“I am a cancer surgeon. In order to save the lives of the victims of tobacco, I have to cut away their cheeks, jaws, tongues, voice boxes, foodpipes and glands, leaving them permanently disfigured and handicapped,” says Dr U S Vishal Rao, a Consultant Oncologist and Surgeon at Fortis Hospital, Bangalore. His blood boils because he sees these people as the victims of their own stupidity, and of the government’s refusal to ban tobacco.
Every week, Dr Vishal and his friend Dr Vikash Agarwal (currently at Kolkata’s Apollo cancer Institute) each examine 25-30 patients and perform 4-5 surgeries. Till date, they have each performed 200-250 surgeries. Another close friend, Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi who works at Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital, handles 150-200 patients and does 10-15 surgeries per week, and has performed over 2000 surgeries over his career. If there is one thing that this trio of friends (see photos) agrees on, it is that over 50% of the cases of cancer that they treat are tobacco-related. And of all the tobacco-related cases, half are related to chewing tobacco i.e. gutka and its variants.
“The most disfiguring tumours of mouth, throat and chest are caused by chewing gutka. When Vikash and I were together at Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, we would see hundreds of patients, waiting in long queues for a consultation, some lying on the streets with no accommodation after having travelled thousands of miles by train. And we would wonder why so much money was being spend on sophisticated cancer hospitals? Why didn’t the government just ban tobacco instead?” he asks angrily.
Cancer specialists throughout the country share their sentiment, and asking the same question. Nearly two dozen cancer specialists across 17 states have teamed up to change their state governments’ policies on tobacco. The cancer specialists who are part of this campaign are: http://tinyurl.com/Anti-Tobacco-Cancer-Specialist
Outraged by what they have to deal with every day – the ravages of cancer caused by chewing gutka — prominent surgeons are now focusing on curing cancer before it strikes i.e. banning tobacco products.
1.Gutka i.e. chewable tobacco annually causes 2.5 lakh cases of cancer — about half of all the tobacco-related cancer cases in the country, and about 25% of all cancer cases in the country.
2.Even after incurring treatment costs (including surgery) averaging Rs 3.5 lakh per head, many patients are left horribly disfigured for life.
3.Annual cost of treatment of 2.5 lakh gutka patients is approximately Rs 87.5 billion or Rs 8,750 crore. (Just for comparision, this is roughly three times the annual plan outlay of a state like Meghalaya.)
4.One third of India’s population — about 27 crore persons of all ages — are addicted to some form of tobacco consumption.
5.Cigarettes account for 13 percent, bidis account for about 37 percent and gutka accounts for 50 percent.
6.Over 21 percent of boys in the 10-14 age group smoke beedis or consume gutka.
7.Over 14 percent of girls in the 10-14 age group smoke beedis or consume gutka.
8.India has the highest incidence of mouth-cancer in the world – a clear correlation to the unique popularity of gutka in this country.
9.Of the 27 crore tobacco addicts in India, 9 crore suffer premature deaths due to various ailments, including cancer.
10.Even the lives of the 7 crore people whose livelihoods depend on the tobacco farming are affected by disease. Even those farmers and workers who abstain from consuming tobacco suffer Green Tobacco Sickness by continually inhaling dust and fumes from the leaves.
In the face of such clear statistics, why does the government allow the tobacco industry to do business and continue to spread poison in society? Isn’t it cynical to enable the private sector – tobacco sector and the medical sector — to profit by inflicting addiction and chronic disease of the people of India?
VESTED INTERESTS IN THE GOVERNMENT
The tobacco industry has a large number of supporters within the government. Three of them – Pranab Mukherjee, Jaipal Reddy and Kamal Nath – are on the Group of Ministers (GOM), which is supposed to implement steps to reduce tobacco consumption by issuing pictorial warnings on the packaging of cigarettes, gutkas etc. Naturally, they have been repeatedly diluting, delaying and sabotaging the implementation of the measures. Look at their credentials:
·PRANAB MUKHERJEE comes from Jangipur constituency in Murshidabad district, where almost every rural household is the occupation of bidi rolling.
·JAIPAL
REDDY has been a lobbyist of tobacco farmers of Andhra Pradesh for about two decades.
·KAMAL NATH comes from Chhindwara constituency, where tendu leaves gathering is a big business.
Others outside the GOM are also distorting the government’s tobacco policy:
·ABHISHEK MANU SINGHVI, a Congress Rajya Sabha member, is known to be on the payroll of Gutka/Pan Masala industry.
·PRAFUL PATEL, who is not a part of the GOM, has nonetheless been influencing it from outside. He is known as ‘bidi king’ in Vidarbha, as his Rs 800 crore empire stands on tendu leaves and tobacco.
