[From Unsplash]
Good morning,
In Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India's First Women in Medicine, Kavitha Rao shares the fascinating story of the origins of Adyar Cancer Institute, a leading non-profit cancer treatment and research centre based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It was not easy to start it, and the story highlights both the government apathy and how the pioneers and institution builders have to fight against it to get things done. In this case it was Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy and her son Dr S Krishnamurthi. They were aided by Dr V Shanta (who passed away in January 2021).
Rao writes, “In the India of the 1940s, cancer was considered a deadly and incurable disease, resulting in almost certain death… At the time, the only facility for cancer was the Tata Memorial in Mumbai. Yet, there was still no support for setting up another institute.
“Dr Krishnamurthi began by setting up a cancer unit in the Government General Hospital, but this soon ran into difficulties. There was immense corruption and exploitation of patients, and pressure to admit influential patients ahead of others. Dr Shanta recounts an incident where Dr Krishnamurthi hit back at callous and ignorant government officials, during a visit by the health minister. The minister remarked that cancer affected only the old, so treatment was futile. An angry Dr Krishnamurthi responded, ‘Sir, I speak from the statistics of our department and not from the statistics of others. My register shows quite a number of cancers in children, and cancers in adolescents. Paediatric cancer constitutes 8% of all cancers in government hospitals.’ He then produced the meticulously maintained register. The minister was furious and left in a huff.
“Soon after, the cancer unit was closed, and all records confiscated. This was the last straw, which made Dr Reddy and Dr Krishnamurthi decide that it would be better to set up a separate cancer facility.
“Now came Muthulakshmi’s time to use all the contacts she had made over a lifetime in the public eye. And use them she did. She tried every minister, every prominent citizen and every powerful industrialist. She realised she needed a respected organisation to lend their name to the cause. The Women’s Indian Association of Madras agreed.
“When she approached the government of Tamil Nadu for land, a minister queried, ‘Why a cancer hospital? People only die of cancer.’ After more pleading on her part, the government said that only one bit of land could be made available: ‘a long narrow strip of 2 acres along the eastern bank of the Buckingham Canal in the district of Adyar’. The engineers found the land unsuitable, but the government said, ‘take it or leave it’.”
Have a great day ahead.
The Big Tech hypocrisy
Climate change was the subject of much discussion at the World Economic Forum at Davos. And the Big Tech companies led by Microsoft, Alphabet and Salesforce pledged $500 million to work on new climate tech that reduces their carbon footprint. However, there is a lot of work to be done on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) that they aren’t talking about, argues Justine Calma, science reporter at The Verge.
“(F)or tech companies with much of their business and related emissions in data centres, there’s little excuse for them not to prevent much of their pollution in the first place.
“Tech giants that are hyping up carbon removal say that they’re setting up the fledgling CDR market to make it easier for other companies to jump aboard. Getting more backers at this early stage is supposed to make carbon removal more affordable so that it can scale up dramatically.”
“Back in April, Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, Shopify, and other companies made a $925 million joint commitment to purchase captured carbon this decade. In 2020, Microsoft promised to remove more carbon dioxide than it emits by 2030. Microsoft will ‘serve as an expert partner by sharing lessons from its carbon removal auctions,’ the World Economic Forum says of the new $500 million commitment Big Tech made in Davos.
“Yet, despite the cascade of new climate pledges from Big Tech, the emissions of many companies continue to grow. Microsoft’s emissions, for example, rose from about 11.6 million metric tons of CO2 in the 2020 fiscal year to about 14 million metric tons in its 2021 fiscal year. As its business grew, so too did pollution from the use of Microsoft’s devices and cloud services. Salesforces’ planet-heating pollution has similarly grown along with its business in its 2022 fiscal year to the equivalent of over 1 million metric tons of CO2.”
Clearly, the say-do gap is a significant one.
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An American dream gone sour
When looked at from another country, the United States is the kind of country that is aspirational. And the Great American Dream is worth chasing. But this is the kind of country as well from where news emerges every once a while that chills the bones—of how a gun-wielding person goes berserk and kills innocents. The most recent episode is that of a lone gunman killing 21 school children in the state of Texas. Just how does an outsider to the US attempt to comprehend America’s gun control laws?
Jack Holmes attempts to do that in Esquire magazine. And he figures it is utterly incomprehensible.
“The thing to remember is that this is never about the fact that the United States is home to 400 million civilian-owned firearms. It's never about the fact that this kind of mass death at gunpoint does not happen in other rich nations that are home, supposedly, to the rule of law.
“It's the country where more than 450 people just shoot themselves every week. It's the country where you might just get shot at the mall, or the movie theatre, or the subway, or anywhere at any time. Here's hoping you aren't in the wrong place at the wrong moment. In a time when the democratic process itself is under attack, when people are running to be governor of a state on the platform of throwing out votes if they don't like who got more of them, it is the gun thing as much as anything that has me convinced that the United States of America may well be a nation beyond repair. Those kids in Texas had two days left until school was out for the summer. You have to wonder whether the sun will ever shine the same way.”
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Getting things done
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Team Founding Fuel
