Jaan ki Kasam

Depression, post-partum blues and Hollywood

In an interview, Tom Cruise spoke diminutively about psychiatry, calling it a “pseudo-science”. He also criticized the actress Brook Shields’ decision to take Paxil, an antidepressant, to treat her post-partum blues. His remarks smack of hubris and ignorance, and do disservice to all those who are in the profession, rendering help to the mentally ill. He instead advocates scientology, a dubious faculty that recommends taking vitamins and exercise to combat depression. He claims it benefited him in fighting his blues. Freud might have squirmed in his grave.
Brook Shields retorted that since Tom had never suffered from post-partum depression he had no authority to speak on the matter. Morning sickness, the pangs of labor and post-partum depression are the terms most women can understand better than men do. It’s the woman’s domain of suffering. Leaving post-partum depression untreated would be perilous not only to the woman but also to the infant. Vitamins cannot alone stop a depressed woman who is seriously intent on taking her own life. It’s true that psychiatric treatment does not offer dramatic results or instant recovery to every mental patient with the means of treatment that are available at the shrinks’ disposal. There are many factors that determine the course of illness or prognosis. Some patients have bleak prospects and are weakly resigned to the world-shunning despair of melancholia or schizophrenia. It is a downward spiral for them but a sizable chunk of the patients can live with an appreciable level of comfort and be of fruitful utility to the society if they receive medication and family support at the right time. But this is the case also with the somatic diseases. Tuberculosis is very much treatable, as is malaria, but people in many parts of the world die in large numbers due to these very diseases. Most of the alternative cures for depression are dubious and at best can cure occasional blues and offer little respite in severe depression, that only the psychiatric treatment can claim to do. It is true that the present generation of antidepressants is notorious for its side-effects, yet the magic bullet is perhaps not too far. With more and more receptors being identified each day and newer antidepressant compounds becoming increasingly selective and effective, it might not be too far when depression would be as treatable as a bout of flu. The advent of Largactil(chloropromazine) in the fifties was a revolution in psychiatric medicine because with its use, the patients got freedom from manacles and became manageable for those looking after them. Without medication, an insomniac would be watching TV the whole night or rolling uneasily in his bed from want of sleep. A sedative or a hypnotic can ameliorate much of his distress. Suggesting something so negative about psychiatry as what Tom said might deter those who are seeking psychiatric treatment, something that can be seriously detrimental to their lives as well as of those around them. Tom calls Ritalin a “street-drug”. Only a parent of an attention-deficit child can appreciate the difference it can make to the child’s life. Ritalin abuse, mostly by students who want to enhance their grades, is a different issue altogether.
Many are enamored by the limelight, the ostentatious lifestyle of Hollywood stars and the whopping wealth they earn. But it is also synonymous with multiple-marriages, broken homes, drugs, jilt, resentment, depression and suicide. Instances such as of Marilyn Monroe, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz and … would more than prove the point.
(This is an old post meant for publishing in a newspaper, written by me long ago. Found it on my pc and posted it).

Stem cell cloning

Organic diseases due to degeneration of cells viz., diabetes mellitus, Parkinsonism, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis etc., have offered resistance to any line of treatment, and treatments have been palliative so far. All of these diseases limit the patient’s physical or mental abilities, some even making the individual a social invalid. Still, there is a silver lining for the subjects of these diseases in the form of stem-cell research and gene therapy that are still in the pipeline. The gene therapy would be a novel method to counter human maladies of this nature, whereby the defective genes that predispose any person to any of these diseases would be effectively treated. It won’t be long before a diabetes patient bids adieu to the painful shots of insulin or the likes of Mohammad Ali Clay (the legendary boxer), a Parkinsonism patient, to Levodopa. The sooner this happens, the better for the afflicted ones.




Now that the mammoth is extinct, the elephant is the largest animal on land. But going by the recent breakthroughs in cloning this may not remain the case in future. Recent moves in cloning the Tasmanian tiger, long thought to be extinct, is paving way for more cloning and reproduction of the extinct or endangered species. A few years back, a mammoth’s remains were extricated in excellent conditions in Siberia. If the DNA of any such well-preserved mammoth is found to be cloning-worthy, the mammoth might again dwarf the elephant on Earth and come back in a totally different ecosystem this time. Aided by advanced computers, scientists will be able to repair the broken links in the damaged DNA strands of extinct species.




On the other hand, therapeutic cloning holds a lot of promise as a cure for some of the most intractable human maladies. Rita Hayworth, Jonathan Swift,Ronald Reagan, Mark Twain and Ralph Waldo Emerson all died from Alzheimer's disease, but for those living with the dementia, the stem cell research may one day indeed bring in cure. Stem-cells, the precursors of the specialized organ cells, could be cloned to multiply in large numbers and then be allowed to grow into specialized organic cells, thus offering hope to tens of thousands of subjects of Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, organic brain or spinal-cord damage, diabetes mellitus, degenerative myopia or any disease originating out of cellular degeneration. Stem cells could one day be designed to grow into body organs, thus making the horizons bright for the patients with heart or kidney failure. Hair cells could be cloned and could one day emerge as a cure for alopecia. Such immense possibilities exist, but how long will it take to translate them into reality? It is a mammoth question. Politicians must do whatever it takes to ensure the development of such technologies that would be available at humanity’s disposal to mitigate the intractable diseases.