Fixed Doze Combination Drug Ban in India: An Unbiased Analysis!

In a surprise move on 10th March 2016, the central government of India has banned about 340 combinations of orally consumed drugs produced and marketed by modern pharma companies in India for various ailments such as cough, allergy, fever, cold, influenza, etc.(See this report) Many of these so called medicines have been in common use for quite some years and have been used by the common folks as over the counter (OTC) medicines without the prescriptions by any medical doctor.

The following gives the list of the banned  combinations- also called fixed dose combination (FDC) drugs - of medicines that are banned in accordance with the powers entrusted with the government under section 26A of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940 and the Drug Rules 1945 of India:

 

  

  

I do not know whether this sudden action by the government is the right initiative or not. Apparently, the government has done this to safeguard the citizens health. However, all industry experts and users may not agree to this (Click here to read this!). I too am of the same opinion, as governmental decisions are mostly seen as governed by political or extraneous considerations and not always based on well informed and logical reasoning! (Also read my earlier blog on 'the politics and strategy of bans') 

The India government combination drug ban is estimated to cause the immediate disappearance of nearly 1500 popular prescription and over the counter English medicines from the medical shops across the length and breadth of India which is likely to cause much difficulties for the patients, doctors, the drug retail shops and the pharmaceutical companies. The problem would have been less severe, had the government did this in a planned manner with due diligence and planning!

The following are some of the very common medicine brands that would disappear:

Anti diabetic drugs : Tribet, Gemer P, Gluconorm, Triexer
Cough syrups : Phensedyl, Tossex, Ascoril, Zedex
Fever, cold, pain relief: Sumo, Vicks Action 500, Zerodol-P

There are hundreds of others for other kinds of ailments!

The governmental action is reportedly on the basis of several research studies which suggest possible adverse effects of using such fixed combinations of more than one drug. However, all these research findings are debatable issues as there are other research studies which support alternative views.

The authorities have been telling the pharma companies and the medical community not to use brand names while prescribing medicines. Instead, they were advised to use the original chemical name (generic name). However, the pharma companies and the medical doctors have just ignored these guidelines for quite some time now.

The pharma companies have been making huge profits from the medicine business. Most of the medicine suppliers are not original manufacturers of the basic drug. Many of them import or buy the basic medicine in bulk fro original drug producers from India or abroad and convert it into very small tablets, capsules, injectables, oral syrups, etc containing few milligrams of the original drug and market those in various kinds of fancy trade names. 

The sales representatives of these pharma companies, called the medical representatives, go to the hospitals and the medical doctors and educate them about the method of use of these so that the doctors remember these names to prescribe them to the needy patients. There exists an unholy nexus in this business and this is known to all concerned. The companies have devised their own systems wherein the prescribing doctors and the medical shops get good rewards when a particular brand of medicine gives good sales returns to the company.

There is nothing very surprising in this. Doctors, hospital managements, the medical shop owners and the pharma company people are all humans and they are all in this business for making some profits or earning a livelihood. 

But the markets operate in a competitive environment. The government allows so many drug makers to start business and operate. They simply cannot exist, unless they make profits. So they too are compelled to device marketing techniques of various kinds.

Fixed combination drugs are essentially a kind of marketing technique. In this method, more than one drug combination allow the pharma company to market a drug combination product under a brand name different from that of its competitors and reap better benefits and returns commensurate with its own marketing efforts.

While the law of the land has been in existence for decades, the drug enforcement authorities have never been publicly against any pharma company as the pharma companies know pretty well how to take care of the statutory authorities. It has been a win-win situation for every one. Even the poor patients too benefited to some extent as many had the choice of buying the medicines over the counter without actually being in the crowded lines in front of the hospitals and the medical doctors for small ailments like cough and cold that is so common. Their experience with the drugs have been better than many of the doctors!

And India is no USA, Canada or the European Union. In the latter, the prime responsibility of the citizens' health vests with the government and the government and the medical systems reportedly work pretty well unlike in India.

So India has been different so far and we call it as the Indian way of working. Even the foreign companies understood how to work in India. They work differently in India as compared to their own mother nations. So they make and market drug combinations that they do not make and sell in their own countries.

When we consider all these, the sudden ban of the combination drugs looks a bit absurd and perhaps even motivated with agendas other than citizens' health. What will happen when all these common remedies vanish from the medical shops? What will the common man do? Rush to the already overcrowded hospitals for seeking alternatives? Will our doctors be competent to prescribe non-combination alternative medicines to manage an ailment in such a short notice? We should consider the fact that they have been in the practice of remembering mostly trade names of common combination drugs!

