KARACHI: The International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), at the University of Karachi, has successfully produced a foreign variety of tomatoes known as cherry tomatoes.

The large-scale production of the tomato variety was carried out at the ICCBS greenhouses, the centre’s director, Professor Dr. Iqbal Choudhary said on Tuesday.

Choudhry added that it is for the first time in the country’s history that the cherry tomatoes have been produced using state-of-the-art plant technology.

The tomatoes had been under cultivation for the last two years and while some were produced last year, this is the first time a large-scale production has been made possible.

The seeds of cherry tomato were initially taken from Canada and germinated at the biotechnology wing of the university, the professor said. The plant was grown in greenhouses for the initial adaptation where environmental conditions were comparatively controlled.

After a successful first cultivation from seeds, disease-free and healthy plants are propagated at mass-scale using plant tissue culture techniques and cutting techniques and the newly propagated plants are allowed to grow for fruiting in a system where they are able to utilise the maximum light, humidity and nutrients.

Using state-of-the-art techniques, a cherry tomato growing facility had been under development at the ICCBS greenhouses since last year.

A handful of plants will produce a large volume of the small tomatoes, especially once cultivation really thrives in the hot summer months, Choudhry added.

The mass scale production is in a successful progress and soon will be introduced for marketing as a new variety of tomato and its plants will be made available for local farmers for cultivation in mass scale. —APPLINK

There was a time when the physician was like a god to his patient. His word was gospel not to be flouted. No longer so. It is partly the trust deficit between them that has eroded their relationship. At the root is the commercialisation of the medical profession.

Once monetary considerations determine a doctor’s decisions, the results can be disastrous. Instances of deaths due to medical negligence are legion.

When it was more assertive in playing its regulatory role, the state would routinely correct many aberrations in public services before matters reached the brink. But today the growing empowerment of the private sector has prompted the government to shy away from its responsibility of protecting citizens’ rights and checking excesses by private facilities. Its vulnerability stems from its failure to get its own dysfunctional institutions in running order.

In a milieu where it is acceptable to look the other way and condone corruption and profiteering, the public is the sufferer especially if private entrepreneurs gain a monopoly.

In this scenario it is no less than a miracle to see individuals who are prepared to swim against the tide and correct the wrongs. That is how one would see the small group of medical professionals — preponderantly women — who joined hands four years ago to form the Karachi Bioethical Group (KBG).

Speaking candidly about the need for health professionals to regain public trust and re-establish their credibility, the KBG stresses the need for their actions to be ‘grounded in ethics and morality’ and their conduct to be ‘guided by a personal sense of integrity and professionalism.’ They have bravely decided to combat the ‘rampant commercialisation that is rapidly turning medicine into a business enterprise.’

One outcome of their exercise to translate their commitment to these principles into action is a paper titled Ethical Guidelines for Physician Pharmaceutical Interaction. In a nutshell the document exposes the unethical practices of physicians who become willing partners in the pharmaceutical industry’s unscrupulous marketing strategy aimed at boosting sales by influencing the physicians’ judgment in prescribing medicines.

Whether they are cheap giveaways such as coffee mugs and free samples of drugs, or bigger offers involving the financing of lavish conferences and holidays for the health professional and his family, the net result is the same.

As the first step, the KBG document adopts an institutional approach requiring hospitals and academic organisations to discourage one-to-one interaction between individuals and the pharma industry.

Individual doctors are asked to reject offers of gifts while the drug industry is required to send what it wishes to give to a common pool in every hospital where a bioethical committee could decide how the funds would be used with transparency being observed at every stage.

The KBG is to be commended for taking up this issue which is fast assuming the form of a social evil while bringing a bad name to the medical profession. But will the endeavours of the 27-member group see positive results?

The guidelines do not focus on private practitioners although stories about the favours some of them receive from drug manufacturers are shocking. A KBG spokesperson explained that the group had agreed that private practitioners should be addressed at a later stage. It had to make a beginning somewhere and it is easier to start at the institutional level because hospitals can draw up rules and enforce them.

Making a distinction between an ethical principle that must be observed by an individual voluntarily and a law that is enforced legally, the KBG says it wants to create awareness among doctors that the medical profession is regarded above all other professions as ‘a moral enterprise based on a covenant of trust.’

The KBG’s idea is to start a debate within the medical community on an issue that affects many but is not talked about sufficiently. Some major private hospitals have ethics committees to look into patients’ and doctors’ complaints. But the pharmaceutical companies’ role that leads to corruption of doctors does not figure.

The KBG feels that all hospitals should have such committees that should display sensitivity to patients’ rights. The positive development is that the KBG says it is striving to take as many hospitals on board as it can and also mobilise doctors through presentation in medical conferences and on a personal level.

