The New Nation - Internet Edition

Election as per road map

LAST Wednesday Army Chief General Moeen U Ahmed in an opinion exchange meeting with the editors of newspapers, news agencies and chiefs of electronic media organisations dismissed speculations and doubts regarding the upcoming general elections. The army chief, in clear terms said that the election would be held in time as has been laid down in the road map of the Election Commission. Such an assertion was essential and it came at an appropriate time.

General Moeen gave a brief resume of the tasks the army has accomplished over the last one year and a quarter. Our people in many matters applaud the army's constructive nation building role. It is reassuring that the army does not think of capturing the political power. In fact, he has been untiringly saying so since 1/11 of the year 2007. The army chief termed the media as Parliament. He was unambiguous regarding the election but was equally emphasising on the quality of the people who will be elected to the Parliament. He said that honest and efficient people should constitute Parliament.

Now, by the concerted efforts of all concerned, the ideal point of getting honest and efficient people elected to the Parliament should be taken care of. But one point should be clearly understood, that the goal cannot be achieved overnight. This is a process and needs to be pursued patiently for quite a long time. General Moeen treated the editors to a lunch most of the items of the menu being prepared with potato. General Moeen was possibly in a subtle manner proving true to his call for the people to take potato along with rice. Bringing some change in our national food habit is necessary. But any persuasion on that at a time when rice is dearer runs the risk of being misinterpreted.

Foods that spread diseases

SENSING a respite from actions of mobile courts, some food producers and caterers who were beginning to feel the compulsion for changing their ways to serve members of the public better, seem to have started going back to their previous health hazarding practices of adulterating food items. Unhygienic preparation and handling of foods are seen at many places. Push-cart sellers of various food products such as chutneys, serbats, fruits, tea and the like cater to large number of people in the open.

They care the least about flies sitting on the foods they serve to people. Dust from the road also fall on such foods which are not covered. Even the plates on which the foods are served are not properly cleaned by the roadside vendors. They tend to wash again and again the plates in the same small bucket of water that becomes dirty from repeated use; hardly do they care to replace the dirty water with fresh water. It is not that laws are not there to regulate such dangerous practices that pose serious threats to public health. Many fall ill due to the consumption of such foods.

Two years ago when the mobile courts first went into operation, people came to know how from the dirty and uncared for kitchens of seemingly nice looking restaurants on the outside, they were being actually served adulterated foods without their knowing about the same. The problem, really, is one of law enforcement. The present government should take a vigorous interest in enforcing the law in this vital sphere for the sake of public health. People will be healthy and more productive and not need to spend much on medical treatment if they can get the benefits of clean foods and their equally clean catering services.

Arthur C Clarke: science's critical cheerleader

Nalaka Gunawardene

With the death of Arthur C. Clarke, science and rational thought have lost one of their leading promoters.

"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert", the author Sir Arthur C Clarke once wrote. The words were a play on Newton's Third Law of motion, and Clarke, who died on19 March 2008 aged 90, was empathising with politicians and members of the public who become confused when scientific opinion is divided or polarised.

Clarke's forte was not only extrapolating about humanity's technological abilities, but also exploring the nexus between science and society. With his death, science has lost an articulate and passionate promoter who challenged scientists to play a greater role in public policy and demanded that political leaders should take science seriously.

Best known as a writer of plausible science fiction, Clarke's recurrent themes included humans evolving into a space-faring species and making contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence.

But he was never an uncritical cheerleader for science, and that will be part of his enduring legacy. In an essay in Science, he cautioned, "For more than a century science and its occasionally ugly sister technology have been the chief driving forces shaping our world. They decide the kinds of futures that are possible. Human wisdom must decide which are desirable."

In line with this belief, Clarke often used his stories to caution against undesirable futures. For example, he imagined supercomputers taking control (HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey), and the termination of life on earth by nuclear warfare, asteroid impacts or climate change.

