Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
ELECTRICITY
ELECTRICITY: _ The picture above shows how a barber cuts hair during recent power failure in India. _ Prologue: Electric crematoria were snuffed out with bodies inside, New Delhi’s Metro shut down and hundreds of coal miners were trapped underground after three Indian electric grids collapsed in a cascade on 30th and 31st July 2012, cutting power to 620 million people in India. The blackout engulfed as many as 19 of India’s 28 states on July 31, with more than 100 intercity trains stranded and traffic lights went out in busy roads, causing widespread jams. Without question, it was the largest blackout in world history. Hospitals, factories and the airports switched automatically to their diesel generators during the hours-long cut across half of India. Many homes relied on backup systems of invertors with batteries. On the other hand, millions of India’s poorest had no electricity to lose. Of the […]
THE WAR
THE WAR: _ _ Prologue: If I intentionally kill another person, I will be subject to a long term of imprisonment or even, in some jurisdictions, the death penalty. But if I kill 1000 people, I might receive a medal; or if a million, I might be promoted to field marshal or even president, provided only that those killed come from another side of a border in a state known as “war”. Today, violence and war are a routine way of life. Dulled by repetition and numbers, we hardly notice mass death. That hundreds of thousands died in a civil war in Africa may be mentioned briefly on page four of our newspapers. If you look at human history, you will notice war is all the rage. Wars have been fought on every continent and in every century—and we have the written records of events to prove it. In 1976, […]
TORTURE
TORTURE: _ _ Mohammed C., a Chadian born in Saudi Arabia, was just 14 when arrested in Pakistan in October 2001. After three weeks he was handed to US officials. He says he was hooded, shackled, beaten and threatened with death. In January 2002 he was transferred to Guantánamo Bay, where he says he was beaten, deprived of sleep, racially abused and burned with a cigarette. In September 2005 Mohammed, by now an adult, was still being held without charge in Guantánamo Bay. Torture is one of the most extreme forms of human violence, resulting in both physical and psychological consequences. Torture has been used for thousands of years, and is still widespread, occurring throughout much of the world (Amnesty International, 2009). Research has shown that torture can have enduring negative effects on both survivors and perpetrators, and is ineffective for obtaining reliable information in interrogation. Survivors of torture […]
SUPERSTITIONS
SUPERSTITIONS: _ _ Prologue: I was traveling from Yanbu to Jeddah by plane and it was my first experience with Saudi Airline. Just before takeoff, as plane was standstill, I heard “Allāhu Akbar (الل أكبر)” [god is greatest] thrice and then plane took off. I never heard similar thing in Indian airlines planes praying Hindu Gods. Is Indian Airlines plane less safe than Saudi Airlines plane simply because a prayer is not recited before takeoff? Has superstition become pervasive in contemporary culture? Did you know that insects could be tried for criminal acts in pre-industrial Europe, that the dead could be executed, that statues could be subjected to public humiliation, or that it was widely accepted that corpses could return to life? What made reasonable educated men and women behave in ways that seem utterly nonsensical to us today? Strange histories present a serious account of some of the most […]
THE PAIN
THE PAIN: _ _ Prologue: Pain, as a proper subject of scientific observation and study, has long been neglected by medical science. Perhaps, like death, it reminds us too much of our failures as physicians. Or perhaps, like sex, it was seen as too private or subjective a subject for objective analysis. Whatever the reason, pain was never mentioned as a topic in my medical school, residency, or internship training. Pain is the most common symptom of disease and the request for its relief probably the most common demand placed on the doctor. Pain is too important a topic to continue to be ignored. Pain is clearly a multidimensional experience. It is neurophysiological, biochemical, psychological, ethnocultural, religious, cognitive, affective and environmental. The topic of pain is extremely complex to say the least. Pain is that pervasive, invasive, all-encompassing personal warning that something-is-wrong signal. Pain is associated with a wide range […]
