SAJAforum

FOOD: One curry could bust your daily limit, UK magazine finds

Did you know that in order to burn the calories from an Indian food, you need to exercise for 271 minutes? And that's only for men. Women need to exercise 335 minutes to burn the same amount of calories.

In an investigation done by UK's Which? magazine, Indian takeway curry has scored worst on saturated fat - compared to pizza or Chinese takeout meal. The Indian meal had 23.2 grams (0.82 ounce) of saturated fat, 3.2 grams (0.11 ounce) more than what a woman should eat in a day. Overall, Indian food contained 1338 calories. Chinese food contained 1436 calories and a thin crust pepperoni pizza contained 929 calories.

Also, according to the report, one Chinese takeout meal had 19 teapoons (3.39 ounces) of sugar per portion, three times more compared to an Indian meal.

The magazine tested chicken tikka masala, pilau rice and a plain naan, which according to the magazine is one of the most popular meals in the UK.

This is the original link to the report (currently not working because they are redesigning their website).

Takeway meal

On average, the takeaways had more calories a portion than the supermarket versions, but less salt (especially the naan and pilau rice).

Naan bread contained more calories, weight for weight, than chicken tikka masala.

Pilau rice had a similar number of calories weight for weight as the chicken tikka masala.

You might think bread and rice are healthier than the masala, but the problem is how they’re cooked. Pilau rice is fried and naan has a thick layer of butter on it. Half the takeaway meals had more saturated fat per Which? portion (pictured above) than a woman should eat in a day.

Supermarket meal

None of these stood out as significantly healthier or less healthy than the others.

For example, Asda’s meal had the most saturated fat and sugar.

Waitrose’s pilau rice contained more than five time the fat of the Tesco version (which had the least), and M&S's chicken tikka masala had more salt than other supermarket versions.

Also, here are Which?'s tips on eating healthy Indian takeouts:

Avoid deep-fried dishes, such as battered food, prawn toast, samosas and spring rolls.

Choose tandoori, steamed and stir-fried dishes.

Go for curries with tomato and onion-based sauces, such as jalfrezi, instead of creamy sauces, such as kormas.

Choose boiled or steamed rice over pilau or egg-fried rice.

Choose a chapatti instead of naan bread. Include side dishes of vegetables and/or dhal (lentils).

Go easy on the free extras, such as prawn crackers, poppadoms and sauces.

Anyone know how this compares to Indian meals in the US? Please post your thoughts below.

HEALTH/CRIME: NJ doctor suspended for removing wrong lung

This story has got to be every surgical patient's nightmare - and, I presume, every surgeon's as well. From WNBC.com:

Santusht Perera's physician’s license was suspended after he removed of portions of the wrong lung during surgery and allegedly attempted to conceal the error.

Perera was issued a two-year suspension on June 5 from the State Board of Medical Examiners . The Board’s appellate court upheld the suspension in Perera’s appeal case with a final decision on June 12.

After the surgery, Perera told the patient, Richard Flagg , the right lung tissue, which was wrongfully removed, contained a life-threatening tumor even though he knew it did not.

According to state medical officials, Perera's misconduct prevented Flagg from being properly treated. Before he died in September, 2003, Flagg testified before Congress arguing for patients’ rights in malpractice cases.Perera’s suspension from his practice at Hoboken University Medical Center began June 6.He has been fined $30,000 in penalties and $51,273.10 in reimbursement of costs.
[Video of WNBC report here.]

 

Read the state attorney general's 15-page administrative action complaint from May 16, 2005 (PDF).

This story reminded me of a 1995 medical story in NYC. That's when a New York surgeon operated on the wrong side of the brain of Rajeswari Ayyappan, mother of Bollywood star Sridevi - Ayyappan died later in India.  The hospital then settled with Sridevi's family and that doctor went onto become head of neurosurgery at another hospital, where, in 2000, he was suspended after operating on the wrong side of another patient's brain. Read a 2000 Rediff report on the "Sridevi's mother" doctor.

Post your comments below.

Earlier on SAJAforum:

• Dr. Dipak Desai of Las Vegas accused of infecting thousands with hepatitis (anyone have updates on the Desai story?)
  

OBIT: Vinay Chakravarthy loses battle with leukemia

[UPDATED: Funeral plans in Boston added below. Please continue sharing your thoughts.]

In March 2008, we wrote about the passing of Sameer Bhatia, one of two South Asian men whose struggle with leukemia had caught the imagination of South Asians and others across the U.S. We are sorry to report that the other young man, Vinay Chakravarthy, 29, passed away this morning.