Will this cause a sudden shortage of all kinds of life saving drugs and medicines when the pharma companies retaliate with their own methods?

Muhammad-bin-tugluq thought of many good things to give better administration to his people of his time. But all those good ideas became miseries for the people and this ruler has never been admired for his good ideas and deeds!

Is the present government doing such a thing by the many bans that it has initiated in the name of good governance?

Only time will tell!  

Does God Have Sons and Daughters?

Does God have sons? Or for that matter, daughters, lest otherwise it may antagonize some feminists!

Before I try to give an answer to that question on the basis of my own understanding so far, let me apologize with this disclaimer: 

I am no authority on this subject nor I possess any proven credentials to provide any undisputed opinions, except that I am fortunate of being with a little advanced information from a great book of truth revelations which I honestly believe as coming from supernal sources, about which I had repeatedly declared through several of my blog articles published in this site.

But then several of my contemporaries in our world today do not seem to believe honestly in the concept of God. For them, the world and the universe is as a result of some random accident that could well be explainable by the so-called science, if not now, at some time later!

On the other hand, there are billions who believe with their own ideas and concepts about God. Several among them apparently seem to be in a mindset that cause them to think of a primary duty to protect and safeguard the interest of their own god or gods, rather than the other way round! Some seem to think that God is responsible for all misfortunes and it is necessary to keep trying to please God always to offset all the misfortunes and ill fates of life! There are people who keep praying , worshiping and doing all kinds of rituals for receiving many kinds of favors from God.

The confusions about God for those who are believers have been so great that a few among them do not hesitate to indulge in much inhuman savagery and violence in the name of God causing much distress to many others! 

That prompted me to write about God, knowing pretty well the difficulty of writing some finite words about an infinite and eternal existence!

And now, I try to venture to express my understanding a bit further by trying to write about the sons and daughters of God!

For those like me, who are believers in God and in the concept of the divine creation of the universe and life forms, all intelligent life forms that got divinely created are sons and daughters of God, when we talk about it in a very general way.

But in the very beginning, in the remotest eternal times, God was the sole living entity. There was God over his domain of power and nothing else! In those eternal times, God was not yet a creator nor a father. God was a solitary power existence with abundant future potentials! God was neither male or female, nor was any material energy! Yet, in God everything contained for future manifestations!

At some time later in those eternal times, a sequence of creative acts got initiated by God, that culminated in the formation of innumerable creations, both living and non-living, all getting formed in eternity in non-material energy and life forms.

In a sequence, there is a first event. The first ever living, non-material living being that came to existence in the likeness of the original God, can now be designated as the eternal son God to differentiate this entity from the original eternal entity whom we may now designate as the eternal father God.

Then comes the act of the first delegation of power ever in the non-material eternal universe wherein the father God delegates several powers so far vested with him to the new divine entity that emerged from him. The father-son divine duo then began to associate to continue with the acts of the future eternal creations. The second person of this divine duo too was neither male or female, but both of them contained the qualities of both male and female characteristics that emerged later in the creative chains.

At some very  advanced eternal creative sequence of non-material creativity acts of both living and non-living  beings and things, there emerged a beginning time where in the material universe that we understand was initiated to be formed.

Time and space as we understand came to exist from this point onward. The creation of the material universe was as a result of a creative effort of the non-material beings that got in to existence in the non-material space earlier in the creation sequence controlled by God the father and his immediate divine sons. 

Matter and energy that the material universe needed for its formation was drawn from the infinite non-material energy that already existed. The non-material energy remained as unresponsive to all material things and beings for all ordinary purposes, though it was the source of energy and existence.

In a similar manner, material life forms and beings got created in the material universe in a sequential by the action of non-material intelligent beings who worked to create those. 

Life and mind came directly from the non-material realm and these were superimposed on material bodies of material life forms and beings in a manner perfectly controlled by the non material intelligent beings delegated with various kinds of powers for the creation and maintenance of the universe systems so created.

Material beings could understand the mechanisms of their bodies by the life and mind that worked in their body systems, but miserably failed to decipher life and mind, because these two have not been part of the material systems to which their bodies belong. To decipher those, they are required to enhance their delegated mind powers beyond their material existence, a requirement many of them find as difficult while they pursue their day to day chores of finite material living.

We, humans too are created by the divine will of God by the creative acts of the divine sons and therefore can well be considered as sons of daughters of God. But we exist in the farthest ends of the creative sequence chain in a realm that is pretty different in form as compared to those in the beginning of the chain.

For the time being we are finite beings unlike those beings in the beginning of the creative chain who are infinite and are nearer to the father God.

But the first source and center of every thing, the father God and his immediate divine sons who are his immediate creative associates, have some purpose for all these kind of creative acts.

