What Makes Modern Medicine Modern

The government’s and court’s recent knee jerk decision to clamp down on clinical research in the country is likely to prove regressive in the long run, for if there is one single factor that keeps modern medicine ahead of other systems, it is new discoveries and innovations fuelled by the indomitable spirit of research.

Heart diseases for instance can now be prevented by new drugs that lower cholesterol or prevent stickiness of clot-forming platelets, which are getting better by the day, thanks to research. Narrowed or blocked arteries of the heart can now be opened up by balloons or stents inserted through the hand, thanks again to bold research. Further, the occluded arteries can also be “bypassed” surgically using grafts or conduits, as our present prime minister’s health bears testimony to, as a consequence of daring experimentation by bold heart surgeons 30 years ago.

What has made these “advances”possible however has been years of painstaking research, initially in laboratories, then in animal labs and finally in human subjects. And if the terms “research” and “clinical trial” evokes creepy feelings of cold inhuman experimentation, remember that the benefits we enjoy today would not have come otherwise.There must have been a “first few’ who went under these therapies that were once “experimental”.

As a corollary, the lack of research has made several systems that once had their day in the sun, become obsolete. In the second century, lived a great Roman physician called Claude Galen, whose observations and teachings reached historical heights and his potions made from herbs became the treatment of that day. The next hundred years witnessed the blind practice of what Galen had written with no new research or additions. Progress soon came to a stand-still and history now looks back at this period as the Dark Age of western medicine.  Our Indian systems of medicine, once rich and flourishing, have also been plagued by lack of new research.

Hepatitis B infection, a leading cause of liver failure and liver cancer, that had no remedy till the mid-eighties, now has 6 good medicines and an effective vaccine for prevention, thanks to medical research. Hepatitis C infection which has only the expensive and toxic injections of interferon by way of therapy today, is all set to see the launch of several effective “oral” drugs that could transform its treatment in a couple of years,. But how will they come into our arsenal unless tested on patients and found to be effective?

Needless to say, medical research needs to meet high standards of ethics, care and safety, and be transparent and accountable.But research needs encouragement and promotion if medicine has to continue its advancement. Banning it would halt its progress and take us back to the Dark Ages!

As published in HT City ( Hindustan Times) dated 13th January, 2013.