"We are devastated at our loss today," said a spokesperson for the Chakravarthy family. "Vinay was an amazing soul who inspired all of us with his will to live. We take some comfort in knowing his journey may have saved lives through the campaign, and in all the lives he touched with his love and
spirit."

Vinay, through HelpVinay.org and Sameer, through HelpSameer.org, used their illness as a way of mobilizing the community and bringing attention to the lack of South Asians in the national bone-marrow registries.

Vinay was featured in a April 16, 2008, PBS/WGBH special, "The Truth About Cancer," taking on the question, "how far have we come in the war on cancer." You can learn more about the show here; you can watch it here; Vinay's segment begins here (chapter 5).

This is a logo of the PBS show: Vinay with his wife, Rashmi; they were married in 2005.

Vinay's last posting on HelpVinay was on May 12:

Hello everyone!

Once again sorry about the delay in updating all of you especially after the PBS documentary. Well as most my already know since my relapse in January 2008 after BMT, I received a dose of mylotarg which placed me in remission. Since then I have been battling graft versus host disease and multiple complications that have placed me in the ICU three times now. The first time for acute kidney and liver failure and the second, third time for excessive blood loss from the gut. I was successfully treated for all ICU visits, the last stay I required an interventional radiology procedure to stop the internal bleeding. After the procedure I was transferred back to the regular floor and my diet was slowly advanced to normal! I am doing well so far and will be transferring to a physical rehab center here in Boston to get my overall strength back. I hope to be home for good in 2-3 weeks! The rehab facility will provide 3 hours of physical therapy seven days a week, quite intense but should be better for me in the long run.

While I was in the ICU a lot has happened in our community, I want to send my love to Sameer and his family. Please if you need anything let us know, let the community know, we will always be there for you.

Here's what his parents had sent out last year (via SAJAer Seshu Badrinath, Vinay's cousin):

Vinay is the world to us - he is warm, funny, and loving. We have watched him grow from a little baby, to a young boy playing sports, to a fine young man determined to be a doctor, to a man marrying the girl of his dreams. Please help our son to have a chance to live - to be with his wife, with us, and with his friends.

If you aren't registered in the registry (I am, having signed up at a SAJA Convention drive some years back), please do so. Here's info on how to do so, from HelpVinay, SAMAR, the South Asian Marrow Association of Recruiters and MatchPia.org.

FUNERAL INFO - BOSTON, from HelpVinay.org:

Thursday:
Viewing is from 5:00 - 7:00 PM ET
Folks will be saying a few words around 5:30 PM
Location: Mann and Rodgers Funeral Home
Located in JP on the corner of South Huntington and Centre Street

Friday:
Rites/Service will be held in the morning from 9:30 AM onward for about an hour.
Location: Mann and Rodgers Funeral Home
Located in JP on the corner of South Huntington and Centre Street

A private cremation for family members only will be held at 10:30 in the Forest Hills area.

 

Some of you have enquired if you could do something in Vinay's memory. We request that you do not send flowers or other gifts. If you would like to make a donation in Vinay's memory, we would suggest that you donate to the National Donor Marrow Program.

Feel free to also donate in Vinay's name.

Vinay's commitment to finding other South Indian's a match has been made evident to the work that him and the group, helpvinay.org have done thus far for the South Asian Community.

 

Please post your thoughts, comments, etc, below. We will make sure his family sees them.

Earlier: Sameer Bhatia loses battle with leukemia

CONTROVERSY: British Doctor Admits Plagiarism

Another Kaavya Viswanathan-ish scandal here - but this time, it's not a student. It is a professor/doctor.

One of England's top psychiatrists, Raj Persaud, has admitted that he plagiarized materials for four of the articles published in his 2003 book - "From the Edge of the Couch." He has also admitted lifting passages for his four 2005 articles from from an article and book by Thomas Blass, of the University of Maryland.

Read the full article on the Guardian. Here's the Times Online version.

Persaud (who was voted one of the top ten psychiatrists in the UK in 2002 by the Institute of Psychiatry and the Royal College of Psychiatrists) published his articles in leading publications including the British Medical Journal, Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry, and the Guardian and the Independent newspapers.

He was also a longtime presenter of "Travels of a Mind" for BBC World Service and "All in the Mind" for BBC Radio 4.

Read Persaud's bio on Gresham College's website (where he is a professor).

Any thoughts? Please post your comments below.