·ARUN JAITLY (BJP leader of opposition in Rajya sabha) frequently represents Indian Tobacco Company (ITC) in court as a lawyer. He is the lobby’s man in the opposition, and exercises considerable clout.
CANCER SURGEONS’ MOVEMENT FOR PREVENTIVE ONCOLOGY
The 23 cancer specialists who are now part of this movement work in major cancer hospitals in 17 states of India. They, along with about 200 cancer patients afflicted by tobacco consumption, are part of the Voice Of Victims project, which aims to reach out to policy makers and the general public. See their website: http://www.vovindia.org
These surgeons are asking their state government: Why is this nation continuing to serve poison to millions of people, including school children, and then struggling to cure them? What is the point in our continuing to do these surgeries, if the government will not ban tobacco?
The surgeons consider their campaign as “preventive oncology”, as against curative oncology. So far, the results are promising. In the past two months, the Chief Ministers of eight states (Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttrakhand, Maharastra) have responded. Governors of three states (Karnataka,Bihar, Madhya Pradesh) have signed the pledge to take a strong action against tobacco.
WHAT THIS MOVEMENT HAS ACHIEVED SO FAR:
Kerala: the Chief Minister has agreed to file an intervener in the gutka case in the Supreme Court asking for a ban on gutka. Kerala CM in his first Cabinet Meeting restricted the sale of tobacco products to 400 yards of educational institutes.
Karnataka: the Chief Minister and his Cabinet signed the Pledge to ban gutka. Note: the same Chief Minister had a few weeks back made widely quoted public statements about asking the Supreme Court to relax the ban on plastic gutka sachets as it was impacting areca nut and tobacco farmers!
Goa: In addition to signing the Pledge the CM is ready to help the group of cancer specialists with the Supreme Court case.
Chhattisgarh: the CM wrote asking for a ban and that his statement should be presented in Court.
Arunachal Pradesh: CM has asked for tax rates to be raised further.
Maharashtra: CM is going to give time in the Maharashtra Assembly for a talk on tobacco control.
Books are your companions, when you are on a journey to access the unknown. It’s the biggest education boon to let you know your world. Browse through http://www.rightbooks.in today to get more info.
Books are your companions, when you are on a journey to access the unknown. It’s the biggest education boon to let you know your world. Browse through http://www.rightbooks.in today to get more info.
Select a WP Edit Snidget below to add it to your post or page. Yes, they can be used in content areas too!
is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his forty year family practice career. He is a contributor to and an endorser of the efforts of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and was a member of MindFreedom International, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
While running his independent clinic, he published over 400 issues of his Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter, which was emailed to a variety of subscribers. (They have not been archived at any website.) In the early 2000s, Dr Kohls taught a graduate level psychology course at the University of Minnesota Duluth. It was titled “The Science and Psychology of the Mind-Body Connection”.
Since his retirement, Dr Kohls has been writing a weekly column (titled “Duty to Warn”) for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota. He offers teaching seminars to the public and to healthcare professionals.
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">Gary G Kohls George Monbiot[/caption]
Studied in Oxford University, columnist with The Guardian newspaper, also the author of the bestselling books The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order and Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed, No Man’s Land, How Did We Get into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature and other.
Prof Johan Galtung was born in Oslo. He earned the PhD degree in mathematics at the University of Oslo in 1956, and in 1957 a year later completed the PhD degree in sociology at the same university.
Prof Johan Galtung received nine honorary doctorates in the fields of Peace studies, Future studies, Social sciences, Buddhism, Sociology of law, Philosophy, Sociology and Law.
State Councilor of St. Petersburg, Russia. Founding President, Global Harmony Association (GHA) since 2005. Honorary President, GHA since 2016. Director: Tetrasociology Public Institute, Russia. Philosopher, Sociologist and Peacemaker from Harmony. Author of more than 400 scientific publications, including 18 books in 1-12 languages. Author of Tetrism as the unity of Tetraphilosophy and Tetrasociology – science of social harmony, global peace and harmonious civilisation. Director, GHA Web portal “Peace from Harmony”. Initiator, Manager, Coauthor and Editor in Chief of the book project “Global Peace Science” (GPS).
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First published at :
">Leo M Semashko Robert C Koehler[/caption]
writes for the Huffington Post, Common Dreams, OpEd News and TruthOut. He considers himself a “peace journalist.” He has been an editor at Tribune Media Services and a reporter, columnist and copy desk chief at Lerner Newspapers, Chicago. Koehler launched his column in 1999. Robert Koehler has received numerous writing and journalism awards over a 30-year career in USA. He writes about values and meaning with reverence for life. He is praised as “blatantly relevant” and “a hero of democracy”.
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First published at :
">Robert C Koehler Robert J Burrowes PhD[/caption]
has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
He has been a radio producer (Earthstar Radio, San Francisco), organized and worked with the homeless, and is an advocate/activist in the nonviolent protest movement for safe energy, human rights, and peaceful solutions.
