By Amba Charan Vashishth
Media carries a very happy and heartening report that a research institute has developed an intravenous injection that will do away with suffering of a severe backache forever. If that happens, it will provide another life to the ailing. In the present day lifestyle, backache is a very common painful experience.
In the modern day world research is a continuing process in every field. Medical science is doing a lot to make life convenient, comfortable and worth living.
There is another aspect of the research in medical science. New diseases are keeping pace with the research to cure the existing ones. As some incurable diseases have now turned curable, thanks to the medical research, many new ones have sprung up to pose a greater challenge to the medical science and profession. AIDS, Ebola — to quote — are some of the instances.
Every other day new and newer medicines and drugs flood the market with remarkable results. But there is no dearth of instances in which the wonder medicines and drugs — no need to name them — had to be withdrawn and banned because of their serious adverse effects on human beings. There are reports that some drugs banned in USA and Europe, continue to be prescribed and sold in the Indian market.
There is no gainsaying the fact that research in every field — medicine included — cannot dissect itself from the desire to earn, besides serving ailing humanity. That is why pharmaceutical companies and those engaged in experimenting for discovery of new and newer medicines with better and quicker effects on the sick rush to be the first and pioneer in the field. In the process, many a times, the long-term adverse effects of administering of such medicines on the sick surface, the consequences which manufacturers inadvertently or otherwise seem to have been overlooked. These startled the medical practitioners and the patients alike.
This situation certainly amounts to playing with the life of unsuspecting human beings dying for fast and instant relief and, in the process, pushing them to greater suffering in the long run. This virtually amounts to luring them into purchasing at great cost one medicine to get relief from one ailment to contract for free two other diseases as side effect.
The authority which approves introduction of a medicine for a particular ailment should make it mandatory for the companies engaged in research for newer medicines and drugs to indicate any side effects of its use on the basis of their experiments on human beings. No medicine should be approved which has side effects of any kind in the immediate or long run. The objective of research in medicine is to alleviate the suffering of humanity and not to cure one disease to prepare it for more suffering.
The company whose drugs and medicines consumption leave a debilitating effect on human beings need to be punished under the law.
There are quite a lot of medicines available for back pain nowadays. While its true that some may have side effects, the medical industry is not stopping on its efforts to reduce these odds. Aside from medications, we have other alternatives as well as other controversial treatments such as medical marijuana. Whatever works for each individual really.