There are many laws on the statute book — the leftovers of yesteryears, such as the Drug Act of 1976 — which could be used by the authorities to check wrong practices. Thus the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) is mandated to cancel the licence of professionals guilty of malpractices. But it is not doing so. Hence the KBG’s activism. Given the PMDC’s past performance, can one be faulted for not reposing confidence in it? After having mobilised the medical practitioners and winning their cooperation, the KBG hopes to initiate this thought process within members of the pharmaceutical industry as well. Thus it eventually expects an open dialogue with the drug companies to enlist their cooperation as the next stage of the KBG campaign.

The doctors in the KBG want to revive professionalism in medicine and give the doctor-patient relationship an ethical underpinning. May they succeed in their mission. This is the need of the hour, especially at a time when the moral image of a medical practitioner appears to have lost its glow. The young medicos of today are thrown into the deep side of commercialism that robs them of their idealism from the start.

Postscript: The medical students I wrote about last week learnt their lessons in ethics from their ideological moorings. Dr Mohammad Sarwar, founder of the Democratic Students Federation, it was pointed out to me, did not abandon his activism after graduation as I wrote. He carried his ethical principles to his medical practice and the Pakistan Medical Association which emerged as the main source of dissent against military rule in the Zia period.LINK

BAIKONUR: Three astronauts from Japan, Russia and the United States blasted off early Monday morning amid harsh weather conditions for a Christmas voyage to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz rocket blasted off on schedule from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in the barren Kazakh steppe at 3:52 am carrying Soichi Noguchi of Japan, US astronaut Timothy Creamer and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov.

Rain and then sleet poured down onto the sparse Central Asian landscape, quickly blanketing the site in a thick layer of ice, weather conditions which nonetheless helped create a breathtaking backdrop for the launch.

As the rocket surged skywards from the launch pad, the fire from the boosters turned the inky night sky a searing white, bathing the area around the launch site in an almost supernatural glow for more than a minute.

The launch was the first manned night time mission undertaken during the long and frigid winter months here at the historic cosmodrome that helped launch the space race when it propelled Yuri Gagarin into orbit almost half a century ago.

The Soyuz successfully reached its designated orbit to applause and cheers from the assembled crowd of observers and family members, and is due to dock with the ISS on Wednesday at 2254 GMT, just two days before Christmas.

‘A spectacular launch. Great Christmas present. A crew that is facing a very challenging expedition once it arrives on the station a couple of days from now. A great way to finish the year,’ NASA spokesman Rob Navias told AFP.

The crew will now spend six months in orbit, during which time they will celebrate Christmas and ring in the new year, and they have promised to hold holiday festivities onboard the station, handing out gifts to one another.

Several onlookers even remarked that the rocket, draped in lights prior to liftoff, resembled a Christmas tree, adding to the already festive mood surrounding the expedition.

Indeed, much of the attention leading up to the launch has been focused on the lighter side of the voyage – Noguchi’s promises to prepare ‘space sushi’ for the crew and Creamer’s plans to update his Twitter page from the ISS.

Creamer, who holds a masters degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a self-described ‘tech guy’, took the time to ‘tweet’ one last message before the launch.

‘Just to share: now on the van 2 suit up. Thk u all 4 your well-wishes. Will tweet soonest. Happy & Safe holidays to all!’ he posted as his final message before lift off.

But putting aside talk of high cuisine in high orbit and passing Santa Claus’ sleigh on their way to the station, the expedition has several serious technical goals.

Their biggest Christmas present to the ISS will be the delivery of a new viewing platform for the station, which will provide a 360 degree view of the heavens and bring the station another step closer to completion.

‘The main aim of the expedition is to first of all deliver the final US connecting element, ‘Tranquility Node Three’ and a multi-windowed viewport called the ‘Cupola’ to the station,’ Navias explained.

‘That will set the stage for the completion of assembly and the beginning of the utilization of the station for science capability.’

The ISS, which orbits 350 kilometres above Earth, is a sophisticated platform for scientific experiments, helping test the effects of long-term space travel on humans, a must for any trip to distant Mars.

A huge new solar array was installed earlier this year to provide more power which, together with a newly installed European laboratory and a hi-tech Japanese lab, Kibo, has significantly boosted the station’s capabilities.

The Soyuz is set to become the sole means of reaching the ISS for a few years as the United States is due to take its aging shuttles out of commission in 2010.

The team was to replace Frank De Winne of Belgium, Robert Thirsk of Canada and Roman Romanenko of Russia, who returned to Earth on December 1 after spending six months on board the ISS whose capacity was doubled in May from three to six astronauts.LINK