HEALTH: Cosmetic surgery catches on in India, sorta

A guest post by Lien Hoang, an American student working this summer as a journalist in Vietnam.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The growing trend of cosmetic surgery in India is the topic of a San Francisco Chronicle article by freelancer Ben Frumin, who notes that their popularity hasn't made such procedures any easier to talk about. The article cites Hinduism as a reason for the taboo nature of cosmetic surgery, sharing the measures that patients take to hide their recent operations. India's economic growth and Western influences in the form of Bollywood help to explain the trend, Frumin writes. Read the full article here.

MOVES: Geeta Anand moves to Mumbai for Wall Street Journal

Geeta Anand, the New York-based senior special writer for the Wall Street Journal's investigative group, is moving her job to Mumbai for a few years. She's going to be joining the Journal's India team, where she will continue to do investigative work on health, science and the environment (among other stories). She will report to the paper's India bureau chief, Paul Beckett, and joins Peter Wonacott, Eric Bellman and Jackie Range as correspondents based in the country (in addition to stringers and others).

Asked why this job at this time, Anand told SAJAforum: "I've always wanted to write about India, and now is the time where it works both for my family and for the Wall Street Journal for me to be there."

She is also the author of 2006 nonfiction book, "The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million--And Bucked the Medical Establishment--In a Quest to Save His Children," which is scheduled to be made into a movie titled "Crowley" by the producers of "Erin Brokovich." Just this week, Variety reported that this will be Harrison Ford's next movie (as an actor and executive producer and that filming begins in the fall.

Anand, who shared a 2003 Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting for a series of stories on "the roots, significance and impact of corporate scandals in America", is moving with her husband and daughters to the city where she was born and raised. Before moving to the U.S. to study at Dartmouth College and launch her journalism career, she was a top swimmer in India, representing the country in international competition and setting various womens records.

In July 2007 at the SAJA Convention, she was asked by Sonu Munshi about the possibility of working in India:

AWARDS: Arun Venugopal wins MHA prize for radio reporting

Arun Venugopal, SAJAforum's fearless leader, won a major award yesterday. In typical Arun fashion, he whispered not a word about it to us, hoping that the award, his trip to D.C. to collect it, etc, wouldn't be noticed. Well, too bad, Arun, because this is a prize worth noting (the photo is from last year's SAJA Convention; PHOTO: Manish Vij).

Mental Health America, "the country's leading nonprofit dedicated to helping ALL people live mentally healthier lives," presented its 2008 media awards on Saturday, June 7 at a luncheon as part of its Mental Health Promotion and Prevention Summit in Washington, D.C. Among the winners:

Local Radio
WNYC (New York, NY), "Cities Embrace New Ways to Handle Confrontations Between Cops and the Mentally Ill," by Arun Venugopal

Listen to Arun's report - all nine minutes - here (transcript link below):

SURVEY: Measuring discrimination against South Asians in the U.S.

Arpana Inman and Anju Kaduvettoor of Lehigh University are conducting a survey meant to measure how frequently South Asians experience discrimination.

By understanding the impact of discrimination in detail, we believe that we can add to the limited research for this population. We also believe that this research may help professionals working with South Asian populations provide more culturally appropriate services and gain a greater understanding of the experiences of South Asian men and women. This study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board at Lehigh University.

You can take the survey here. Some of the questions relate to how often you've experienced discrimination at the hands of teachers, employers, neighbors, strangers and people in the service sector. All answers would be confidential, and the full survey is supposed to take 20 to 35 minutes.

Here's the contact info for the authors of the study:
Anju Kaduvettoor, ank9[at]lehigh.edu and Arpana G. Inman, agi2[at]lehigh.edu

Both are part of the counseling psychology program at Pennsylvania-based Lehigh (Inman is a professor and Kaduvettoor is a doctoral candidate). They were on a Lehigh team that went down to help Hurricane Katrina victims in Louisana - the team wrote about their experience here.

That's Kaduvettoor on the extreme left and Inman right in the center during their post-Katrina project.

And here's a list of earlier research on the same topic:

SUICIDE: Ganesh Santhanakrishnan, former PhD candidate

Twenty-seven-year-old Ganesh Santhanakrishnan, a former doctoral candidate who had become homeless and mentally unstable, committed suicide by jumping off the Tappan Zee Bridge, just north of New York City. This happened on April 3, a day or two after being released from the Westchester Medical Center's psychiatric unit and three years after moving to the US from Tamil Nadu. At the time of his death he had been sleeping in a storage shed. From The Journal News, April 12:

State police didn't make Santhanakrishnan's name public until yesterday when they finally made contact with the man's father in his native India. It turns out that the young man had been living the life of a loner in Ossining after losing his computer-related job in New Jersey.

