Dhondy's Blog

[Dhondy]

As you get older and more cantankerous, you can't be bothered to sit around, waiting for people to reply to your rather nostalgic, sometimes despairing posts. Hence I thought of this blog idea. ICF being my passion, I have stubbornly resisted the idea of starting an independent blog. Actually, I did succumb once, but didn't give the URL to a single soul. There are 200 or so hits on it- all mine, or at least that's what I think. Here's my refuge from the bad ole world then. Any ideas that crop into my mind, I'll drop in here. If you want to read, you are welcome. Don't feel obliged though. I can be the greatest of narcissists when it suits me- all in love with my own lil self. Gambo, Varun, or any of the other whiz kids- I wonder if you can make this into some kind of icon at some corner of the board? The problem with putting this on either the Cricket or Chit Chat forums is that it constrains me. It would be nice to have the freedom to write just about anything that comes into these antiquated frontal lobes. Eventually, it would be nice to see some of the magnificent writers we have here follow suit- Lurker's own political blog, Boss' stats domain, Gambo's compendium of the weird and wonderful, Bumper's giggly lines, Shwetabh's soulful ruminations, Salil's tips on the finest tipples and the finest cricketers, and Ravi's cricketing reminiscences- all tucked away from general view...but only a click away from your scrutiny... and comment, if you feel so inclined. Here then is my first entry into this blog. I am excited today. Why? In the course of my work, I had the previlege to meet a well known English cricket historian. I just hope he appreciates my work as much as I did his. He quietly revealed his vocation during the course of our consultation in response to my query, and then had to gently steer me back to his problem, as our conversation threatened to run away with all things cricketing. I promptly offered to swap jobs with him, but sadly, at 70, he's retired, and that opportunity had clearly passed. He asked me about my views on 20-20 and was thrilled to learn that I was a traditionalist, just like him. During our chat, he revealed that he had known, and worked with Dicky Rutnagar, that doyen of Indian cricket writing, whose silken prose I grew up reading. I would have liked to talk to him for much, much longer, pick his brains on Tendulkar and Lara and all the great cricketers he had witnessed over the years, but alas, the next patient was waiting, and he had to bid goodbye. All is not lost though. I have extracted a promise that he'll call back in a month to let me know if my remedy worked, and I shall no doubt seize the opportunity to inveigle a few more reminiscences out of him.

[PaiN_KiLLeR]

You have one dedicated reader here :two_thumbs_up: . does this mean you won't post in the other threads?

[Lurker]

Blogs are always a good idea. For one there is no limit on size of article which is always otherwise an issue on forums. Write too long and not many people will have time, or interest, to read it. No such issues on blogs of course. Onto your happenstance Dhondy, it must have been quite a meeting. Always a pleasure to listen to old timers. I hope you do get a chance to meet him again and maybe dig out a few anecdotes if possible?

[Dhondy]

Hopefully, I can do that, Lurker. He really is a very nice and down to earth man for one so accomplished. And Pain_Killer, no danger of me bowing out from the forums. There'll be too many contentious threads in a few weeks time, once the cricket takes off.

[Mr. Wicket]

Great stuff, Doc. I'll be bookmarking this and look forward to reading plenty from you.

[Ram]

Great, looking forward to reading the entries!

[satishg]

An interesting write up for ur first blog..looking forward to more such write ups:two_thumbs_up:

[fineleg]

post on doc

[Dhondy]

