While the Supreme Court decision in the recent Novartis case has cleared the way for production of generic drugs in India, doctors have to prescribe cheaper alternatives to costly brands if patients with limited means are to benefit.

Given the increasingly commercial and corporatised nature of healthcare, organisations like the IMA should provide leadership and a sense of direction to the individual medical professional overwhelmed by change.

Why is the safety quotient so low in our society both in general, and in healthcare? Should our natural instinct for self preservation not make us sensitive to basic safety issues? Are there some socioeconomic and cultural factors at work here which numb us to safety?

I have often wondered whether individuals like me are, by being in the belly of the beast, contributing to the growth of the beast in its present form.

This essay provides data that may help the reader identify the rot within the Council. Permitted optimism, we may hope that this essay and similar observations by others will prompt a change for the better.

Surgery for long has been a male-dominated profession. In recent years, there have been a growing number of women taking up surgery. The two textbooks reviewed in this article appear to perpetuate not only prevalent gender notions but reveal a marked insensitivity as to how women patients should be treated.