Wanted: Empathy

With reference to Real Stigma (November 15), West Bengal has about 40 lakh people aged over 65 and 80,000 of them have been suffering from dementia. Calcutta has about 46,000 dementia patients. While we are making all efforts to help all those in distress, huge obstacles lie ahead of us, the foremost problem of them all is that very few people are aware of the disorder. Moreover, health professionals are ill-trained to handle patients suffering from it. The society believes in the non-pharmacological approach mentioned by Dr Lon Schneider in the story. We believe that Alzheimer?s patients need empathy, and nothing else.

Nilanjana Maulik
Alzheimer Society (Calcutta)

For a clear concept

This refers to Vaccine reaction in this column (November15) in which the letter writer expressed his eagerness to know the basics of vaccination and immunology. In a democracy right to information is a basic one, but an amendment to our Constitution (to be precise, the 42nd) also makes it a fundamental duty of a citizen to foster a scientific temperament. So I?d request him to get in touch with the community medicine department of any medical college to clear his misconceptions and unfounded apprehensions about vaccination.

Tapan Pal
Batanagar

Faulty diet

With reference to the query ?Why do only humans cook their food?? (October 25) no wonder that no other species had the temerity to come up with such an idea. There?s no denying that cooking makes food digestible and tasteful, but human beings began cooking food just because they wanted to eat meat. Meat was never meant for human consumption and our dental structure shows that we were designed to live on plants. Our departure from vegetarian foods has not only paved the way to several critical diseases (like corona-ry artery disease), but also cut down nutrition from our diet.

Arta Misra
Cuttack