Friday, November 27, 2009

Pediatricians

Over the Thanksgiving break I met a young pediatrician at a friend's party. She was freshly out of her residency and into motherhood with an almost two year old daughter. Child rearing was the obvious topic of conversation. She shared that her daughter takes hours to go to bed and wakes up many times during the night. The doctor has all kinds of advice coming to her from older women in her family about what to feed the child, how to handle the sleep issue and how to treat common childhood ailments. I was stunned as to how clueless the young mother seemed about things such as discipline, sleeping etc. In fact, not much different from how I was with my first child but somehow I was expecting a pediatrician to be more aware. After all, aren't we always advised to consult our pediatrician when in doubt. I did receive very good and wise advice, and immense support from the first pediatrician I consulted for my babies. I still remember and use his wise words. Now that I think of it, all his advice wasn't really coming from his medical degree. It was the advice of a man who had spent 40 years of his life working with children and had seen it all. The medical degree did not give him the knowledge about child rearing, just the opportunity to be with many parents and children, and to learn from them.

This got me wondering if we should seek our pediatrician's advice on child-rearing matters, or consult them strictly for medical issues. What do you do?

Friday, November 20, 2009

The new cancer directive

New guidelines for cancer screening came out a few days ago and these have understandably sparked a big debate. So we are not supposed to do a daily breast exam anymore? As Gail Collins pointed out in her op-ed - Now if dentists would just decide to withdraw the flossing directive, we may have enough additional spare time to learn Spanish.. She had breast cancer too, but it might have been caused by, as she points out, the now withdrawn directive of estrogen replacement therapy for older women. Cynicism is valid; after all for years it has been drilled into us that with cancer early detection is the key and hence, regular breast exams, mammograms and PAP smears are essential. Now all of a sudden they pop-up and go "umm, we don't think so."

My first thought on hearing the news was that the-medical-powers-that-be have also been going on and on about the usefulness H1N1 vaccine and they haven't had 10 years to study that one. As it is, I am very skeptical of medical advice these days as the drug companies have too much influence on our doctors and FDA. Every time I see an ad for Flu vaccine, I wonder who is making money from the vaccine, and is that why they are promoting is so much and can afford to pay the celebrities? I didn't get the vaccine, neither did my children but they are not little babies anymore and I feel the more the immune system gets exercised the stronger it will be, not to mention my growing fear of subtle corporate exploitation. At this rate by next year I will start questioning all vaccines - this is nuts!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Where is the news?

I was reading an article somewhere bemoaning that we no longer have authoritative newsmen such as Walter Cronkite and universally-admired leaders such as FDR. I have already talked about the article about erosion of dignity in our world that others are worried about. That got me thinking, and the more I think the more I am convinced that people such as Cronkite & FDR still exist, or rather they were no different from the people of today. It is just that the lens through which we view them has changed.

In my opinion, it is a simple consequence of the choices we have in media, especially the 24 hour, for-profit news networks and I just don't mean Fox News. These channels are in the business of making money and will do whatever it takes to get ratings. Anger sells, so we have Fox News. Humor sells and so we have Jon Stewart and Bill Maher. This is why Simon Cowell has been a judge on American Idol for so long - people would rather have snark than reason. People would rather be entertained, even when they are being informed, and hence CNN's vanilla-news is regularly losing viewers. Have you seen Bill O'Reilly outside his show? Watch Lou Dobbs on this video. He seems like such a reasonable guy, but what happens to him on his own show? Nowadays, comedians such as Stephen Colbert aren't the only ones assuming a TV persona. The news personalities and even their shows, put on a persona to entertain. They either stoke anger against those who they don't agree with or turn them their opponents into caricatures to be laughed at. This completely de-legitimizes the other side. Bush was president to some and the village idiot to others. Obama is being painted as anything ranging for Lenin to Hitler, and people who disagree with him are swallowing it up. Same goes for the "experts" - there are too many of them to be relevant, and each side is constantly tearing down at the other. With all this name-calling, digging up of skeletons and questioning everything, no wonder it is hard to find a leader to respect. Even Gandhi would have had tough time in this media climate.

We don't have newsmen like Cronkite anymore because we really don't have news anymore. All we have is entertainment. I think our hope lies with shows such as Law & Order, or Boston Legal - that is where I see hard questions being asked and often a nuanced debate about them. Real entertainment, it looks like, might be our only hope for a reasoned debate.

Monday, November 9, 2009

A continuous civilization

I have been watching the HBO/BBC series Rome. I did not study Roman history or culture in school so I am thoroughly enjoying it. I know a lot of it is drama and cannot be considered authentic history, but it does have some factual basis. Having studied Indian history in some detail, I am struck by how similar to Indian culture ancient Rome seems. Any number of ancient Indian kings, queens and gods could be seamlessly substituted in the stories and it would still ring true. For one there is the religion - the numerous gods, and the little altars in every home; the style of worship ranging from specialized-deities to the revenge-mandalas, seeking Gods to bless everything and the blood-rituals. Then there is the style of clothes and the decor. There is also the clear demarcation between the nobility and the "plebs" and the decadent luxury of the rich. And although current India is sexually-repressed, we know from ancient books and temple carvings that this is a fairly modern happening. The only difference is that the Roman culture ended after advent of Christianity, whereas the Indian one survived and kept evolving; kept incorporating ideas and rituals from all the invaders that came through. It is becoming even clearer why India has been referred to as a "continuous civilization".

All this has given rise to a storm of thoughts and I am sure I will be writing more posts about this.