"He was alone in the country and apparently was experiencing some significant mental issues," said state police Investigator Noel Nelson. "You could imagine what that must have been like for him - not to have anybody to either confide in or to be of assistance."

Neighbors on Albany Post Road said that, over the past year, he exhibited increasingly erratic behavior, noting that he would chase cars and one time even ran after the mailman with a piece of lumber.

"He was essentially a nuisance, chasing people down the street, chanting in the middle of the night, clapping his hands loudly till all hours of the night," said Chuck Mosello, owner of Corvettes of Westchester, located across the street from where the man was staying. "The guy was not well."

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy of The Journal News has a recent update on Ganesh, where she's interviewed his distraught mother in Chennai. She also portrays him as an academically accomplished but fun-loving guy whose life went downhill after he lost student funding.

"He loved to read Frederick Forsyth novels, and had the most infectious laugh," said Girishankar Gurumurthy, 27, who works for Texas Instruments in Bangalore, India.

These descriptions, however, bear little resemblance to what neighbors in Ossining witnessed during the past nine months. Santhanakrishnan seemed to descend into a mental abyss, howling into the night, sleeping in a storage shed. He had lost an extreme amount of weight. Gurumurthy himself viewed a recent picture of his old friend and said he hardly could recognize the man he knew in college.

HEALTH: World Malaria Day initiative launched

A scene from a World Malaria Day event at the United Nations. From left: Rajat Gupta, chairman of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF Executive Director and Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. PHOTO: Jay Mandal/On Assignment

There's a big new effort to eradicate malaria. And unlike a lot of other efforts with vague, intangible goals, this one has a deadline a thousands days from now. From the UN press release:

A bold initiative announced today by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today brings together the many forces fighting malaria to focus on one goal: providing universal coverage of malaria-control measures in Africa, where 90 per cent of malaria cases occur, by the end of 2010.

Global health leaders stood shoulder to shoulder at UN headquarters in New York to outline a roadmap for success and rally governments, corporations, international institutions and private citizens to work toward ending malaria deaths.

UNICEF, the World Heath Organization and the Malaria No More partnership are among those who will now join forces on behalf of 600 million people at risk of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. They will work to provide universal coverage for malaria prevention and treatment by 31 December 2010 – less than 1,000 days from now.

Rajat Gupta, the former head of McKinsey & Co and chairman of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was part of the launch announcement.

Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about Gupta becoming chair of the fund and all his other nonprofit/educational activities (I also included some comments about interviewing him for the first time in April 1994). Watch a short January 2008 video of Gupta talking about malaria at Davos:

Post your comments below.

SOMEWHAT UNUSUAL: The Baby with Two Faces

Here we go again. A flurry of recent news reports out of India--including a widely circulated AP report--have featured a small baby named Lali, who was born with two faces and one body. Lali suffers from an extremely rare condition known as craniofacial duplication, and has two working pairs of eyes, two noses, and two mouths.

As if that weren't enough of a burden, Lali is also being celebrated as a reincarnation of a Hindu god, with residents of her tiny Uttar Pradesh village flocking to see her with gifts and well wishes.

Accounts differ on just which deity Lali is meant to represent.

From The Telegraph:

To the largely illiterate villagers from the agricultural community the little girl is a reincarnation of Lord Ganesh, the half person and half elephant, and one of the most worshipped deities in the Hindu pantheon.

But the AP differs.

… the little girl is being hailed as a return of the Hindu goddess of valour, Durga, a fiery deity traditionally depicted with three eyes and many arms.

OBIT: Sameer Bhatia loses battle against leukemia

[UPDATE: June 25, 2008: Vinay Chakravarthy, whose HelpVinay campaign partnered with the HelpSameer campaign, died today.]

Sameer Bhatia, whose brave struggle against leukemia was documented at HelpSameer.org and caught the imagination of South Asians across the U.S., died on Thursday, March 27, 2008, in Seattle. Below are messages from the family (please post your thoughts in the comments section).

The photo on the right is from July 1, 2007, when a group of students made 1,200 paper cranes for Sameer. More coverage at Ultrabrown and SepiaMutiny.

From: "Chatwani, Robert" <rchatwani@ebay.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:44:24 -0600
Subject: Sameer Bhatia's Memorial Service

Dear Sameer's friends,

For those of you who have not yet heard, it is with deep sadness that I share the news of Sameer's passing. Sameer passed away peacefully early Thursday morning in Seattle, surrounded by family.