He is USA Vice President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association whose mission is to build a parallel world body to the United Nations, an emerging Earth Federation with a Provisional World Parliament under the Earth Constitution.
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First published at:
">Roger Kotila PhDProf Richard Falk[/caption]
an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.
Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).
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First published at :
">Richard FalkDr Gray Corseri, PhD[/caption]
is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. He has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including, TMS, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and Counterpunch.
He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons.
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First published at :
">Gary CorseriAntonio Carlos Silva Rosa, Editor, TMS[/caption]
born 1946, is the editor of the pioneering Peace Journalism website, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, an assistant to Prof. Johan Galtung, and Secretary of the International Board of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
He completed the required coursework for a Ph.D. in Political Science-Peace Studies (1994), has a Masters in Political Science-International Relations (1990), and a B.A. in Communication (1988) from the University of Hawai’i.
Originally from Brazil, he lives presently in Porto, Portugal. Antonio was educated in the USA where he lived for 20 years; in Europe/India since 1994.
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First published at :
">Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist, Associate Professor Emeritus, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is noted for his books and research publications in quantum chemistry, thermodynamics, evolution, and history of science. His 2003 book Information Theory and Evolution set forth the view that the phenomenon of life, including its origin, evolution, as well as human cultural evolution, has its background situated in the fields of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory.
He is an Indian citizen & permanent resident of Australia and a scholar, an author, a social-policy critic, a frequent social wayfarer, a social entrepreneur and a journalist;He has been exploring, understanding and implementing the ideas of social-economy, participatory local governance, education, citizen-media, ground-journalism, rural-journalism, freedom of expression, bureaucratic accountability, tribal development, village development, reliefs & rehabilitation, village revival and other.
For Ground Report India editions, Vivek had been organising national or semi-national tours for exploring ground realities covering 5000 to 15000 kilometres in one or two months to establish Ground Report India, a constructive ground journalism platform with social accountability.
He has written a book “मानसिक, सामाजिक, आर्थिक स्वराज्य की ओर”on various social issues, development community practices, water, agriculture, his ground works & efforts and conditioning of thoughts & mind. Reviewers say it is a practical book which answers “What” “Why” “How” practically for the development and social solution in India.
worked as a mediator for the church in Belfast; as faculty at The School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, and as Executive Director, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation. He has founded several Indian NGOs, is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
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First published at -
">Vithal RajanRene Wadlow[/caption]
is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.
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">Rene WadlowBaher Kamal[/caption]
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Baher Kamal
Egyptian-born, Spanish-national secular journalist. He is founder and publisher of Human Wrongs Watch. Kamal is a pro-peace, non-violence, human rights, coexistence defender, with more than 45 years of professional experience. With these issues in sight, he covered practically all professional posts, from correspondent to chief editor of dailies and international news agencies.
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Credits :
">Baher KamalRosa Dalmiglio with Lama Mongolia[/caption]
She is a member of the China Council Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe (special art, culture and humanity), which touches the hearts of all people and portrays the strong willpower so encouraging to 60 million Chinese disabled persons.
Ms. Dalmiglio is Intermediary Agent of CICE, Centre International Cultural Exchange, a direct subsidiary of the Ministry of Culture, People’s Republic of China. CICE is a comprehensive institution engaged in cultural exchange programs, professional publication and presentation of cultural art works such as exhibits, receiving foreign art troupes and artists, holding international cultural research programs, and producing intercultural and interreligious documentary films.
She is a member of China Disabled Person’s Federation, CDPF. She is also a member of the International Women Federation, which is concerned with the financial ethics of women s enterprises in underdeveloped areas.
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credits:
">Rosa Dalmiglio
Director, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies.
A recipient of Cultural Doctorate of Philosophy of Economics from USA. He is an active member of various professional bodies, namely -
He participated and presented papers in various International/national/regional seminars, conferences etc.. He remained member of the Academic Council of Punjab Technical University, Jalandhar. An unwearied researcher has about 200 research papers published in various international and national journals of repute and 15 research monographs to his kitty. Besides, he has authored/co-authored /edited 15 books which have been well received and highly acclaimed during his three decades of professional career. He was honoured by various national and international awards, namely, Guru Draunacharya Samman, Vijay Rattan Award and so on.
Dr Ron Paul served in U.S. House of Representatives three different periods: first from 1976 to 1977, after he won a special election, then from 1979 to 1985, and finally from 1997 to 2013.
During his first term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul founded the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE), a non-profit think tank dedicated to promoting principles of limited government and free-market economics. In 1984, Paul became the first chairman of the Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), a conservative political group founded by Charles Koch and David Koch 'to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation.' CSE started a Tea Party protest against high taxes in 2002. In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two new organizations, with Citizens for a Sound Economy being renamed as FreedomWorks, and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation becoming Americans for Prosperity. The two organizations would become key players in the Tea Party movement from 2009 onward.
