Medical educator | Biochemistry, MedEd, EdTech | Health, Higher Education & Public Policy | Words in NDTV, Mint, The Wire, etc | Manipal | MUCM Malaysia
Melaka, Manipal
Joined January 2010
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Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Assessment of cerebral bood flow is one of the central pillars of my field of Neuroanaesthesiology and Neurocritical Care.
And where I work, we regularly use non-invasive methods like Transcranial Doppler and Near-Infrared Spectroscopy to try our best to find out how well the blood is flowing in the brain.
"Try our best to find out".
Anyone doing TCD, knows how difficult it is to even get a window to peep inside the brain with an USG probe.
And it still only measures the velocity and direction of the blood flowing in an artery.
Non-invasive accurate assessment of cerebral blood flow is still an area of active interest and research.
So when I see someone selling something that claims to give a picture of how blood flows inside the brain, I only wonder at the state of science and rationality in our society.
And at the consumer so gullible and blind to the scientific method, that anything fancy looking is automatically assumed to be accurate.
The sellers are just selling because there's a market.
The consumer needs to get smart first.
Dear Concerned Indian Doctors,
I see your rage against Temple on X. I have a few points
to make:
1. First and foremost, a business lesson: if Temple were a scam, and any of what we said weren't true, people would know it in just a few days of using Temple. We have 14-day, no-questions-asked returns (which even Apple doesn't offer in India). If the product doesn't work, it fails out of the gate and the company dies before recovering a tenth of its R&D.
2. We have already spent $30m building Temple, $20m out of which is my own money. Selling a few thousand devices recovers a small fraction of this investment. A scam that pays nothing is not a scam anyone would run.
3. I left the Eternal CEO role to chase purpose with Temple. This is not about money. I have enough of it to last for generations. My incentives are fully aligned with getting the science right. I am not staking a reputation earned over 20 years on making a quick buck.
4. Our employees bought into our round a few months ago. The round we're raising now is mostly our customers. Scams don't build that cap table.
5. Most wearable companies start with internal studies. Whoop shipped its band in 2015, and the first published validation followed a few years later. We hold ourselves to a higher standard; pre-prints are a step prior to peer reviewed publications, and they are coming up.
6. At some point you have to stick your neck out and say: we believe in our science, and the product is now valuable enough for people to pay for and use. We believe we are there. More validation continues in public.
7. We are confident that we are building something that the world is going to be positively astonished with. We stand by our science and our methods. Each of our claims is easily verifiable by individuals and institutions alike, and you will see a lot of independent studies come up on their own when the device becomes available to use.
Last but not the least, the most ground breaking features in Temple are not even public yet. And some of them, thankfully, have nothing to do with doctors 🤭
Hope this addresses some or all of your concerns. If not, keep raging 😘🤗
No, cancer cannot be cured.
But, with affordable healthcare one won't go seeking treatment from charlatans, with mental health support distraught caregivers won't seek solace from gurus, with scientific temper people wouldn't accept these past-karma nonsense from Babas.
What's with the figure $15bn?
Google DC in India and Malaysia announced.
Key to see that clean energy grid addition is hyped only in the Malaysian announcement.
Project timelines also quite different.
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
How rich are India's top bureaucrats? A new report by The Indian Express reveals that 115 out of 244 self-acquired properties declared by 102 senior officials have no current valuation. The same number have no details of their size. So, how much do we really know about the wealth of those who run the government?
Full video: youtu.be/AKbzKuEGr2c?si=20vh…
"The guru becomes useless when there is a particle of self-knowledge" - Jiddu.
Just sad that the country is infested with these Babas, and gurus, and charlatans of all hues; exploiting on lack of scientific temper, lack of mental health support, lack of affordable healthcare...
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Five weeks ago we reported that two Election Commissioners had objected 14 times in 10 months, revealing an unprecedented rift inside the Election Commission.
Since then the Commission has reversed course on almost EVERY move the two Commissioners had
red-flagged.
The last was Form 6.
The SIR declaration is now out of the online form everywhere, including the states where the SIR is still running. It’s a separate declaration now.
With this, the reversal is complete. Let me explain.
indianexpress.com/article/in…
🧵 (1/13)
Hats off to the pediatricians!
Same medicine. ₹4 crore a year vs ₹2.5 lakh a year. 💔
A helpless mom came to me with her child, who has Allan-Herndon-Dudley syndrome (MCT8 deficiency). It was very painful to see them so helpless. I tried to find a solution as if it were my own child. I couldn't rest otherwise.
