August 02, 2019 Friday
Bedtime Story
Bradford Hill and Richard Doll
Remember that any clinical trial of a drug
(particularly a novel one) that is carried out on human volunteers needs a
principle investigator who has to be a physician who Bradford Hill was not and
therefore it was mandatory for him to work with Richard Doll.
Thus Bradford Hill has gone down in the
history (other than for his popular textbook ‘Principles of Medical
statistics’) for being an essential part of the core team of not one but two
landmark clinical trials that had a world-wide impact on public health (in
spite of the fact that there are plenty of knowledgeable tobacco consumers out
there either in the form of its smoke inhalation or chewing of its cud).
Research has shown that smoking in
populations is far more widespread in low-income and middle-income countries
(such as China, India, Russia, Poland, Brazil, Thailand, Poland) than in the
developed world where a decline is seen among the male smoking population but
still an increase in the female population.
(It seems women desire to equal men in
every which way irrespective of its implications.)
In these semi-developed or third world
nations almost half of the men are tobacco smokers most of them starting their
addiction in their adolescence or early adulthood.
In such third-world countries tobacco
consumption is on the rise at the rate of roughly 3.4% per year in contrast to
the developed nations where it has plateaued.
Sadly enough it is the miserable poor of
these wretched nations who have to bear the maximum disease burden (and end up
dying premature) at their own cost (out-of-pocket health care is virtually a
norm) since the state simply is unable to cope up with the medical demands of
its ailing population.
Today a medical research institute that is
known as Clinical Trial Service Unit which stands on the Old Road Campus in
Oxford has been named after Richard Doll.
Inside the building on one of the walls is
a plaque with the following quotation from Doll about the dangers inherent in
smoking tobacco:
“Death in old age is inevitable, but death
before old age is not.
In previous centuries 70 years used to be
regarded as humanity’s allotted span of life, and only about one in five lived
to such an age.
Nowadays, however, for non-smokers in Western
countries, the situation is reversed: only about one in five will die before
70, and the non-smoker death rates are still decreasing, offering the promise,
at least in developed countries, of a world where death before 70 is uncommon.
For this promise to be properly realized,
ways must be found to limit the vast damage that is now being done by tobacco
and to bring home, not only to the many millions of people in developed
countries but also the far larger populations elsewhere, the extent to which those
who continue to smoke are shortening their expectation of life by so doing.”
Richard Doll lived to the age of 92 and
Bradford Hill upended him by one additional year.
Understandably tobacco smokers/chewers would
rather live a short, well-smoked life than a smokeless long life.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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