Global Update

Indian Pediatrics 2002; 39:897

News in Brief

Creating life: For centuries, men have dreamt of playing god. Now scientists of the Stony Brook University in New York have produced the polio virus from inanimate base pairs in a test tube. The creation of ‘life’ appears to have storybook simplicity. They downloaded the polio virus sequence from a free website and mail ordered the nucleic acid base pairs (a few cents a pair). Since RNA is unstable, they converted it into DNA sequence which was partly assembled manually and partly by a commercial laboratory. The DNA was reconverted into RNA. Mutations were inserted into it to distinguish it from the wild virus. When placed in a soup of nucleic acid base pairs, the ‘virus’ replicated and injection into mice brains produced paralysis indistinguishable from polio. The flip side is that anyone with a penchant for bioterrorism could reproduce this. Was this whole exercise "irresponsible" as many feel or irresistible (eBMJ 20 July 2002)?

Gutka is gone: Ten to 40% of school children and 70% of college students in Mumbai chew either gutka or paan masala. The evidence for it’s link with precancerous lesions in children and oral cancer in adults is strong. From 1st August 2002, Maharashtra has banned its manufacture, distribution, display and sale. With oral cancers being the number one cancer among Indian men, this piece of legislation was long overdue ( eBMJ 27 July 2002).

Viagra for newborns: Amrita Medical Institute, Kochi was in the news for the use of sildenafil citrate in 3 cyanotic babies with pulmonary hypertension. The 3 survived, but Dr PK Rajiv, chief of neonatal services was lampooned by the media for illegal and unlicensed use of the drug. There appear to be equal number of supporters and detractors for it’s use. Genuine concern for the patient with explained consent is probably acceptable while silently conducting trials without ethical clearance is a definite no-no. In the meantime there are reports of it’s use in pulmonary hypertension of the newborn in several hospitals worldwide including the Royal Brompton Children’s hospital in London and Boston Children’s Hospital. Pfizer is also soon launching a multicentric trial of it’s use in adult pulmonary hypertension ( eBMJ 27 July, 3 August 2002).

Russian Medical Degrees: Can Indians who get a medical degree in Russia or the Commonwealth of States ( former Soviet Union) practice medicine with rescreening in India? Several complaints received by the Medical Council have impelled the authorities to start a retesting before giving them a registration number in India from September 2002 onwards. The 7000 odd Indian students currently in Russia are up in arms over the new move since medical education there is 1/10th the cost of Indian private medical colleges. But since official data says that 40-50% of students who apply for registration turn out to be frauds, the move seems sensible ( eBMJ 3 August 2002).

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