Tiratricol wasn't available in India. Dr Santosh and I wrote to doctors. Dr Praveen and others directed us to the Erasmus team, who did the trials for Tiratricol. After many emails, they suggested Egetis Therapeutics might be able to support the child. I teared up. But our happiness was short-lived: Egetis said it could not give us the medicine.
I wrote to many journalists. I posted on Instagram and tagged the PM. Someone told me Tiratricol was available in Germany. The mother bought it, paying ₹12 lakh for just one month. That's impossible to keep up for life, for this child or for the five other children with the same condition under Dr Praveen's care at CMC Vellore.
Finally, Toufiq, a senior journalist, wrote about it, and it reached the Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation in the Netherlands. They said Tiratricol can be made available at ₹2.5 lakh per child per year, against ₹4 crore per child per year by Egetis!
I raised funds, and the Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation raised funds. Now 7 children are getting the medicine free of cost for one whole year. (The 7th child was added after my Instagram post.) 🙏
Thank you to Access to Medicines India and Organization for Rare Diseases India for their important role, and to geneticist Dr Kishore, who helped us reach the diagnosis.
India can compound the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient here and make it available to every child with this condition at a reasonable cost.
👉 Please tag @narendramodi @JPNadda @MoHFW_INDIA
People of India, you can make it happen! Please share. 🙏
All the paediatricians, endocrinologists, paediatric endocrinologists, and paediatric neurologists, if you are currently caring for a child with confirmed or suspected MCT8 deficiency, please share the details below. Our team may contact you for further clinical information and coordination regarding diagnosis, treatment and access to tiratricol.
Please do not upload or share unnecessary patient-identifying information at this stage.
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F…
#AllanHerndonDudley #MCT8Deficiency #Tiratricol #Triac #Emcitate #RareDiseases #RareDiseaseIndia #AccessToMedicines #PharmaHijack #ChildHealth
Two things are making Twitter hilarious today:
Amazingly witty tweets about #USElections
Amazingly shitty tweets about #USElections
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
‼️ India's shadowy election consultants have gone global, manipulating elections from Kenya to the United States — for less than $10 a day — an Al Jazeera investigation reveals.
Indian election consultants are running covert social media campaigns, pushing manufactured narratives, and helping politicians unethically influence voters from thousands of miles away.
How do shadow election campaigns work? How do they funnel money? And are there any red lines?
Details here | ‘Manipulated’: Kenya to US midterms, Indian bots help campaigns sway votes
aje.news/l7e1ze
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Indians are the largest nationality on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. But their influx onto these platforms has not been great for India’s image in the world, bit.ly/4sEfzzs
Illustration: Lehel Kovács
Dividend Kabhi Jo ban Jaye Disaster..
(Fit the song Phool Kabhi Jo ban Jaye Angaare music; which people of a certain vintage will only remember though).
If you want to understand the State of India’s education and our priorities, read this:
1. In Hyderabad, a university declared a holiday so that students can watch a movie.
2. In West Bengal, the Madhyamik exams were postponed as teachers were on census duty.
3. In Bareilly, schools were shut for a BJP padyatra about protecting democracy!!
4. In Ladakh, a school run by Soman Wangchuk is being asked to shut down.
5. In mumbai, 24 of the total 34 teachers of one school were moved to booth level officer duties.
6. In Karnataka, students got less scores as teachers busy on SIR duty couldn’t teach.
7. In Maharashtra, the election commission recommended alternate days of schooling so that teachers can do election related work.
8. In Maharashtra, 95 FIRs were filed against teachers who refused election work.
9. In Orissa, all schools were closed in a city during the PM’s visit.
10. Calcutta University moved its exams as Central forces were housed in 12 of its affiliated colleges and there was no space to hold exams.
Demographic dividend, any one?
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
This guy is absolutely right.
Odisha could have been like Wakanda, but it's like Congo now.
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Really??? Really….
You could have said “rubber bounces back” but no. You had to say spring back.
Sad. Just sad.
Kerala's plantations spring back to life as natural rubber price crosses Rs 300-mark. #rubber #tyremakers newindianexpress.com/states/…
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Hahahahahahahahahahaha... this was stupendously funny 🤣 And to think this was retweeted by Bryan Johnson himself!
#advertising #marketing #creativity
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Sunidhi Chauhan x Shillong Chamber Choir harmonising on an unplugged version of her classic Kaisi Paheli Zindagani. Just pure and simple music. And what a joy to be able to sing together.
#shillongchamberchoir #scc #sunidhichauhan