Now cancer is another beast. It is too unknown and the variability is huge. IN the end, each doctor is an alchemist. I am particularlyu impressed that in India some of the brightest hit medschool and work in rural areas and government hospitals. The car is not great here not because of the doctors who are great but lack of infrastructure.

cancer can affect people of all ages, but one theory is that it happens when one is past their reproductive prime, and from an evolutionary standpoint, the body doesn’t function the way it once did because it no longer has that “need” to protect itself from death. anyways, so though some children get cancer, it primarily is a disease of the old.

that is, you have to live long enough to get it. many poor people in developing countries don’t live that long. there’s a disproportionate amount of funding spent on cancer research and cancer cures, while research on infectious diseases and their cures aren’t quite as robust since making drugs and such wouldn’t be profitable to pharmaceutical companies–hence less incentive to find cures.

That should say not particularly poor.

There’s an American campus version? Damn. Clearly I went to the wrong college. OK, time to stop derailing the thread.

Yes Shodan, i did mean that only the rich can afford to atleast get some treatment for the dreaded disease. Not only in India, the scenario is the same in the US.

This is absolutely true. My grandmother is on Medicare. When she was diagnosed with stage 4 small-cell carcinoma lung cancer, Medicare denied her access to chemotherapy because they said she was too far advanced. They were perfectly willing to let her die. My grandparents are particularly poor– just average working class retirees– but they certainly can’t come up with the cost of chemo out of pocket. I am livid just typing this.

The drug companies are taking advantage of the dearth of care to recruit subjects for their drug studies. My grammy happened to get lucky and qualify for one; the drug being tested turned out to be extremely effective on people with a specific genetic mutation she happens to have, and she’s still going strong nearly three years after they told her she had 4 months to live. But if she hadn’t gotten lucky… the system would have left her for dead.

hmm, well i’ve never had it in India, but the American campus version most certainly contained a fat-reduced THC derivative. No substitute for morphine, though, for palliative care.

Bhang Ki Thandai (Hindi) is a drink popular in many parts of North India which is made by mixing bhang with thandai, any cold drink prepared with a mixture of almonds, spices, milk and sugar.

That sounds really, really pleasant…

Sarah, it is usually spelled “bhang”. It’s an opiate that goes into a drink people commonly imbibe on holidays like Holi. As I understand it, it contains opium, not cannabis; I think Wikipedia might be wrong.

Yes Shodan, i did mean that only the rich can afford to atleast get some treatment for the dreaded disease. Not only in India, the scenario is the same in the US.