Underlying his vivid imagination was a solid grounding in physics and mathematics, and a firm understanding of social and cultural dynamics of science in today's world. These attributes helped Clarke become an effective, credible communicator of popular science, especially on space travel, communication technologies and futuristic scenarios.

Clarke's writing, television appearances and public talks inspired generations of space explorers, software engineers and techno-preneurs. In particular, he triggered the globalisation of information by proposing the geosynchronous communications satellite in 1945 - satellites that circle the earth at the same speed as the earth itself is turning, and therefore appear to stay in a fixed position.

The full policy impact of Clarke's writing has yet to be fully assessed. For example, it was only decades after the 1952 publication of his book, The Exploration of Space, that he found out how the United States space pioneer Wernher von Braun had used it to convince President Kennedy to go to the Moon.

Given his coverage of Apollo missions on US network television, it is little wonder Clarke was appalled by the belief of a sizeable number of modern Americans that the Moon landings were an elaborate hoax perpetrated by NASA and Hollywood.

Indeed, Clarke readily took on a formidable array of anti-science beliefs and superstitious practices, from creationism and scientology to astrology and fire-walking. In these endeavours he joined other campaigners against pseudoscience, including scientists Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould and the magician James Randi.

For a while, Clarke even made a modest living as a professional sceptical enquirer. Beginning with Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World (1980), he hosted three television series that probed - and sometimes exposed - numerous mysteries, superstitions and the paranormal.

Even when Clarke didn't find full explanations, he invariably demonstrated the value of keeping an open mind and asking the right questions. And instead of ignoring or dismissing popular obsessions, he tried engaging their proponents in rational discussion. That was characteristic of Clarke, a genial moderator who always sought to build bridges - whether between scientists and the public, or across the "two cultures" divide between the arts and the sciences.

Clarke himself straddled the two spheres with dexterity and authority. His advocacy of popular science communication - and its by-product, the public understanding of science - spanned his entire career of nearly 70 years.

He underscored this commitment in what turned out to be his last public address, delivered in mid-February to the global launch of the International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE) at UNESCO headquarters in Paris: "I'm very glad to hear that the IYPE is placing equal emphasis on creating new knowledge and its public outreach. Today, more than ever, we need the public understanding and engagement of science… [it] is essential for science to influence policy and improve lives."

Pursuing this strategy in his adopted home, Sri Lanka, where he lived since 1956, Clarke won some battles and lost others.

On the positive side, his advice on the development of telecommunications, energy conservation and coastal resource management sometimes impacted public policies.

But even half a century of Arthur C. Clarke has not been able to shake Sri Lankans' obsession with astrology. A life-long stargazer, he repeatedly asked astrologers to explain the basis of their work rationally. This challenge was craftily avoided, and astrology continues to exercise much influence over politics, public policy, business and everyday life.

Even the government-run research institute named after Clarke uses astrologically chosen 'auspicious times' for commissioning new buildings. And in April 2006, when astrologers, nationalists and Buddhist monks persuaded the government to change Sri Lanka's standard time to GMT+5:30 from GMT+6, Clarke's voice of reason was completely ignored.

Yet he never gave up the struggle for rational discussion and debate in public affairs, and remained outspoken to the end. In doing so, he lived a vision that he had outlined over 45 years earlier.

Accepting the UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the popularisation of science in Delhi in 1962, he said, "Two of the greatest evils that afflict Asia, and keep millions in a state of physical, mental and spiritual poverty, are fanaticism and superstition. Science, in its cultural as well as its technological sense, is the great enemy of both; it can provide the only weapons that will overcome them and lead whole nations to a better life."

(Arthur C. Clarke mentored Sri Lankan journalist Nalaka Gunawardene and they worked together for 20 years. Gunawardene, who is a trustee of SciDev.Net.

