The recent Supreme Court ruling stating that paid medical services come under the purview of Consumer Protection Act has sparked off considerable medical and public debate. New laws, improvements and change are hallmarks of a progressive society. We must, however, expect friction between the upho...

The medical profession is getting more and more cornmercialised. There has been a continuous erosion of medical ethics not only in the private sector but also in the Government sector. I give some examples from my own experience in Punjab.

While a couple, and more specifically women, must have access to knowledge and services to regulate fertility, this right is distinctly different from the objectives of the policies of population control. It must be added here that the right to regulate fertility - family planning or birth contro...

Resident doctors in the teaching hospitals of Maharashtra recently struck work for well over a month. In this essay an attempt is made to discuss the pros and cons of such action.

Strike is a legitimate form of collective protest in a democracy. At the same time, the guiding principle of medicine is the alleviation of suffering. Thus the issue of whether doctors should ever strike work is contentious. Some have preached from an ivory tower and advocated against this form o...

Clinical decisions by doctors faced with ethical dilemmas are discussed by medical philosophers in a very interesting manner. The principles underlying these decisions, and their interactions with the mental processes of decision makers have been discussed by Wulff et al.

Most Indian hospitals have instituted such a committee principally for the purpose of checking whether proposals submitted for research meet established guidelines. Once this has been established, the researcher is permitted to proceed with his work and the committee turns to subsequent proposals...

An evening in May 1986. I was strolling along Juhu beach. Suddenly, out at sea beyond the waves, I spotted a swimmer struggling for his life, his arms flailing above the water and his voice just audible as he screamed for help. I raced to where a little boy was playing with a fully inflated car t...

A pseudoepidemic of prostate cancer is sweeping the USA, with no real increase in the actual number of patients with this disease. The increase in the number of cases detected is largely because of the widespread use in the USA of a screening test - measurements of prostate specific antigen (PSA)...

My nephew, who works as a research scientist in a reputable medical organisation, asked me, 'What were the rules governing authorship of a scientific paper in your time?' 'What do you mean?' 'How did you decide who should be the authors of a scientific paper?' 'There are no rules. You decide ...