On August 8, the Rajya Sabha passed the new
Mental Health Care Bill. It is a good step forward from the outdated
Mental Health Act of 1987. One of the salient features of the new bill
is that it decriminalizes the attempt to suicide. This repeals Section
309 of the Indian Penal Code which provided for a year-long imprisonment
for a failed suicide bid. It recognizes a suicide bid as an extreme step
of a person under unimaginable stress and attempts to help the
individual instead of treating him as a criminal. Unmodified
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been banned and ECT to minors can be
given only after approval from the Mental Health Review Board. Such a
ban would stop the ECT from being administered at small and remote
places, where anesthetic support is not available.
The Bill ensures right of every person to access
affordable and good quality mental health services which are to be made
available by the Government. The mental health services are to be
integrated into general health services, and are to be made available in
each district. The Bill mandates establishment of facilities such as
half-way homes, sheltered accommodations, supported accommo-dations,
rehabilitation establishments and services, services to support family,
and child and old-age mental health services.
India currently has one psychiatrist for every 400
000 population, and only 1% of the health budget is spent on mental
health problems. This new Bill may show the right way forward to deal
with the gargantuan and difficult problems of people with mental
illnesses. (The Hindu 13 August 2016)
CRISPR Technology Gets FDA Nod
CRISPR technology is the gamechanger in medicine
today. And now the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has approved a
proposal to use CRISPR–Cas9 in humans. This has caused a storm of
excitement in the biotechnology world.
CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced
Short Palindromic Repeats. It is a gene sequence discovered in bacteria
and found to be a self defence tool against viruses. This part of the
bacterial genome actually secretly annexes a part of the viral DNA when
infected by a particular virus. When it encounters a similar viral DNA
again, it activates the Cas9 enzyme to cut out the viral DNA from its
genome.Scientists have now developed tools to activate this CRISPR
sequence and use it to splice any gene of interest. Hence it is a
remarkable gene editing tool at a cost 99% lower than previous
techniques.
Chinese scientists will be the first in the world to
use CRISPR technology in a trial on lung cancer patients. They will
extract immune cells from the patients with incurable lung cancer and
use CRISPR to add a new genetic sequence which will help their immune
system target and destroy the cancer. The cells will then be
re-introduced into the patients’ bloodstream.
The trial in the US is being funded by a foundation
of former Facebook president Sean Parker. The researchers will remove T
cells from 18 patients with several types of cancers and perform three
CRISPR edits on them. One edit will insert a gene for a protein which
instructs the T cells to target cancer cells, and a second edit removes
a natural T-cell protein that could interfere with this process. The
third will remove the gene for a protein that prevents the cancer cells
from disabling T cells. The researchers will then infuse the edited
cells back into the patient. If CRISPR succeeds in these patients it
will change the way we practice medicine forever. (Nature 22 June
2016)
Should Children Play ‘Pokemon Go’
It is being dubbed "the greatest unintentional health
fad ever." Suddenly all around the world, children are moving outdoors.
They are socializing and exploring new places, including museums and
parks. What is this new phenomenon which has taken the world by storm?
Pokemon Go; a new augmented reality mobile game,
which has been downloaded by more than 100 million people worldwide. A
game in which strange creatures called pokemon are superimposed on your
own real world locations. And the challenge is to locate, train and
capture them. As the game is necessarily played outdoors, children are
moving outdoors in droves.
There have been several other unintended positive
effects of this game, like autistic children are suddenly learning to
move out and mix with new people. But on the flip side, there are safety
issues. Children need to be careful when they start moving in unfamiliar
new environments. Potential predators can either lure children to lonely
spots or take notice as they visit the same locations repeatedly.
Parents should consider playing the game with their kids. At the least,
they need to know how the game is played and be aware of where their
kids are going to play it. (The Hindu 12 July 2016)