Regardless of whether you knew Sameer for years or if you met him just once, all of you experienced his amazing zest for life, his entrepreneurial spirit, and his passion for changing our world for the better.

Please see below for details about tomorrow's Memoral Service, information about the live webcast of the service, and messages from Sameer's father. All of these details are also available at http://helpsameer.org.

If you wish to share your thoughts or prayers with Sameer's family, please do so by adding comments to blog posts on the Sameer's site. Also please pass this message on to anyone you feel should be informed of Sameer's passing.

With warmth,

Robert, on behalf of Sameer's family
 
-----

FROM SAMEER'S FATHER - TODAY

We have arranged a memorial service for Sameer on Saturday, March 29 at 3 PM to accommodate many of you as well as our friends in Seattle. Many of you  have flown long distances at a short notice to be here. We want to overcome our collective grief by dwelling on all the positive aspects of Sameer’s life. We hope that it will help all of us to move forward in the way Sameer would have wanted us to do.

HEALTH/CRIME: Dr. Dipak Desai accused in major medical scandal

K.P. Nayar, U.S. correspondent for the Kolkata Telegraph, send me an alert for a story he wrote yesterday. Turns out an Indian doctor in Las Vegas is at the center of a huge medical scandal. As many as 40,000 people may have have been infected with Hepatitis C or HIV as a result of reused syringes and other medical materials at Dr. Dipak Desai's clinic.

The media is Nevada has been covering the story for several days as it built up from a handful of cases to
this stage. But the national media in the US has largely ignored the story so far. And Nayar is the first person in the Indian press to cover this. From his story:

An Indian American doctor is at the centre of what is emerging to be America’s biggest medical malpractice scandal.    

As many as 40,000 people may have been infected with the deadly hepatitis C virus or HIV from a Las Vegas clinic, owned by Dr Dipak Desai, which has been reusing syringes and medical vials for nearly four years.

Desai, who has been practising medicine in Nevada for 28 years, is an alumnus of Gujarat University and later did his medical residency at the Catholic Medical Center in New York.

He is said to be an influential political fixer in Nevada, having made financial contributions to the election campaigns of President George W. Bush and former vice-president Al Gore, among others.

After Nevada governor Jim Gibbons won the election in 2006, Desai was a member of his transition team. He also served on the governor’s health care working group.    

Local TV crews are now descending on his luxurious home with a swimming pool, spa and multiple fireplaces, for which Desai and his wife paid $3.4 million (Rs 13.6 crore) with what may now turn out to be tainted money.
<snip>
In what his victims will now see as a cutting irony, Desai was a member of this board which investigates allegations against doctors. He also served as chairman of the board’s investigative committee.

Other coverage:

• Thousands possibly sickened by Las Vegas Clinic (AP)
• More Vegas clinics broke rules (CBC)

Help us cover this story. Please post comments, links, leads, info below or send to saja[at]columbia.edu. We'd also like to know Desai's side of the story.

MENTAL HEALTH: Bangalore is India's suicide capital

Reporter Vicky Nanjappa has this article in Rediff about the high suicide rate in Bangalore. According to India's National Crime Records Bureau, 35 out of every 100,000 people commit suicide there. It's a combination of stressful jobs, traffic and the absence of family life for all the young professionals:

Those working in the IT sector have to travel at least 20 kilometres to 25 kilometres to reach their work place and, thanks to the traffic jams, the travel time increases by a good one-and-a-half hours at the very least. The pressure of meeting deadlines and making it on time to meetings prey on their mind as they try and beat the traffic. This, in turn, contributes to increasing stress levels.

The National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore also treats patients for stress-related ailments. Doctors at NIMHANS say software engineers in the age group of 24 to 30 years form a large chunk of the patients facing this problem. The doctors add that such patients complain of restlessness, lack of concentration, anxiety and body pain -- all of which are symptomatic of stress.

Another issue is the debt trap that many fall into:

Since the IT boom took place, salaries are at an unbelievable high. This has prompted banks to make tempting loan offers. At least five out of 10 IT workers fall into the trap.

Says Kishore Alva, a software engineer, "It is the EMIs that worry us. How do we repay the banks if we lose our jobs? This factor is on my mind almost every day and increases my stress levels."

Read the rest of the article: "Why Bangalore is India's suicide capital"

HEALTH : Smoking threatens millions in India, study suggests

A recent study on smoking and death in India, published by the New England Journal of Medicine, has suddenly made headlines in the world media. The research predicts that nearly one million people a year - one in five of all male deaths and one in 20 of all female deaths between the ages of 30 and 69 - will die because of tobacco smoking by 2010.

