Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Ignorance Vs Truth


I am shocked!!!! This is a victory of ignorance and bureaucracy over truth. I am amazed to see the naturte of allegation; 7 years back... I've enough doubt whether the development of genetic engineering was as advanced to engineer HIV virus!!!- That's what the lawers of the patients said. Funny logic indeed.

Initially Libya contacted Luc Montagnier, the co-discoverer of HIV virus, to conduct inspection of the mass outbreak of AIDS. Luc Montagnier's report cleared the Palesteinian Doctor and Bulgarian Nurses, instead he accused dirty condition of the Libyan Hospital (which is considered one of the best there). Libyan court rejected the report citing the report contradicted Libyan doctor's initial report. - What an idiotic reason behind rejecting!!!

There is still an option of appeal. Hope the court will uphold Justice....

Below goes the news from Yahooo News:


Libya sentences Bulgaria nurses to death


By KHALED EL-DEEB and WILLA THAYER, Associated Press Writers

TRIPOLI, Libya - Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were convicted and sentenced to death by a Libyan court Tuesday on charges they deliberately infected hundreds of children with the
AIDS virus. The verdict can be appealed.

Judge Mahmoud Hawissa read out the verdict at a seven-minute hearing in a Tripoli court at the end of the defendants' second trial.

The six defendants, detained for nearly seven years, had previously been convicted and condemned to death, but Libyan judges granted them a retrial after international protests over the fairness of the proceedings. Bulgaria contends the children were infected by unsanitary practices at their Libyan hospital.

An international legal observer, Francois Cantier of Lawyers Without Borders, criticized the retrial as lacking scientific rigor. Research published this month said samples from the infected children showed their viruses were contracted before the six defendants started working at the hospital in question.

"We need scientific evidence. It is a medical issue, not only a judicial one," Cantier said after the verdict.

The long trial of the six foreign medical workers has become a bone of contention in Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's efforts to rebuild ties with the West. Europe and the United States have called for their release, indicating that future relations with Libya would be affected by Tuesday's verdict.

But Libyans strongly supported a conviction. Some 50 relatives of the infected children — about 50 of whom have already died of AIDS — waited outside the court early Tuesday morning, holding poster-sized pictures of their children and bearing placards that read "Death for the children killers" and "
HIV made in Bulgaria."

When the Supreme Court ordered a retrial in December 2005, friends and relatives rioted in Benghazi, the Libyan city where the children were infected in a state hospital.

Bulgarians will no doubt be disappointed by Tuesday's verdict. Hundreds of people staged peaceful protests in support of the five nurses in Bulgaria on Monday.

Europe, the United States and international rights groups have accused Libya of prosecuting the six foreign staff as scapegoats for dirty conditions at the Benghazi children's hospital.

Luc Montagnier — the French doctor who was a co-discoverer of HIV — testified in the first trial that the virus was active in the hospital before the Bulgarian nurses began their contracts there in 1998.

More evidence for that argument surfaced on Dec. 6 — too late to be submitted in court — when Nature magazine published an analysis of HIV and hepatitis virus samples from the children.

Using changes in the genetic information of HIV over time as a "molecular clock," the analysts concluded that the virus was contracted before the six defendants arrived at the hospital — perhaps even three years before.

Idriss Lagha, the president of a group representing the victims, rejected the Nature article, telling a news conference in London on Monday that the nurses had infected the children with a "genetically engineered" virus. He accused them as doing so for research on behalf of foreign intelligence agencies.

When the defendants were allowed to give evidence last month, they denied intentionally infecting children.

"No doctor or nurse would dare commit such a dreadful crime," said nurse Cristiana Valcheva, adding that she sympathized with the victims and their families.

A second Bulgarian, Valentina Siropulo, testified that of her seven years in Libya, "I've spent only 6 months working as a nurse and the rest of the time in prison."

Gadhafi, who has been trying to refashion his image from leader of a rogue state, got his government to ask Bulgaria to pay compensation to the children's families.

But Sofia rejected the idea as indicating an admission of the nurses' guilt.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Non-Vegeterian or Herbi-phobe!!!


I don't know when it actually started. I had never liked plants. Not as food though.

During HSC I had left the plant part(classification and most part of plant physiology) nearly untouched. Still I managed to get A+ !!!

Still I don't like this altruistic (!!!) Eukaryote.

Those who have minimal knowledge of Life science surely know-plants are the organisms who capture sunlight, store them as chemical energy which is later used up by all the living organisms.

I was planning to write this post after reading the book Plant Physiology by Ross and Salisbury, most probably. (You can check whether I am right or not from my last post. It's the same book I'm trying to mention.) I was giving a bird's eye view over the book. Plant physiology has lots of interesting stuffs (like any other science). I came to know about the fact of plant ventilation, I've never imagined plants can be that complex... The true beauty of nature is it keeps you wondering all the time. Still I prefer other organisms over plants as a model organism for my research... They can be Prokaryote, Archaea and all Eukaryote except plants. We all have strange choices, don't we?