Placebo nation: Just believe

Sharon Begley

When you write about science, there is no shortage of topics that incite the wrath of readers: Climate change, evolution. racial differences in IQ. But say that dummy pills with no pharmacologically active ingredients-placebos-are about as effective as antidepressants in treating depression, and watch out. People are incensed at the very thought that the (often expensive) meds they rely on might be 21st-century versions of the magic feather that Dumbo, the flying elephant, was told would make him airborne. It was only when Dumbo dropped the feather he was clutching in his trunk while in free fall, and started flapping his ears, that he grasped that his powers actually came from within, allowing him to fly.

No one is saying "positive thinking" can cure cancer, or that patients should throw out their pills, let alone that illnesses that respond to the placebo effect are "all in your head"-imagined. But there is no denying the drumbeat of studies on the therapeutic power of placebos. Over the years they have been shown to relieve asthma, lower blood pressure, reduce angina and stop gastric reflux. An inert solution injected into the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease reduced muscle rigidity about as well as standard drugs. In a bizarre finding, sham surgery of the knee, in which patients got sedation and an incision but no actual procedure, relieved the pain of osteoarthritis better than actual arthroscopy-and produced an equal improvement in joint function, scientists reported in 2002. And last month an analysis of clinical trials of a range of antidepressants found that, except in the most severe cases, placebos lifted the black cloud as well as meds did.

To be sure, no study is perfect. In the antidepressant one, the placebo might not have looked as effective if it had been compared with the drug that worked best for each patient, rather than with the one that happened to be chosen for the clinical trial. (Some patients respond better to Paxil, some to Effexor or others, for reasons that remain murky.) But the fact remains that placebos are at least somewhat effective and sometimes very effective for some patients. Rather than railing against that finding or pretending it doesn't exist, what we should be doing is learning how brain activity that corresponds to the expectation of cure translates into clinical improvement. As Dan Ariely of Duke University says, "It's not that medicines are crummy, but that the placebo effect is so powerful."

There have been clues about the source of that power. In Parkinson's disease, studies find, the expectation of getting better raises brain levels of the neurochemical dopamine, whose shortage underlies Parkinson's, and normalizes the pattern of firing in a region of the brain where aberrant firing causes the loss of motor control. When the placebo effect relieves pain, it releases natural opioid-like molecules in the brain that have analgesic effects like morphine.

Ariely, a behavioral economist, saw the power of placebos during the three years he spent in a hospital recovering from a horrific accident that left him with third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body. Night after excruciating night, patients would beg for painkillers. One day, he recalls, "I overheard the doctors telling the nurses not to give a certain patient any more morphine. A few hours later, when the same patient started begging for painkillers I saw the nurse going to her room with an injection," and soon the patient fell asleep. When Ariely asked the nurse about it, she said the injection was plain saline-a placebo.

Ariely's curiosity about the power of expectation-which he explores in his new book, "Predictably Irrational"-inspired a study of what affects those expectations. He and colleagues gave 82 volunteers a brochure explaining that they would be testing a new pain drug called Validone that worked like codeine, but faster. (It was actually a placebo.) Each then received a series of electrical shocks on their wrists, rating them from "no pain at all" to "the worst pain imaginable." Each then took a "Validone." Half were told it cost $2.50, the other half that it cost a dime. They then received shocks again. Of those who got the $2.50 pill, 85 percent felt less pain from the same voltage than before taking it; 61 percent of those taking the cheap pill felt less pain, the scientists reported last week in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The pricier the drug, the higher the expectation of efficacy, and the stronger the placebo effect.

That will not surprise doctors whose arthritis patients screamed bloody murder after Vioxx was withdrawn from the market after studies showed it raised the risk of heart attacks. People insisted that switching to cheap aspirin just did not relieve their pain and suffering. Maybe.

But in light of Ariely's research, you've got to wonder. And patients who protest when their insurer makes them switch from a name-brand drug to a cheaper, biologically identical generic? "Many claim the generic is less effective," says Ariely, "but you have to consider whether that's an effect of the price. The placebo effect is about expectations, and we expect more-expensive medicines to work better." Maybe researchers would be interested in figuring out how to harness that effect if only it were patentable.