A group of 12 doctors from India, Canada and Britain conducted the study - "A Nationally Representative Case - Control Study of Smoking and Death in India." A point to note in this finding is that 50 per cent of those who die from smoking are illiterates. The full study can be accessed here.

According to the BBC News:

The study warns that without action, the death toll from smoking will climb still further.<snip>

The figures are based on a survey of deaths among a sample of 1.1 million homes in all parts of India carried out by about 900 field workers.

Among men who died between the ages of 30 and 69, smoking caused about 38% of deaths from tuberculosis, 32% of deaths from cancer and 20% of deaths from vascular disease.

The Associated Press writes that "while an increasing number of countries prohibit smoking in public places, people in India freely puff away in playgrounds, railway stations, sidewalk cafes and even hospitals."

"A recent government effort to introduce pictorial health warnings recommended by WHO has run into legal delays, with tobacco companies fighting to keep them off cigarette packets."

Last year, India joined the list of countries that require large graphic warnings on their cigarette packets to alarm the smokers about the negative effects of smoking. According to the Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids, India’s initial pictorial warnings was supposed to include pictures of an ailing baby as a reminder of the harmful effects of secondhand smoke and of a diseased mouth to show the risk of oral cancer.

CRIME: Kidney doctor arrested in Nepal and deported to India

Last month, we wrote about India's stolen kidneys racket. Now, there's an update.

The doctor who is alleged to be involved in a massive organ-trading racket in India, was arrested in Chitwan district of Nepal (about 100 miles south of Kathmandu) and has now been deported to India. Amit Kumar, who is nicknamed "Kidney King" and "Dr. Horror" according to some media outlets, was arrested by the Nepali police on Friday morning with $145,000, a check for 900,000 euros and some fake documents.

From The Hindu:

An Interpol Red Corner Notice was issued against the tainted doctor after the massive racket with inter-state and international ramifications came to light on January 24.

Nepalese media reports quoted a police official as saying that Kumar had tried to bribe the police team which went to arrest him.

Police Inspector Prakash Malla, who went to arrest Kumar, told a private television here that the Indian doctor offered upto one crore to set him free.

"Why do you arrest me, take money, how much do you need? Twenty lakhs, 30 lakhs, 40 lakhs or one crore?" Malla quoted Kumar as saying.

The Hindustan Times has more on how he got arrested.

OBIT: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of TM, dies

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation and the guru of several celebrities of our time died at his home in Netherlands today. From The New York Times, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Spiritual Leader dies:

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who introduced transcendental meditation to the West and gained fame in the 1960s as the spiritual guru to the Beatles, died Tuesday at his home and headquarters in Vlodrop, the Netherlands. He is believed to have been in his 90s. Steven Yellin, a spokesman for the organization, confirmed the Maharishi’s death but did not give a cause.

On Jan. 11, the Maharishi announced that his public work was finished and that he would use his remaining time to complete a long-running series of published commentaries on the Veda, the oldest sacred Hindu text.

He was at the center of many controversies including his title, which is traditionally used by Brahmans (he belonged to a lower caste), his alleged sexual improprieties towards actress Mia Farrow and the TM technique Yogic Flying, which disciples complained never went beyond the first stage.

He founded Transcendental Meditation in the 1950s.

Known as TM, a trademarked name, the technique consists of closing one’s eyes twice a day for 20 minutes while silently repeating a mantra to gain deep relaxation, eliminate stress, promote good health and attain clear thinking and inner fulfillment. Classes today cost $2,500 for a five-day session.

The TM movement was a founding influence on what has grown into a multibillion-dollar self-help industry, and many people practice similar forms of meditation that have no connection to the Maharishi’s movement.

Over the years since TM became popular, many scientists have found physical and mental benefits from mediation in general and transcendental meditation in particular, especially in reducing stress-related ailments.

Since the technique’s inception in 1955, the organization says, it has been used to train more than 40,000 teachers, taught more than five million people, opened thousands of teaching centers and founded hundreds of schools, colleges and universities.

In the United States, the organization values its assets at about $300 million, with its base in Fairfield, Iowa, where it operates a university, the Maharishi University of Management. In 2001, disciples of the movement incorporated their own town, Maharishi Vedic City, a few miles north of Fairfield.

His following was diverse and included Clint Eastwood, David Lynch and Deepak Chopra, Donovan, and Mike Love of the Beach Boys. But his most famous disciples were the Beatles. Check out this video, with interviews and archival footage.

