In the progress of understanding of human biology why complex diseases like diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure and psychiatric disorders are so difficult to predict and treat, or why one individual gets a disease but an identical twin remains perfectly all right, scientists have now discovered one vital clue to unravel the riddle. Human genome is a collection of 4 million gene switches. Some reside in bits of DNA that once were discarded as ‘junk’ but that turns out to play critical role in controlling how cells, tissues and organs behave -- the junk DNA is often referred to as the ‘dark matter’ instead. As a result of a huge project involving 440 scientists from 32 laboratories around the world, the discovery is considered as a major medical …show more content…
As medicines are invented and prescribed, so are the counterfeits. Counterfeit drug is a huge problem. With the advance of applied technology, counterfeiters have become more sophisticated, manufacturing pills and packaging those that look like the real drugs. However, a scientific breakthrough in 2005 invented an ‘ion gun’ which is attached to the machines and will allow checking hundreds of pills a day. An operator simply provides the sample – a pill, some food or a dollar bill, for example – to the machine; the machine then emits a jet of helium gas and captures in a minute the amounts of material, thereby instantly identifying its component parts and then compare with those of real ones. Contrary to the notion that counterfeit drugs are simply sugar pills, study shows that many fakes have some level of active ingredients. Cheap and readily available pain reliever paracetamol is one of such ingredients, for example, and might temporarily soothe some symptoms but will not fight the underlying disease. Occasionally researchers find harmful or much unexpected chemicals. Nobody knows how much fraudulent or substandard medicine is sold around the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) evaluates that as many as 1 in 4 pharmaceutical drugs sold in the developing world is counterfeit. Half of the medicines that are supposed to treat deadly diseases are fakes that …show more content…
Media has its responsibility to report: in this context, scientific publication, the very coin of the realm for research scientists. One renowned research scientist claims that 90% of medical research is wrong. It is a very, very powerful statement: “90% of medical research is wrong.” He tracks 49 of the most highly acclaimed research findings in medicine over the previous 13 years. He puts his contention to the test, not against some random run-of-the-mill researches, or even merely well-accepted research, but against the absolute tip of the research pyramid. These research findings had been judged by the science community’s two standard measures: (1) the papers appeared in the journals most widely cited in research articles, and (2) those 49 articles themselves were the most widely cited articles in those journals. These articles had been considered as game changer that had lead to the widespread popularity of treatments such as: (a) the use of hormone-replacement therapy for menopausal women, (b) vitamin E to reduce the risk of heart disease, (c) coronary stents to ward off heart attacks, and (d) daily low-dose aspirin, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), to control blood pressure and prevent heart attacks and strokes. He laid out the facts: (a) out of the 49 articles, 45 claims had been uncovered effective interventions; (b) 34 claims had been