No big intelligence is needed to understand that. The source of supreme intelligence is any way more wise than us and he will not do things without any purpose.

It is also not very difficult to decipher that purpose, provided we do have a desire and eagerness to know.

But that does not mean that we question the wisdom of father God and his immediate divine sons and derive our own foolish conclusions.

But as daughters and sons of the very same father God, we have great responsibilities in this vast universe.

The most important responsibility is to ensure peace and harmony in the father's home, the universe. And it should begin in our own homes, communities, nations and world.

For that we need to learn to respect and love our own sisters and brothers, whether they live in our homes or elsewhere in this world!

Just as we, they too are sons and daughters of the same father God. If we say we are not, then it is another matter altogether!

Did A Meteorite Really Fall to Kill A Man in Tamil Nadu on Saturday, the 6th Feb 2016?

A falling small meteorite killed an innocent man in the campus of Bharatidasan Engineering College-one of the private engineering colleges in Vellore in Tamil Nadu reportedly on 6th February 2016 (Saturday). I do not know how many people really noticed this news. If this is true, perhaps it is the first time that a meteorite fall causing any human casualty in the world! The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Ms.Jayalalithaa had reportedly confirmed that it was indeed a meteor fall that caused the mishap!

T N Police inspecting the site of the meteor fall

(Photo & News courtesy: The Hindu)

The fall site photo published by Hindu in an earlier news 

apparently does not match the site photos on the top or appeared later!

It was a mysterious explosion at noon in the college campus which killed one driver and injured two gardeners of the college besides causing some other damages. No one initially understood what had happened and even suspected a terror attack as the initial reports indicated.

Whether a meteor fall is actually a natural disaster that could be feared or not is a matter of scientific debate. Meteors are small stone like particles from space that keep falling down to planets like earth. They have great destructive power due to the high velocity at which they fall down. However, earth and its inhabitants are more or less fortunate because our atmosphere causes the falling cosmic stones to burn out fully by friction once it enters our atmosphere. The burning out is usually visible to the naked eye and is commonly known as shooting stars or falling stars!  Due to the 'burn-outs' only a few such cosmic stones have some thing left to really hit the earth's surface and cause any damage. Yet there are rare occasions when some meteor residue can strike and cause explosive like destruction on earth. Such incidences have been reported in history all over the world, as is given in the international comet quarterly.

During my younger days when I used to stay in my village, Elanthoor, in central Kerala in south India, I remember watching the unpolluted clear night sky in search of finding occasional shooting stars. Some elders used to consider witnessing a shooting star as a bad omen. But fortunately in my village home none believed in those superstitions and rather I was encouraged to watch the celestial wonders of the skies. But only on one occasion I happened to witness a shooting star so close that I believed that it really hit the ground somewhere nearby. That was some twenty years ago.

In the village we children used to pick up unusually heavy iron containing black stones with a molten rock appearance which we used to call ulkka which in my native language Malayalam meant a meteor! Obviously in the olden times people were aware of these falling sky  stones! 

The news image from the Indian Express depicting an  investigator

holding a piece of the alleged meteor that had fallen in Vellore!

In the cities of India, shooting stars are not very much an observable phenomena now-a-days because of the high urban pollution and the urban area lighting.

Though the Tamil Nadu government had officially declared the Vellore incident last week as indeed a case of a meteor fall, there are many who might think it as due to some thing else. Even the scientific community too may not provide any conclusive verdict so soon.

Large sized meteor falls can release very large energy equivalent to several mega tonnes of explosives or that of the present day nuclear bombs. Scientist believe in the formation of large impact craters and mass destruction of life on earth thousands of years ago due to meteor falls. Technically such incidents can happen even now. But we are fortunate that it happens very rarely! Besides we have the protective atmosphere that keep us safe from the meteor showers!

At this juncture, let me quote a statement of truth revelation from my book of life guidance-the Urantia Book- about meteorites:

"Millions upon millions of meteorites enter the atmosphere of earth daily, coming in at the rate of almost two hundred miles a second. On some other people inhabited worlds (without such atmospheric protection) the advanced inhabitants must do much to protect themselves from meteor damage by making electrical installations which operate to consume or shunt the meteors. Great danger confronts them when they venture beyond these protected zones. These worlds are also subject to disastrous electrical storms of a nature unknown on earth. During such times of tremendous energy fluctuation the inhabitants must take refuge in their special structures of protective insulation."

In other words, the above statement reveals the fact about the existence of at least some other worlds in the universe which are much more hostile to life than the conditions that we face on earth. In those worlds the inhabitants have to use their intelligence and creativity to device means for self protection!

Don't you think us fortunate in that sense?