The Maharishi had established a multi-billion dollar global empire in his years of teaching and mentoring people.

Some 5 million people devoted 20 minutes every morning and evening reciting a simple sound, or mantra, and delving into their consciousness.

VIDEO: Two YouTube videos on kidney sale in India

Earlier on SAJAforum, we posted about India's stolen kidneys racket. I found two videos on YouTube (posted  in Nov. 2007) that tell two chilling stories - one about a woman who got scammed after selling her kidney and another about a woman who died after the kidney transplant.

The first is a National Geographic story about a woman named Malika, who finds a middleman, Raji, to help her sell her kidney. She said she was promised $3,500. According to the narration, her kidney was transplanted to a son of a rich foreigner who paid somewhere around $40,000. But Malika only gets $700. Watch the video below.

According to Chennai-based freelancer Scott Carney:

A year after her surgery her [Malika's] son Kannan came down with a bad case of jaundice that destroyed his kidneys. Unable to giver her remaining kidney, now she has to watch her son suffer and possibly die because he has no way of getting a donor organ.

Click here to see the pictures that Carney took during his research to find a donor and a middleman. Read his blog post "The problems with selling organs."

CRIME: India's Stolen Kidneys Racket

Once in a while an unusual story about South Asia captures the imagination it seems, of everyone I know. All day today I have been fielding questions and comments - in person, via e-mail, via Facebook e-mail - about the horrifying New York Times story about the 500 poor laborers outside Delhi who had their kidneys stolen. From the story by Amelia Gentleman, a stringer for the International Herald Tribune and the NYT:

GURGAON, India — As the anesthetic wore off, Naseem Mohammed said, he felt an acute pain in the lower left side of his abdomen. Fighting drowsiness, he fumbled beneath the unfamiliar folds of a green medical gown and traced his fingers over a bandage attached with surgical tape. An armed guard by the door told him that his kidney had been removed.

Mr. Mohammed was the last of about 500 Indians whose kidneys were removed by a team of doctors running an illegal transplant operation, supplying kidneys to rich Indians and foreigners, police officials said. A few hours after his operation last Thursday, the police raided the clinic and moved him to a government hospital.

Many of the donors were day laborers, like Mr. Mohammed, picked up from the streets with the offer of work, driven to a well-equipped private clinic, and duped or forced at gunpoint to undergo operations. Others were bicycle rickshaw drivers and impoverished farmers who were persuaded to sell their organs, which is illegal in India.

Although several kidney rings have been exposed in India in recent years, the police said the scale of this one was unprecedented. Four doctors, five nurses, 20 paramedics, three private hospitals, 10 pathology clinics and five diagnostic centers were involved, Mohinder Lal, the police officer in charge of the investigation, said.
<snip>
The case has enthralled India’s newspapers. Editorial writers have been particularly incensed by the failure of the police to capture the main doctor, who has many names but was known most recently as Amit Kumar.

This morning's Brian Lehrer radio show on WNYC featured a live interview with Gentleman calling from India. Listen here (Lehrer does a nice job of connecting this to the urban legend that's been circulating via e-mail for years - about waking up in a tub of ice without a kidney).

It will be interesting to see where the investigation leads in terms of which foreigners got some of these kidneys.

Post your comments below.

Earlier on SAJAforum:

• "Man Marries Dog" and other strange tales from India - by Arthur Dudney (Dec. 3, 2007)

AIDS: Reuters feature on an AIDS school in India

Gokul is a small special school in Bhoogaon, a small village about 81 miles north of Mumbai. Special because most of the students at Gokul are HIV positive and most of them lost their parents because of AIDS.

In her feature, "Love, hope for shunned kids in India's AIDS school," Reuters reporter Krittivas Mukherjee writes that at Gokul, each student has a tale of discrimination and suffering.

    "In a smart blue tunic and red ribbons in her hair, 12-year-old Komal's laughing eyes hide a fear of death that stalks every student in her village school.

    "Within months or years she could be dead, but while she lives she is fulfilling a dream -- of going to school again after she was expelled from her previous one because she was infected with HIV.

    "They used to throw water on me and tear up my books," Komal said as she reminisced about her days at a regular school. "Still, I wanted to go to school, but one day my teacher said don't come back."

According to the article, "children do not figure on India's estimate of 2.5 million people infected with HIV, but the government says about 50,000 children below 15 years are infected by the virus every year."

International AIDS charity AVERT's website has a comprehensive report on the history and future of HIV and AIDS in India.