I will, Fineleg. There's stuff rushing out of my ears and I need to get them down before they vanish. Once Ravi or Varun are free, they'll move this thread to a spanking new Blogs section. Till then, bear with me, as I have no intention of confining myself to cricket, despite the section that this blog started on. I'll use this entry to talk about something that is very close to my heart- Science. If you follow such things, you'll know that recently in Germany, kids as young as five are being presented with "science boxes" by world renowned engineering companies such as Siemens, Bosch and Thyssen-Krupp, with tasks that involve putting together electrical circuits that will light up bulbs, making a moving carousel, and so on. The idea behind this to stimulate a lifelong interest in science in very young children, who would then hopefully take up careers in engineering when they mature into young men and women. Germany's formidable engineering firms would thus never run dry of home grown scientists. This struck a chord with me. Through chance or design, junior has picked up my fascination for science. While the results can be quite annoying for his parents, with the requirement to participate in at least one "experiment" a day, I have loved to tag along with him to science museums and workshops that run during school holidays. You are given a motley array of wires, electrical cells and wheels, and the task is to put together contraptions that whir, run or light up at the end of it all, usually an hour filled with frustrated grunts at things not going to plan from all concerned, mostly the adults who find out they are far clumsier than they could have ever imagined. Coming back to the issue at hand, I truly believe that a nation's greatness is in danger of ebbing away if it does not nurture its scientists. Science epitomises curiosity and non-acquiescence with established ideas, an appetite for innovation, continuous learning allied with discipline and pleasing creativity- traits that are all rather important for character building in the young. Yet, so many countries in the West are cutting back on science funding. Business and finance are grabbing the best brains from universities and even people who originally chose science are making a detour to vocations that appear to be more lucrative in the short term.There is no doubt that careers in science may not be the highest paying, at least initially, and do involve long, hard grinds to get to the top. Just on this board, we have lost a PhD in an advanced scientific discipline and a Chemistry honours graduate to the financial industry recently. You can understand their decisions, but you can't help but mourn the loss to science. Imagine the hours of methodical thought processes lost, the imagery of novel and unprecedented concepts that will never now see the light of the day. That is why we need more schemes like the baccalaureates that exist in countries like the US and France. Encourage the young to excel at a young age, and reward perseverance. Some of you, like Vroom, THX, Holysmoke and Graphic, who are in scientific disciplines, do pause and think before you switch streams. There is so much at stake.

[SachDan]

@dhondy...I would rather prefer Doc,the cricket related blogger than a science one....

[The Outsider]

Great initiative Dhondy and cool first entry. Having the blog feature does add a lot of freedom to posting. I remember posting some lengthy rants about India's North East states when we had the feature earlier and it was quite fun.

[Dhondy]

