was
independently rediscovered by Howard Florey and Ernest Chain at the Dunn School
of Pathology in Oxford in 1940. In fact, long before Alexander Fleming saw the
fungus growing in his culture plate serendipitously; two other microbiologists
had discovered the same species of fungus, Penicillium Glucon, capable of
destroying bacteria. They also did not go any further. However, it was the
flamboyant Alexander Fleming who, at the end of the day, cornered all the glory
for the discovery of penicillin, the first anti-biotic. He was knighted by the
King, appointed Vice Chancellor of the famous Edinburgh University and,
eventually, he even managed to pocket the Nobel Prize in 1945!
Well
meaning leaders in the microbiological field quickly announced to the world the
menace from germs is almost but gone for ever. Soon after that they were shocked
to see stronger staphylococcus acquiring special resistance power against the
scientists’ potent penicillin. The germs soon acquired the capacity to eat
penicillin and live by getting mutated to have the power to destroy penicillin
using an enzyme, beta-lantamase. Scientists were too proud to let that happen
and they went in for newer and newer molecules of antibiotics for the last half
a century. They have now landed up with around five hundred antibiotic
molecules. All of them are prohibitively expensive in addition to having
serious side effects. The latest curse, though, is that no drug company is keen
on another new molecule as the risk of not making huge profits with the
existing stiff competition is not very bright.
Germs,
on their part, have become resistant to most, if not all, antibiotics and some
of them have become monsters in the hospital environment. Indiscriminate use of
antibiotics for minor viral illnesses also added to the problem of drug
resistance. Today many hospitals have
these multi-drug resistant germs; leader of the group is pseudomonas,
threatening to produce the epidemic of nosocomial infections resulting in many
unnecessary deaths. After the advent of penicillin even a simple organism like
the peumococcus today kills more patients with pneumonia acquired in the
hospitals in the elderly patients. Less enthusiasm for developing a new
anti-biotic molecule by the drug companies coupled with the rise of the
“super-bugs”, the resistant germs, has been the biggest challenges of modern
times. What started as a blessing has now become a curse. More and more
hospitals are relying on biological competition between micro-organisms to kill
germs these days. Maggots are used to kill germs as well as the dead tissue in
wounds very effectively. What a pity that we did not think of it earlier.
Similar
stories could be narrated about every single drug in the pharmacopoeia. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, a well known writer and a physician, was dead right when he
wrote: “if the whole Material Medica could be sunk to the bottom of the seas,
it would be that much better for mankind and worse for the fishes.” How true?
Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) are the fourth important cause of death in the US
today. On an average 1,80,000 people die annually in American hospitals due to
ADRs only. In addition, the ADRs in out patients result in another seventy
million drug prescriptions to correct the ADR. The net loss to the buyer and
consequent profit to the drug industry, for these ADR related prescriptions
amounts to $80 billion annually! Drug companies have slowly shifted to more
profitable business of manufacturing vitamins and minerals in place of
expensive antibiotics etcetera.
The
recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) audit in the US showed that doctors and
hospitals are the third important cause of death after heart attacks and
cancer. Simple life style changes that really keep man going as long as one
lives on this planet are given a go by because of the false promises of the
modern medical world that they have life saving drugs and technology in their
armamentarium even to pull a man out of the jaws of death. A very tall promise
that is very wide off the mark in reality. Prince Charles, the heir to the
British throne, in one of his off the cuff remarks, recently came out with the
reality in modern medicine. “Modern medicine, for all its breathtaking progress
seems to be slightly off balance like the Tower of Pisa,” said he rightly.
Most
of the other technologies and drugs have met with the same fate but the medical
world does not admit this because of the large amount of money involved in this
medi-business. Over diagnosis, not letting the well alone through screening the
apparently healthy, and intervening even in healthy people have resulted in a
total loss of 2,25,000 deaths in one year in the Us whose population is just
over 290 million in all. Many other systems of medical care delivery like
Ayurveda, homeopathy and many more could assist the medical care delivery much
more effectively at a small fraction of the present fiscal burden. Modern
medicine is a must for emergency care and surgery but that is just about ten
percent of the sick population. The remaining vast majority of 90% could do
well with the other complementary systems. A judicious mix of all the systems
would be the future hope of mankind.
That
said, he hastened to add that the present craze for selling redcutionist herbal
drugs in the name of Ayurveda seems to be more dangerous. American market for
herbal drugs was in the order of $70 billion last year. This again would take
that science to the market place and result in misery for mankind. The lecture
made a fervent plea to the scientific community of the University to see that
newer research in herbal medicine follows the new science of holism and chaos
and not the out dated fallacious reductionist science of the post-Descartes
era. Surreal, a word derived from
surrealism, also means dreamlike, distorted and bizarre in another sense. The
present scenario in the scientific world of drugs and technology could be aptly
described as surrealistic. The talk traced the history of all these from serendipity to surreal.
The
following day Professor B. M. Hegde answered questions from the students and
staff of the life sciences department for well over two hours on all kinds of
subjects around science, spirituality and real life situations in the world
today.