Various groups have made predictions about the effect that AIDS will have on India and the rest of Asia in the future, and there has been a lot of dispute about the accuracy of these estimates. For instance, a 2002 report by the CIA's National Intelligence Council predicted 20 million to 25 million AIDS cases in India by 2010 - more than any other country in the world. ⁵² Yet the government has claimed that these figures are completely inaccurate, and has accused those who cite them of spreading panic. ⁵³ The government has also disputed predictions that India’s epidemic is on an African trajectory, although it claims to acknowledge the seriousness of the crisis.

For those interested, here is a CBS 60 minutes report "AIDS Out of Control in India," which was reported in early 2004 by Bob Simon.

Last year, the New York Times wrote that, based on a study, India has fewer cases of HIV than thought.

And here is what UNAIDS has suggested:

• India's adult HIV prevalence will peak at 1.9% in 2019.
• The number of AIDS deaths in India (which was estimated at 2.7 million for the perid 1980-2000) will rise to 12.3 million during 2000-15, and to 49.5 million during 2015-50.
• Economic growth in India will slow by almost a percentage point per year as a result of AIDS by 2019.

Please post your comments below.

Earlier on SAJAforum:

• India has fewer AIDS cases than earlier thought
• A provocative essay about spending on AIDS vs other diseases

US-INDIA AFFAIRS: WSJ edit page on a World Bank scandal

The Wall Street Journal's crusading editorial page has uncovered a World Bank scandal involving loans made to India. From "World Bank Disgrace":

Yet nothing we've seen so far can compare to what has now been uncovered about five health projects in India, involving $569 million in loans. The projects were the subject of a "Detailed Implementation Review," a lengthy forensic examination undertaken by Ms. Folsom's Department of Institutional Integrity, known within the bank as INT. As of this writing the bank has not publicly released the review, though it's been shared with the bank's board. But we've seen a copy and are posting its executive summary on wsj.com/opinion and OpinionJournal.com (click here to see it). We are also posting photographs that show the real price that corruption in bank projects exacts on the poor. Here are some of the lowlights:

• In the $54 million "Food and Drug Capacity Building Project," for which money is still being disbursed, the INT found "questionable procurement practices, some of which indicate fraud and corruption, in contracts representing 87 percent of the number of pieces and 88 percent of the total value of equipment procured." That is nearly $9 of every $10 in aid funds.

• For the $194 million "Second National AIDS Control Project," the INT discovered that "some of the test kits supplied by particular companies often performed poorly by producing erroneous or invalid results, potentially resulting in the further spread of disease."

• In the $114 million "Malaria Control Project," the review found "numerous indicators of poor product quality in the bed nets supplied by the firms." And in the $125 million "Tuberculosis Control Project," the INT discovered "bidders sharing the same address and telephone numbers, unit prices showing a common formula, and indicators of intent to split contract awards among several bidders."
<snip>
The report goes on in this vein for hundreds of pages. With the exception of Paul Volcker's investigation of the U.N. Oil for Food scandal, we can think of no comparable review of an international organization that has brought such damaging facts to light, certainly not one that was internally conducted.

See the rest of the piece, a slideshow showing some terrible conditions at the sites and a copy of the executive summary of the report in question (PDF).

One note: The slideshow says, "these photographs show the real price that corruption in bank projects exacts on the poor." As a reader of the WSJ's editorial page for 15 years now, caring about the poor doesn't strike me as the page's #1 priority.

Post your comments below - along with any links/updates you come across.

NEPAL: Orlando Bloom visits UNICEF programs in Nepal

Orlando Bloom became the latest young Hollywood figure to get involved with children in the developing world. He was just in my hometown of Pokhara, a small tourist destination just 200 kilometers west of Kathmandu.

Bloom was on a four-day visit to several UNICEF program sites for Nepali children in western districts of Kaski and Chitwan.

I found it amusing that villagers welcomed him with traditional garlands and red tika on the forehead.

From The New York Observer :

While most of us were eating cold noodles and watching Project Runway, another major Hollywood actor joined the industry’s growing brigade of charitable stars.<snip>

Later, when he visited another village, Pokhara, Mr. Bloom played a small role in a “mini-drama” that some three-dozen area children were recording for a radio program. The play was reportedly about “the plight faced by young girls in a hostel without a female warden.” Mr. Bloom played a helpful fellow guest with advice to share. “Talk about your problems,” he read from the script. “There’s no need to feel shy. It’s always good to talk about issues that concern you.”

More pictures and a report on his trip on the UNICEF website: