The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Hope on cancer front
Gene decoding may yield better treatment

A transforming moment may have finally arrived in the endless quest for a more effective treatment of cancer with the unlocking of the genetic code of lung and skin cancers by British scientists. This detailed picture of the fundamental causes of the disease may lead to earlier detection, clearer understanding of the causes and better drugs. In a decade from now, it may become possible for all cancer patients to have their tumours analysed to find the genetic defects that caused them. Such personalised therapy would be a medical revolution indeed. That is why scientists are ecstatic, with Mike Stratton of the Sanger Institute’s cancer genome project telling a briefing in London: “We have never seen cancer revealed in this form before.”

Right now, the breakthrough has come only in the case of melanoma skin cancer and lung cancer but soon similar progress may be made in other categories. India’s national cancer genome anatomy project is focusing on cancers of the oral cavity, while stomach cancer is being studied in China, breast cancer in the UK, cancers of the brain, ovary and pancreas in the US and liver cancer in Japan.

The development is big news for India where over eight lakh persons are diagnosed with various cancers every year and about 5.5 lakh die of these deadly tumours. While the whole world waits patiently for an effective treatment, what must be remembered is that prevention is the first line of defence. Peter Campbell of the Sanger Institute has underlined that the lung tumour carried more than 23,000 mutations and the melanoma had more than 33,000. A smoker developed one mutation for every 15 cigarettes smoked. The good news is that by quitting smoking, cancer risk falls as damaged lung cells are replaced by healthy cells. Similarly, weeding out foods contaminated by toxins can save lives.

Changes in the BJP
RSS stranglehold, Advani may hamper change

After weeks of procastination the BJP has made known its intention to effect a generational change this month with Mr Nitin Gadkari replacing Mr Rajnath Singh as party president, and Ms Sushma Swaraj donning the party leadership mantle in the Lok Sabha. With Mr Arun Jaitley already leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha, a younger leadership is now emerging to take control of a party that has been hurtling towards disaster in the aftermath of the debacle in the last Lok Sabha elections. There are two elements of the proposed changes, however, that cannot escape attention. The first is the unmistakable stamp of the RSS in the changes on the anvil and the second the fact that the octogenarian leader, Mr L.K. Advani, will assume the role of a mentor in the new scheme of things in the new post of BJP Parliamentary Party chairman.

It is indeed no secret that Mr Gadkari, a leader not known widely across the country, is a protégé of the RSS and would owe his enhanced status to it. How subservient that would make him to the RSS, which wields power without responsibility, is anybody’s guess. At a time when people at large are fed up with temple politics and obscurantist attitudes of the RSS and the aging BJP leaders, would the new incumbent be able to inspire the requisite confidence by hanging by RSS coat-tails? Also, would the generational change symbolised by the emergence of Mr Gadkari, Ms Sushma Swaraj, and Mr Arun Jaitley in key positions not be unduly reined in by the presence of Mr Advani as an ultimate authority over them?

Evidently, the BJP is still going through a churning process and its leaders are unsure of what they want. Mr Gadkari is no visionary and his record inspires little hope of a break with the past. Ms Sushma Swaraj and Mr Arun Jaitley may bring a whiff of fresh air but they may be allowed little initiative. All in all, the BJP reorganisation is a patchwork solution which offers little hope of the party’s resurgence.

Thought for the Day

An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.— Earl of Chesterfield, letter to his son

ARTICLE

Obsession with high growth
Think of the welfare of common man too
by Jayshree Sengupta

No one can deny that economic growth or GDP growth is important because it means more output, more employment, more business activity, rising stock markets, wealth creation and prosperity. India has experienced over 9 per cent growth before the global financial crisis and today seems to be obsessed with high growth and is trying hard to achieve 9 to 10 per cent GDP growth it reached a few years back. The last quarter’s ( July to September 2009) GDP growth of 7.9 per cent seems to make that goal possible.

But is high growth translating into prosperity and happiness all around? It is a question worth asking. Because if high growth is only leading to skyscrapers, five star hotels and malls, then one wonders whether it is really benefiting the people in the villages and the vulnerable sections of the population.

According to a recent report, the percentage of poor in India for 2004-05 has been estimated at 37.2 per cent which is quite high. The Tendulkar committee has set the threshold per capita consumption expenditure for defining the poor in rural India at Rs 446 per month and for the poor in urban India at Rs 580 per month. At today’s prices this amount would not feed anyone for a month. It is very surprising how the “aam admi” is able to manage his household with nearly 20 per cent food inflation.

If higher growth means more jobs, better housing for workers, better living standards for all, specially better health and education, better transportation system and low inflation, it would surely be welcome. Thus today when India is on the verge of achieving 9 to 10 per cent growth, it is important that the quality of life for the average person also improves. It should not mean astronomical salaries for the corporate executives and luxurious lifestyle for a few while others face daily drudgery and gloomy futures.

Basically, where should high GDP growth lead us to and what does it mean? For India it should mean more investment in health, education and infrastructure. Even the Supreme Court has recently observed that high GDP growth with so much poverty is quite meaningless because it leads to trafficking of women and children. One would like to wish that India could be a country like Norway, Sweden or Finland which have egalitarian lifestyles for all and life that is peaceful as there is very little crime and violence.

No wonder, the Scandinavian countries are at the top of the latest prosperity index calculated by the Lagatum Institute of London. There the children are looked after in proper schools, they have efficient healthcare, retirement benefits, good public transport, good housing, clean water and power throughout the day. There is no sharp contrast between the upper 30 per cent of the population vis-à-vis the rest, and a good social welfare system allows people to live longer and in dignity. One must remember that this ideal model works not only because these countries are sparsely populated and very cold (so that immigration is discouraged) but because the government spends 50 per cent of the GDP on the welfare of the people. They are at the top of the UN Human Development index also.

Why has India slipped in the recently released Human Development Index 2009 down to 134th place from the 128th in 2008? It means the government has not been effective in promoting human development despite high growth as its per capita social expenditure by the government is much less than many of the developed countries. Even within India the states that have a higher per capita social expenditure have a better rank in India’s human development index. The first, of course, is Kerala, then Punjab and lowest ranks are for UP and Bihar. If high growth means better public hospitals and not just private hospitals that are like five star hotels and have very costly tests, consultations and other medical procedures, then it would be a desirable thing.

According to Megsaysay award winner P. Sainath, India has one of the six most privatised health care systems in the world. When the poor fall sick, they have to borrow heavily for treatment and one illness can push them into penury. Indian rural health spending accounts for the second largest component of rural debt. If high growth only leads to elitist culture and only a handful are getting all the benefits of modern technology and medicine, then it has little meaning for all.

If high growth means better education for the entire population where all schools have more or less the same standard of teaching and teaching aids, it is worth having. But if it means airconditioned classrooms for a few and no school building, teachers or books for a huge chunk of the population, it means little. Millions of school dropouts would not be able to benefit from high growth and would find jobs only as low paid labourers.

High growth should also bring good governance evident in a good waste disposal system, good sanitation, and uncontaminated drinking water from taps as it would mean a healthy workforce. It should mean decent housing for workers and other low income groups. If it is believed that the high rate of growth would trickle down and everyone would be able to benefit, then just look around — has it trickled down anywhere in the world? All the prosperous countries that are at the top of all indices and indicators of wealth prosperity and happiness have had efficient governments and good governance. Social infrastructure like health, education and housing, and physical infrastructure like railways, roads, airports and ports, and a good public transport system have all been built by the governments in these countries, including in China.

If the benefits of growth are skewed and go to a small section of people and help them graduate from millionaires to billionaires, then it would not mean much to the ordinary people. Because everyone wants a decent standard of living and a good future for their children, and unless high growth fulfils at least these minimum aspirations, people would not be impressed with high growth. For them the prices of atta, rice, dals and vegetables would be more important as well as the quality of schooling and hospitals. They would want jobs also which in India are not growing at a fast rate after the global financial crisis.

Thus, the obsession is hardly going to be shared by the people. Unlike Indians, the Chinese are obsessed not by high growth but with making China a great power. They may be justified in doing so because the government has fulfilled the basic needs of the people first and all are united in making China great. In India that stage is yet to come because there is so much discontent and deprivation that it will take years for them to think about anything else but survival.

MIDDLE

Peepal tree No. 918
by Jupinderjit Singh

Pillar No. 918 on the Indo-Pak zero line on Suchetgarh-Sialkot border has gone missing. The ever-watchful guards of both countries watched it disappear helplessly.Much after men from both countries partitioned the land and demarcated this area, a giant Peepal tree sprouted exactly on the zero line and consumed millimetre by millimetre the brick-lined pillar, of the size of milestones we see on the roads.

The tree, seemingly revered by both forces now, quietly witnessed the bloodbath between two countries over the years, all the time braving bullets and bombs, working quietly on the stone on its own. It eventually sucked it into its giant trunk engulfing the man-made structure with nature’s wood.