Dr Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, while himself serving a few terms in the House of Representatives. In 1984, he decided to retire from the House in order to run for the U.S. Senate, complaining in his House farewell address that 'Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare.... It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic.'
He is known nationally and internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry.
In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces.
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Credits:
">Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.Jason Hickel[/caption]
He is international consultant of the UN – FAO and international consultant for sustainable development and sustainable future of humankind of Universal State of the Earth - USE.
On 8th October 2016 he was appointed as The Chairman of the Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment protection Committee of the USE, the Supreme Council of Humanity - SCH from Athens, Greece and London, UK.
He is researcher working on: Nature; the Nature, Space and Environment protection; the Climate change system; System thinking; Globalization and global studies; Networking, Complexity and Swarm research: Sustainable Development and Sustainable Future of Humankind. He was among the pioneers researchers (1986 – 1994) to apply nature, space, and environment protection in a local community by activities we call today Local Agenda 21 Processes – a holistic program for survival of our civilization under new challenges of the third millennium.“Commencing from Local Community Sustainable Future and moving towards Sustainable Future of the Global Community of Humankind”.
He is independent researchers with many domestic and international publications and talks. Together with many researchers in co-operation worldwide within philosophy, operational research, global studies, case studies and complex problem solving research, system thinking, requisitely holism, networking and complexity, swarm research, integration and disintegration of matter and energy and universal upbringing, education and lifelong learning. He is contributing a systemic, requisitely holistic and a better understanding of the present. His latest research within the system theory, system thinking, networking, complexity and swarm research may provide a possible answer enabling people to better understand our world of humans.
During 2014 he completed 50 years of research work (1964 - 2014). This year he completed 50 years of been Dr. Vet. Med. Since 1986 he worked on the protection of Humanity, Nature, Space and Environment and completed 30 years of research.
For research on the climate change system and the book “System Thinking and Climate Change System (Against a big “Tragedy of Commons” of all of us), Ecimovic, Mayur, Mulej and co-authors, 2002, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize 2003. His work on “The Information Theory of Nature” was his second nomination for The Nobel Prize during 2007 in Physics. His third nomination for The Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 was for “The Environment Theory of the Nature”, published in the book “Three Applications of the System Thinking”, Ecimovic, 2010. Within last 10 years he has contributed trilogies: “The Nature”, “The Sustainable Future of Mankind” and “The Life 2017” – please see at: www.institut-climatechange.si
I grew up in Chile, got my medical degree there, began an academic career in 1970, and left for the USA due to the military coup in early 1974. My first job in the USA was working as a public nutrition professor in the international programme of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.
I started to travel to Africa in 1975, and worked a year in Cameroun in 1980 helping to prepare their five-year nutrition plan. I then moved to New Orleans, to Tulane University’s School of Public Health, and taught in the department of nutrition for ten years, before moving to Nairobi where I was an advisor in the Ministry of Health. Seven years there got me into extensive consulting in Africa, often on nutritional issues. In 1995 moved to Vietnam where I worked for two and a half years in the Ministry of Health as a senior primary health care advisor.
Many years of touching the reality on the ground, in Latin America, then the USA, then Africa and Asia, has made me understand that the real challenge is in the social and political determinants of malnutrition. I have devoted my writings and teaching to that. Over the years, I have found an important shift in my colleagues’ attitude and understanding towards acknowledging the basic causes of malnutrition. But yet I see little happening as a result. I submit that it is our guild’s lack of experience in the political arena that explains this dichotomy. I devote much of my energy to bridge this gap, and am a fervent advocate of empowering claim holders to demand needed changes from duty bearers. Nutrition is a perfect port of entry for that. Equity, social justice and people’s empowerment in a human rights sense is what really will make a difference.
There is no alternative but to deal with nutrition problems as indivisibly linked to social, political and environmental problems. We need to address them as such. The question is: are we all prepared to do that? The answer, in my view, decides whether we are part of the solution or part of the problem. Travelling and living in different parts of the world has reinforced my conviction that we need to get down from our academic ivory towers, and need to change the curricula of our young and upcoming colleagues, to give them the tools to act in such a context. To me, public health nutrition cannot be anything but that.
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">Claudio Schuftan Dr MDProf. Ram Puniyani[/caption]
rightbooks86
July 11, 2011 @ 11:32 AM
Books are your companions, when you are on a journey to access the unknown. It’s the biggest education boon to let you know your world. Browse through http://www.rightbooks.in today to get more info.
rightbooks86
July 11, 2011 @ 11:32 AM
Books are your companions, when you are on a journey to access the unknown. It’s the biggest education boon to let you know your world. Browse through http://www.rightbooks.in today to get more info.