Put some money on this October's Nobel laureate, folks. I think the prize has just been won by Cassian Yee from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute in Seattle. Before I tell you what Yee and his team have achieved, take a look at why cancer of most sorts is so difficult to treat. Cancer cells are innovative, believe it or not. They mutate all the time, develop novel ways to evade anti-cancer drugs, and emerge with cells that are more robust, and multiply and spread easily. Essentially, it's like a parasite living inside the body that will, in due course, destroy its host. Can the body fight back? Yes, all of us have inbuilt defence mechansims against rogue cells. If we didn't, we'd all develop multiple cancerous growths pretty early in life. Our heroes against budding tumours are little lymphocytes called T cells, specifically, a subgroup called CD8+ cells. Like the celloist at the back of the orchestra though, CD8+ cells look for a cue to go into overdrive from another type of fellow T-cell- called CD4+ cells. CD-4+ cells recognize tumour proteins when they are bound to the body's own cells, specifically to a signpost many human cells carry on their surface, called HLA Class II molecules. These are the same signposts that are matched between donor and recepient in kidney transplants, making it much more likely that the transplant would be successful if there is a match. Once CD-4+ cells recognise the tumour peptide latching on to the host's HLA Class II molecule, it lets loose a stream of some really vile stuff- called Interleukin 2. It's like waving a red rag to the CD8+ cells, which had been hitherto idling by quietly like cattle grazing a meadow, now suddenly transformed to ferocious bulls. The CD8+ cells attack the incipient cancer cells and kill them. Problem solved. Cancer specialists have used interleukin 2 to directly activate CD8+ cells and fight tumours. A quarter of patients with the commonest type of kidney cancer and a skin cancer called malignant melanoma respond to this treatment. Unfortunately, interleukin-2 is toxic in therapeutic doses as it activates a whole host of other cells, and moreover, it doesn't kill all types of cancers, even among these two groups. Enter Yee and colleagues. They thought of novel ways of making the body's own cells fight back against cancers. So they cultured CD8+ cells outside the body, which remember, are the ultimate cancer exterminators, and infused them back into the body. Unfortunately, CD8+ cells only live for around 20 days, and the cancer cells simply outlived them. Yee and co-workers then thought of a novel approach. They turned their attention to the much longer lived CD4+ cells, the instigators, and cultured these outside the body in close contact with melanoma (skin) cancer cells bearing a prominent antigen called NY-ESO-1. They then infused around a 100 million of these cells into the blood of a patient with malignant melanoma that had spread to several parts of the body. Interleukin-2 and other agents had already been tried on this man, and unfortunately failed to halt the spread of his cancer. What happened? Within 2 months, every trace of cancer had disappeared from the man's body. It was unprecedented and remarkable, a happenstance never before seen with any sort of cancer. The investigators had essentially used the body's own cells, selected out to target the cancerous tissue, to get rid of a growth that had spread far and wide, and would have otherwise proved fatal. Nor did the vigilante CD4+ cells damage the patient in the process. Minor side effects such as mild fever, were seen for a couple of days, and then remitted. The treatment was really as safe as could be imagined. No chemotherapy side effects such as hair falling out, gut wrenching sickness, nothing like that. The implications of this piece of research, published in the latest issue of New England Journal of Medicine, are far reaching, and might well change the way we treat many cancers. Identify a prominent antigen on the cancer cells, incubate cells bearing those antigens with CD4+ cells, and infuse these cells into a patient with the specific cancer. Sit back and watch the cells seek out the malignant cells and kill them one by one in true "chun chun ke maarenge" style. Like all new discoveries, this one too is likely to run into roadbocks. What if the cancer cells are clever enough to disguise themselves from the body police by getting rid of the prominent antigen? This is a distinct possibility and one of the major reasons why the treatment may not be universally successful. Nevertheless, it is an enormous breakthrough, a seminal discovery that is likely to change the face of oncology and many, many cancer patients the world over for ever. Time to put your two bob on Yee and gang.

[Don]

Wow thats some great stuff by YEE and co. Cheers Dhondy for iforming us in details, i read the BBC report but it didnt explain this into any much detail as you did. Shall be following your blog with utmost intrest.

[Dhondy]

The UK topped the league of arm exporters last year, with 10 billion pounds worth of sales, accounting for nearly a third of worldwide arms trade. Editorialists lost no time in condemning their country's "shameful" record of making money out of warfare, pointing out that the bulk of these exports went to nations with dubious or downright aweful records in upholding regional peace or human rights, such as Saudi Arabia, China, Israel, and Columbia. Those living outside the UK may not be aware of the storm that brewed in the UK media last year over the Al-Yamamah deal made by British Aerospace Engineering Systems (BAE) with Saudi Arabia, under the terms of which, BAE supplied £43 billion worth of warplanes to the kingdom, starting in the 1980s. It was alleged that £6billion of this money had been passed on as "commission" to corrupt officials, including a large chunk to the rather badly named Prince Bandar, son of the Saudi defence minister, who then went on to purchase a 2000 acre prime estate in Oxfordshire with his ill gotten money. As you can imagine, a lot of people were up in arms (excuse the pun) when this news broke. Among them were Britain's competitors in arms trade, such as France and Russsia, the USA, where BAE has a significant presence, and several special interest groups in Britain itself, who have doggedly campaigned against arms trade over the decades with little success. BAE's profits were described as "blood money". The investigation went to the Attorney General's office, under pressure from the US government, who demanded a free and fair enquiry, out of concerns that BAE had gained an unfair advantage over Americam firms through such sleazy practice. Nothing happened. The British government ordered the AG's office to drop the enquiry on "national security concerns", on the premise that British nationals could be targeted by Arab agents if the investigation went through. The real reason, of course, was that the defence industry supports 49,000 jobs in the UK. A lion's share of their work comes from UK arms exports. Run down the arms industry, and you kiss goodbye to these jobs. It would have been political suicide for any government. Shortly after the UK withdrew the investigation, BAE concluded a £4.4 billion deal with the Saudi government for Typhoon/Eurofighter aircrafts, thus safeguarding thousands of British jobs. If allowed to run, the deal would amount to £20 billion over many years, as it would include maintenance and servicing of aircrafts, a very expensive business. This then, was the path that the UK traversed en route its position as the top arms exporter. It has been pointed out by angry broadsheet editors that Britain doesn't top the export league in any other area. It is easy to be ensconed in your chair at the top of an ivory tower, preaching morality to the masses, but how would have these newspaper editors and anti-arms campaigners felt if it was their job that was on the line? What's acceptable- exporting arms to a regime that would probably buy them from a competitor anyway if you balked, or walk the moral tightrope, lose your job and possibly fall into poverty? What if one knew that part of the money paid was going to dealmakers? Would it make the whole thing any more reprehensible? It's worth mentioning that the same Saudi government that purchased billions of dollars worth of arms last year, was also the donor that bailed out United Nation's World Food Programme, the flagship UN scheme to feed the hungry and needy the world over, with a gift of $500 million to bridge the resource gap created by rising food prices. I don't know the answers obviously, but that doesn't stop me from marvelling at the evanescent interpretations of morality shaped by the vantage point you happen to be occupying. Who would want to be a preacher these days?

