Shiban is the chairman of a biotechnology company in India and a practicing gastroenterologist in the USA. He travels between these two spaces frequently but lives in them simultaneously. He has been a passionate theater worker, reluctant army officer, ambitious entrepreneur, successful CEO and an active NGO volunteer. Still, he is does not know what he wants to be when he grows up; but he wants his epitaph to be "He tried." Email: [email protected]
On Saturday morning, when I entered my kitchen to make tea for my brother-in-law (BIL) – who was visiting for the long weekend – I found him sitting at the kitchen table, looking intently at a row of glasses of water: eight of them, filled up to the rim. “No thanks, I will not have…
My brother-in- law (BIL) has been breathing all his life but is unaware of the amount of air he has sucked in – over 200 million liters! He has inhaled 500 ml per breath – a little less during childhood – 15 times every minute to keep his body working for 51 years. “Now, that…
About 98.000 people die every year in the hospitals in the USA due to medical errors. The experts calculated this in 1997, after they studied reported adverse occurrences in hospitals in New York, Utah and Colorado in previous years. The data for the rest of the world is not available. If we assume similar incidence…
Here we go again! The white house contenders are piping seductive music to our ears: the loud techno-heavy metal clatter about the Iraq war and the gospel-soul music for the healthcare. And we know it well — they will play only the doleful blues after the election. Barack Obama has promised to provide health coverage…
No, it is not about the death by the deranged beast in us that wages war and genocide, nor is it about the economics of episodic mania of nature unleashing its fury, but of that death which takes us away quietly in our un-heroic old age. It is about the economics of snatching a few…
You have been selected to the jury to award the Nobel Prize (NP) in medicine. One of the contenders for the prize is the multiple antiviral drug therapy for HIV-AIDS. Surely, you say, this therapy has prolonged the lives of millions of HIV patients who were otherwise doomed, which makes it a favorite in your…
George Bush, in his last year of office, finally got the comprehensive immigration reform law passed. He signed the law in a ceremony in the White House on 10 Oct 08. Two events compelled a bipartisan approach: the looming election fiasco and the intense lobbying by Arnold Schwarznegger With election only a few weeks away,…
Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so. And if I seek to acquire these weapons, I am carrying out a duty. It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the…
On the seventh day She said, “Let there be light.” But nothing stirred: not a blade of grass, not a leaf. Then on the eighth day She said, “Let there be Caffeine.” And the whole world came into being; life found a purpose: the trees trembled, the fish floated, the birds buzzed, the women went…
The second line of the declaration of independence “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is ambiguous for a good reason: ambiguity in politics is as rewarding as precision in science. The authors of these lines were aware that only the pursuit was an “inalienable right” but not happiness itself. But this right may be…
Dear Shakespeare, The other day I counted the word “sleep” in 167 passages of your work and I am sure I did not count them all. You have penned sleep in its own image and as a metaphor. You knew sleep: “The innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care, The death…
The world health organization (WHO) defines health as “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” This definition entered the books between 1946 and 1948 and has remained unchanged. Current medical knowledge is desperately struggling — only with partial success –just to “merely” control “disease…
Evolutionary pressures banish unfit biological species into extinction. The American descendents of Homo sapiens species will explode into extinction at the midriff. A walk through Main Street, USA will convince any skeptic of the veracity of this prediction. And it will all happen due to the adipose state of the nation. Fact: 65% of US…
By Dr. Shiban Ganju Shiban is the chairman of a biotechnology company in India and a practicing gastroenterologist in the USA. He travels between these two spaces frequently but lives in them simultaneously. He has been a passionate theater worker, reluctant army officer, ambitious entrepreneur, successful CEO and an active NGO volunteer. Still, he is…