Well, then if you ask me, " How would you like to define plant?" That's a tricky question. Am I going to consider all photosynthetic organisms as plants? May be not. It's again mind's call ;)

My first preference is working with eukaryotes, especially multicellular ones. Cell differenciation and signalling, Developmental Biology, Oncology are my hot favourates. When I was in 1st year I wished to work in Immunology. Archaea is another special group that has always fascinated me.

Time will say what will happen.

NB:- Herbi-Phobe= Herb+Phobe (You'll not find this word in any dictionary, I've created myself ;))

Image Courtesy: Mark Harden's Archive

Actual Image link:
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/m/mondrian/mondrian_red_tree.jpg

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Missing Communication

Last night, I was going through pages of Plant Physiology by Ross & Salisbury. I came up with a box entitled “Must We Write? by Page W Morgan. The objective was why and how to write? It was in interesting comprehension in terms of both content and purpose.

It’s not surprising to me when I found the box stating that most of the science students find writing and communicating rather a useless time spending (which view I used to hold as well ;)). He put down some arguments against this. I think he was quite clear in his points.

I don’t like verbal communication with lots of people in general. But not sure what would be my attitude if the subject of communication is unknown to most of the listeners (Somehow I’ve the feeling that I will enjoy then.) But writing stuffs was never that irritating and boring to me.

Reading that article, I felt we miss one thing badly here in Bangladesh. It’s the lack of opportunities in developing communicating skills. There isn’t much we can do as students. In our department, DJ is trying to do something new. But I don’t like her approach. Anyway, everyone has his/her own style. We must learn to respect others. That’s one of the things we all have to learn.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Noble Achievement


This year Nobel Peace Prize (2006) was awarded to a Bangladeshi person, Dr Muhammad Yunus and an organization, Grameen Bank. It is a remarkable thing for this poverty striken corrupted politician led country. I had no intention to post an entry on this subject. But some SMS's from friends and posts in groups prompted me to sit for this entry.... again got confused where to post (I've so many blogs ;)).

Some said, at last they (indicating to West) had to recognize us... some other thought after achieving this prize we can do anything... Blah Blah Blah.

Well, Nobel Prize isn't a recoginition of something... Someone didn't get Nobel Prize doesn't mean s/he didn't do good for Humanity. There is a selection board, there are lots of people and organizations to be considered. At the end, you select one or couple of them. That doesn't mean others did nothing.

Every nation has its talents, the matter is getting opportunity.

Another thing, very few Bangladeshi do great things. Our education system is such a numb one that it makes us shed all the humanly qualities, creativity, innovation. Besides unfortunately our society does neither respect nor reward the great peoples.

I don't know much about Bangladeshi born scientists who are doing good job abroad (I know only about my Shejho Mama, Dr Fazlul Huq who was once nominated for Nobel Prize for his Anti-cancer research), but it's for sure that no Bangladeshi working in Bangladesh is doing Nobel Prize winning science. There is no funding, besides you don't even get appreciation and inspiration for carrying out research.

May be someday things will change.

Image Courtesy: www.nobelprize.org

Monday, October 09, 2006

Expression and Interferance gets Nobel

I'm kind of late with this post. I wanted to post when the prize of Medicine or Physiology was declared, but now Chemistry Nobel is already declared. So both at once.

Medicine or Physiology got Nobel on RNAi or RNA interferance. The work is itself simply groundbraking and marvellous. You know just after the publication, you deserve Nobel prize. Details of RNAi can be found in the following links

1. For General People.
2. Advanced Information.

It was a remarkable feat for Andrew Z. Fire & Craig C. Mello, recieving within ~ 7/8 years of reporting.

The Chemistry Prize went to Roger D Kornberg son of another Nobel Laurate Arthur D Kornberg. His work was on Eukaryote gene expression and its regulation. He coined the presence of Mediators in EK gene regulation. Details can be found in the following links

1. For General People.
2. Advanced Information.

Gene expression sweeps Nobel this year, whats next???

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Folding or Misfolding???

I's thinking about protein folding... there are terms like misfolding, unfolding and folding.

Misfolding is kind of misleading term. As far as I remember in Biochem texts Misfolding refers to 3D arrangements other than native conformation. Then what's the native conformation??? You'll asnwer the conformation that's found naturally... more or less that's the prevalent concept.

I've problem in accepting the word Naturally. I think each and every protein has millions of naturally occuring confoormations... even if the sequence of amino acids is identical (after all the melieu isn't identical) . What you're referring as Misfolding today might appear to be the most abundant fold... We don't have what's going through most of the life forms.

Instead of Misfolding we should use Variations of Folding Pattern.

Human mind is like proteins also. There are lots of ideas, concepts, thoughts... and most importantly they are environment dependent. The view you're holding today might be well differnt from the view of tomorrow's you.

That's enough for explaining the Title of my Newest Blog.