The tree was there well before my eyes as I, part of a group of “lucky” visitors, could stand next to it and touch and feel it. There was a time in my childhood in Khalra village in Amritsar when our tractor would wade around such “border signs” while ploughing the land.

That time the borders had just such stones and no fencing and bundhs. Terrorists had not started sneaking in from across the border. And one didn’t need VIP position or special access to go close to the stones as one has to do now.

After seeing hundreds of such stones, standing alone and strong in our village, or along Punjab border with Pakistan and even in Rajasthan where sandstorms can only temporarily erase them, I stood wonderstruck before this tree at the working of mother nature.

The speechless tree had its own way of telling us what the nature thought of such man-made boundaries.

No one could have fed it water or manure. It is dependent totally on rains but seems to have taken vital supplements from the brick-lined pillar it gulped and grew strong.

I felt the light brown trunk and it seemed it was crying. I felt I was hugging the one body of two brothers, India and Pakistan. Separated like Siamese twins, they have no love lost now and vie for each other’s blood and of the progeny as well.

Whose tree is it? One half is in India and the other in Pakistan with branches extending their shade on both sides equally.

As I walk back towards the Indian territory with BSF men closing the huge iron gates behind me, I brood on the message given by Mother Earth. We can create borders on her chest, dividing her breasts for the two sons to feed on. But can we divide the land and mark it mine or yours and make the mother nature behave accordingly?

But why was a new pillar not put up? Wasn’t the numbering jeopardised? I asked the technical question to an officer. “Well, the tree is the Pillar No. 918 now. We have marked on it the number of the pillar it consumed.”

The tree that tried to finish the man-made border is now part of the border, one of the thousands of such pillars. I felt as someone just took life out of something growing rapidly. That is what man does to nature.

OPED

Breakthrough in cure for cancer?
by Steve Connor

British scientists announced on Friday that they have sequenced a “cancer genome” for the first time. It means they have identified all of the many thousands of genetic mistakes that make a tumour cell different from a healthy cell taken from the same cancer patient.

Not all of these mistakes, or DNA mutations, were involved in triggering the cancer, but some of them – the “drivers” – clearly were. Scientists believe it will be possible eventually to identify these driver mutations and find the genetic faults that led to the changes in a healthy human cell that caused it to divide uncontrollably to form a cancerous tumour.

How could this lead to a possible cure for cancer?

There is unlikely ever to be a single “cure” for cancer, which after all affects so many different tissues and organs of the body. In fact, there may be as many as 200 different types of cancer, and many more subtypes. But each and every cancer involves damage to the DNA template that rules the cell and governs the way it divides. In this respect, cancer is a genetic disease, indeed it is said to be the most common genetic disease since, in the developed world, it strikes one in three people over a lifetime, killing as many as one in five.

By understanding the nature of these genetic mutations in a cancer cell, it should be possible to design tailor-made drugs that specifically target the faults, or the outcome of the faults. It could also lead to new methods of diagnosing cancer in the earliest stages of the disease before it becomes apparent to the patient or doctor, or new ways of finding secondary cancers lurking in the body that have evaded earlier anti-cancer treatment.

Who carried out this work?

It was a team of human genome scientists led by Peter Campbell and Professor Mike Stratton at the Sanger Institute near Cambridge, which is funded by the Wellcome Trust, the world’s biggest medical research charity. They are part of the International Cancer Genome Consortium, a collaboration of research institutes from countries such as Britain and France in Europe, the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia. They will be taking samples from about 500 patients around the world in the hope of analysing the genomes of the 50 most common cancers.

What was actually done in the latest study?

The Sanger Institute scientists analysed cells stored from two patients who had died of cancer. One was a 55-year-old man with small-cell lung cancer and the other was a 45-year-old man with malignant melanoma, the most lethal form of skin cancer. The researchers took a cancerous cell and a healthy cell from each patient and sequenced the full genetic code, or genome, of all four cells. They did this dozens of times over to make sure they had a correct final sequence, consisting of some 3 billion letters of the full human genome.

And what was the result?

The scientists found that the lung cancer cell had 22,910 DNA mutations that the healthy cell from the same patient did not possess. These mutations in the lung must have accumulated during the lifetime of the patient, many as a result of exposure to cigarette smoke. The same goes for the 33,345 mutations identified in the cancerous skin cells of 45-year-old man with malignant melanoma, although most of the mutations here are presumed to have been caused by exposure to sunlight.

