“Cough – not a disease; an indicator of disease” by Dr. Ravindra A. S., Mobile no. blablabla ‘Prajawani,’ June 2nd, 2007 issue.
It was printed in this article that IgG Test is very effective in diagnosing Tuberculosis. IgG is a class of antibody. There are variants in it which are specific to a disease. I wanted to know which IgG variant was effective in diagnosing Tuberculosis. I called up the author and spoke to him. I asked him which antigen that IgG was targeted to and how efficient it was. He said, “Even I don’t know. Inquire it in the laboratory. I had sent a patient whose all investigations were normal. Only IgG could identify it as Tuberculosis.” That could have been a fluke. Or the guy must have had the infection long back and must have gotten well with it. Can it be because of the BCG vaccine that was given to him in his childhood? Or who knows, that guy might not be having tuberculosis but some other chronic granulomatous pathology, in which case the test would be false positive. There are many things that have to be tested before certifying a diagnostic tool. When asked about the details of the investigation, he said he was not a technician but a doctor.
Even I am a doctor. To diagnose infections and other diseases, it’s common to send laboratory investigations. But which investigation to be done, which one should not be, which one would give accurate diagnosis - is not the work of a laboratory technician. It’s entirely reserved to the physician’s decision. Whichever investigation it may be, it should only help the physician to arrive at a diagnosis and should not make a diagnosis by itself.
I’ve been doing research since three years on the efficacy of these blood tests (serodiagnosis) in diagnosing Tuberculosis. I’ve examined and studied more than 300 patients in detail. I’ve classified them as tuberculosis of lung, of abdomen, of nervous system and many other types and tried to study the efficacy of these blood tests in all these sub-types. I’ve read about IgG, IgM and their sub-types from more than 10 text-books, more than 50 Scientific Journals and innumerable Websites. What I’ve learnt from my experience and from the experience of other experts in this field is that no single IgG or IgM is till now found to be significantly effective in diagnosing this disease. “You can do research for 10 years, I don’t care. It’s the work of a technician and not a doctor,” he said. I cannot describe you my feelings when I got such a response from him. It was like telling a physicist, who is involved in years of research on superconductors, that my technician has discovered a superconductor and you don't know about it!? With words, can you describe how much will he be annoyed?
Well, when you don’t know something, it’s a crime to even comment about it, let alone publishing it in newspapers, I believe. Writing a scientific article is very much different from writing personal views or opinions or experiences because, as Karl Pearson says, “The classification of facts, the recognition of their sequence and relative significance is the function of science, and the habit of forming a judgment upon these facts unbiased by personal feeling is characteristic of what may be termed the scientific frame of mind.”
Should the author have any such authentic information on the efficacy of that IgG test, let him publish it in a scientific journal. Let the world of science also know about the technology and appreciate the author. Why should he write it for a newspaper, get his mobile number printed in it and advertise himself?
And now, coming to the journalism. As the competition goes on increasing, our Editors begin to publish unnecessary details for a common man. I can write endlessly for a newspaper on such topics, if you want. Instead nutritious diet, personal and environmental hygiene, immunization against infectious diseases, scientific logic to drive away the superstitious beliefs - put in a simple language that evokes awareness among common men – that should be the aim of publishing health-related articles,; not an article that includes unnecessary details (that too wrongly printed) just to make the newspaper look more colorful and voluminous than the others. Instead of publishing such a debatable article, if you were to create awareness among the public regarding personal and environmental hygiene, will not an appalling disease like Tuberculosis be contained to a certain extent at least? Give it a thought.
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