Meet a woman of history

Tom Plate

POWERFUL women seem to be appearing frequently in Asian news these days. Recent headlines trumpeted the continued defiance of the great Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and of course mourned the assassination of the Pakistani heir-apparent Benazir Bhutto.

The truth, though, is there's nothing that new about powerful women and Asia.

They are omnipresent throughout the region, embedded even in otherwise sexist or patriarchal cultures. Over the decades, national liberation movements have spawned prominent female insurgent leaders. Even the long-established political dynasties throw up their fair share of powerful matriarchs.

And so while the US electorate goes about deciding whether the next American president will be a woman, in a country where no woman has even been vice-president, I was able to sit down with a famous - indeed, in this region, legendary - Vietnamese woman who helped spearhead her country's reunification struggle against both the ill-fated French and American interventions. Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, now in her eighties, has been aging quite gracefully, thank you. Even today, she packs such punch and panache in her eyes and such bouncy incandescence and voice as she recollects her involvement in the historic Paris Peace Talks of 1972 and the ultimate US troop withdrawal from her country, that you can't imagine how we Americans might ever have thought we could possibly prevail here.

Vice-president of Vietnam for ten years from 1992, Madame Binh looks every bit the part of the Asian women of steel and destiny. She is happy to comment, though diplomatically, about things American, especially as they relate to our troubled past with her own Vietnam. "That Iraq war will go on too long," she says, at once tugging at her brown socks, then sipping Vietnamese tea from a large glass. Like with Vietnam, "the US considered itself a big power and behaved like a big power. And because it was such a great power, it could not accept that the Vietnamese people would actually fight against them."

It was only "after great losses," as she put it, that America withdrew from Vietnam; with Iraq she fears our big-power hubris will delay the inevitability of withdrawal: "With Iraq, it's different from Vietnam but the general purpose is the same: The US wants to impose its rule and its rules on other countries."

This view of US hegemony through socialist eyes that have seen much over the decades might strike Americans as far more ideological than historical. The American intervention, after all, was justified to prevent the spread of communism from North Vietnam to the south and then (presumably) through all of Southeast Asia.

But, as Madame Binh notes, the Cold War is over, and America and Vietnam have gotten on with the job of trying to relate in a businesslike manner. And she is not at all reluctant to admit that Vietnam has made its own share of mistakes in its struggle to escape third-world underdevelopment:

"Socialism does need to be democratic," she admitted, "and we really have not implemented it well enough. But if we want to implement true democracy in Vietnam, we need to have much better education for our people. You can't have intelligent public participation without sufficient public education." That, she points out, will take lots of money - or, in the fancy phrase of our times, economic development. To that end, Vietnam needs to make friends with every country, make no more enemies than necessary, and be warm and gracious to all visitors and tourists, especially those with money to burn.

In truth, the Vietnamese can be the friendliest of hosts. The buoyant energy of the streets is palpable; at times the place feels like a surging South Korea a decade or so ago. To be sure, the country must not only overcome the enormous cost of its past war-time struggles but the continuing cost of an oft-overbearing communist bureaucracy which is characteristically suspicious of any move it cannot control. Madame Binh has seen it all, of course, and expects that in the course of time Vietnam's political culture will measure up to its economic-development needs. It will have to or Vietnam will fail.

Such issues rise above gender, for all the prominence of women in Asia or elsewhere. And though her sisterhood makes her wish Hillary Clinton all the best, it is both the values and the decisions of America's next president that catch her eye and roil her memory: "I am very happy for her," she says, rising to say good bye, "but America's actual policies are what is most important." In effect, despite all the time that has gone by, very little has changed in that regard.

(Prof. Tom Plate, a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, teaches Asian politics and media at the University of California at Los Angeles)