Both of these “cancer genomes” show where the mutations occurred and in which of the chromosomes of the cell. They were published in the journal Nature. It was the scientific first step towards the “personalised medicine” of sequencing the DNA of cancer patients on a routine basis.

What do these mutations look like?

Some of them involve quite big changes to the DNA molecule, such as rearrangements of hundreds of thousands of letters in the four-letter code of DNA. But some of them are the smallest change possible, a shift for instance in one letter (known as a base) to another, such as C to T and vice versa, or an A to G and vice versa. These “base pairs” are at the heart of the DNA sequencing exercise.

Some of these mutations are already known from previous studies to be linked with certain environmental mutagens, the mutation-causing agents. Tobacco smoke, for instance, often results in the mutation of G to T, whereas ultraviolet light tends to mutate C to T. By looking at the mutations in the lung-cancer cell and the skin-cancer cell, scientists were able to see the influence that smoking and exposure to the sun had had on the DNA of these two patients. “In the melanoma sample, we can see sunlight’s signature writ large in the genome,” said Andy Futreal at the Sanger Institute.

But not all the mutations would have been involved in triggering the cancer. Most of them would have been harmless “passenger” mutations, but some of them would have been “drivers” within the genes that are in some way involved in cancer development.

How can this be used to identify the ‘driver’ mutations that cause cancer?

For this, it would be necessary to extend the sequencing effort into other patients suffering from the same cancer, perhaps as many as 500 people to achieve statistical significance. By comparing all mutations in all patients with the same cancer, scientists will be able to identify those that appear to be common to them all, and hence likely to be involved in triggering that particular disease.

Scientists have already identified more than 30 genes that play some kind of role in cancer development. This gives them a lead in terms of knowing where to search for the likely driver mutations that are probably involved in causing the cancer.

How might this lead to the development of new anti-cancer drugs?

In the past, cancer drugs were discovered largely by trial and error. Now it is possible to find the precise genetic fault that causes a cell to divide uncontrollably and so hopefully be able to design a drug that can fix that specific fault.

For instance, scientists found that faults in a gene called BRAF were involved in triggering a high proportion of skin cancers. The mutations meant that the BRAF gene was permanently switched in the “on” position, causing the cells to divide continually in malignant melanoma. Scientists are now developing drugs that turn this gene “off”, and some of these substances are near to clinical trials.

What do the experts say about this work?

They are very excited by it – they have branded it “remarkable”, “groundbreaking” and “fascinating”. But it will still be many years before we can expect full genome sequencing of a patient’s cells to be used routinely in hospitals and clinics – that is if the NHS can ever afford it given the parlous state of public finances.n

— By arrangement with The Independent

Standard gauge for Railways
by Arabinda Ghose

The trial run for the Inderlok-Mundka metro line on standard gauge - 1435 millimeters (mm) - sometime ago and the announcement about the Airport Express Line of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) also on standard gauge are not merely historical firsts for the DMRC alone, but for the Indian Railways (IR) system too as a whole and could be hailed as the harbinger of integration of IR with the railway systems across the world.

More lines on this world favourite gauge (distance between the inner edges of rails) are expected in future by the DMRC in particular and the people of this country owe a gratitude to its Managing Director, E Sreedharan, for making the standard gauge happen in this country after his efforts to build the Delhi Metro on this gauge in 1999-2000 were spiked by the then Railway Board on the flawed logic that the system should be integrated with the general railway system in the country, which is largely on the broad gauge (1676 mm)

However, some day or other, the country will rue its decision to stick to the broad gauge (BG) even after Independence and the future generations will have to spend trillions of dollars in order to convert the entire B.G. system into standard gauge along with the rolling stock. All over the world, the Railways are staging a comeback, triggered by the TGV train system of SNFC (French National Railways in the early 1980s and within a few years we will have to face this problem when we join the trans Asian railway system.

Most of the systems in Asia and Europe falling on the trans Asian route are in either BG or metre gauge (1000 mm, MG)). India and Pakistan will be the major countries which offer road blocks to the proposed system because of the gauge problem. Of course Malaysia and Myanmar too have the problem of metre gauge and it is time they too at least start thinking about converting their lines to standard gauge.

Before the advent of the trans Asian railway system, it is necessary for India (and Pakistan) to provide at least one corridor from Moreh (on Manipur-Myanmar border) to Zahidan on the Pakistan-Iran border for a continuous standard gauge route for uninterrupted passage from say Singapore to Bosphorus in Turkey.

India has a golden opportunity to usher in the standard gauge over long distances without resorting to extensive conversion from broad gauge. Vast distances in north-eastern India, now without rail links, but on the threshold of being provided with this facility, offer a beginning with making Lumding on the Guwahati-Dibrugarh broad gauge route as the hub of a standard gauge system for the present to be extended to Guwahati in not-too-distant future. Here is how it can be done.

At present, the picturesque Lumding-Badarpur-Silchar section of the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) is being converted from metre gauge to broad gauge. The work is being hampered because of militant activities. The work will of course be resumed, because on this conversion depends the construction of rail lines to Manipur and to Mizoram on the one hand and on the Dimapur-Nagaland line.

We have in our hand the conversion of the metre gauge system from Murkongselek to Rangia, north of Guwahati (with a branch line joining the Arunachal Pradesh capital of Itanagar) and on the other, the construction of the Bogibeel bridge across the Brahmaputra near Dibrugarh.

The idea is to provide standard gauge facilities within the broad gauge rails all along NFR east of Guwahati, with this city eventually becoming the hub of the standard gauge system in the north-eastern part of the country, with all BG lines there converted to standard gauge.

In fact, there should be no gauge other than the standard gauge for rail lines emanating eastward from Guwahati .The pending new line construction in southern Assam towards Manipur and from eastern Assam to Nagaland and Manipur should also be built in standard gauge. The Tripura line should be converted to standard gauge.

The New Bongaingaon-Siliguri line being converted from metre to broad gauge should be converted to standard gauge instead and eventually being extended through metre gauge systems in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan -where this systems still exists in certain stretches- could become the corridor for a thorough standard gauge system from Moreh to Pakistan border .It will be for Pakistan to choose the corridor to Zahidan.

Guwahati, Lumding or Dimapur could become the hub of construction of standard gauge coaches and wagons for a standard gauge system. One or more than one proposed new factories for building diesel locomotives could take charge of manufacturing standard gauge diesel locos. Electrification of the system could wait for the present.

Some in China like it hot
by Barbara Demick

In the debate over global warming, some historical meteorologists in China pose a contrarian view. Their theory, in a nutshell? Some like it hot.Looking back over the millenia, these scientists suggest that China has prospered during periods when temperatures are warmer than usual. Conversely, they point out, cold spells have brought tragedies along the order of barbarian invasions, collapsing dynasties and civil war.

The proposition that global warming might actually be good for China, or at least a mixed blessing, has been quietly discussed – and largely dismissed – in academic circles here. Those who see possible good in global warming for China rarely speak about it publicly, fearing that they will be cast as out of step with the global scientific mainstream.

But beneath the surface, the theory is not completely discounted.

“There are many different opinions in China about global warming, but people express them only in private,” said Ge Jianxiong, director of the Institute of Chinese history and geographic studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University.

Whether politically correct to talk about or not, the Mongol invasions under Genghis Khan at the start of the 13th century were hastened by a sharp drop in temperatures and the phenomenon now known as desertification, according to scientific studies.

“With the cold temperatures there was a drought in Mongolia. Since people were eating livestock which fed on the grasslands, they needed to go south,” said Xie Zhenghui of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ International Center for Climate and Environmental Science. “When there was warmer weather and more rain, the Mongols didn’t need to attack the south.”

The same went for pre-Khan invaders. The western Zhou dynasty came to an abrupt end in 771 B.C., when cold temperatures drove barbarian tribes southward to sack the city of Xian, the capital whose glory is epitomized in the artistry of the terracotta warriors.

Warmer temperatures, on the other hand, have marked periods of major progress. During the Shang dynasty, (1766-1050 B.C.), when China developed its writing system, average temperatures around the Yellow River basin where China was centered were about 52 degrees, slightly warmer than today’s temperatures.

The golden age of Chinese classics, epitomized by the life of Confucius (551-479 B.C.), and the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907), which many historians consider the high point of Chinese power and civilization, also coincided with warmer than average weather.

Not to forget the start-up of the People’s Republic of China. Temperatures have been rising since Mao Zedong’s founding of the republic in 1949, most sharply in the 1980s and 1990s – exactly the same period that the Chinese economy exploded. “Historically, when the temperatures were warmer, the dynasties were more prosperous,” said Xie from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “That led some people to theorize that global warming might be good for China.”

Xie hastens to add that theory has been dismissed in proper circles – in large part because it focused on northern dynasties, when in fact the center of power has been shifting southward.

These days, temperatures in China are about 1.8 degrees warmer than they were in the 1950s and almost as high as in the glory days of the Tang dynasty, according to the Yellow River Conservancy Commission.n

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post