[Lurker]

I don't know the answers obviously' date=' but that doesn't stop me from marvelling at the evanescent interpretations of morality shaped by the vantage point you happen to be occupying. Who would want to be a preacher these days?[/quote'] Morality, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder. Great Britain has a lot to answer for before it starts categorizing other countries as suspect. Sending back all the artifacts that reside in Royal British Museum and actually belong to India/Pakistan, Egypt etc would be a good start. It is easy to come across as a Land with Morals when you first categorize the other country as a bad boy and then chastise yourself for joining forces with them. Good thoughts there Dhondy, keep them coming.

[Holysmoke]

Put some money on this October's Nobel laureate, folks. I think the prize has just been won by Cassian Yee from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute in Seattle. Before I tell you what Yee and his team have achieved, take a look at why cancer of most sorts is so difficult to treat. Cancer cells are innovative, believe it or not. They mutate all the time, develop novel ways to evade anti-cancer drugs, and emerge with cells that are more robust, and multiply and spread easily. Essentially, it's like a parasite living inside the body that will, in due course, destroy its host. Can the body fight back? Yes, all of us have inbuilt defence mechansims against rogue cells. If we didn't, we'd all develop multiple cancerous growths pretty early in life. Our heroes against budding tumours are little lymphocytes called T cells, specifically, a subgroup called CD8+ cells. Like the celloist at the back of the orchestra though, CD8+ cells look for a cue to go into overdrive from another type of fellow T-cell- called CD4+ cells. CD-4+ cells recognize tumour proteins when they are bound to the body's own cells, specifically to a signpost many human cells carry on their surface, called HLA Class II molecules. These are the same signposts that are matched between donor and recepient in kidney transplants, making it much more likely that the transplant would be successful if there is a match. Once CD-4+ cells recognise the tumour peptide latching on to the host's HLA Class II molecule, it lets loose a stream of some really vile stuff- called Interleukin 2. It's like waving a red rag to the CD8+ cells, which had been hitherto idling by quietly like cattle grazing a meadow, now suddenly transformed to ferocious bulls. The CD8+ cells attack the incipient cancer cells and kill them. Problem solved. Cancer specialists have used interleukin 2 to directly activate CD8+ cells and fight tumours. A quarter of patients with the commonest type of kidney cancer and a skin cancer called malignant melanoma respond to this treatment. Unfortunately, interleukin-2 is toxic in therapeutic doses as it activates a whole host of other cells, and moreover, it doesn't kill all types of cancers, even among these two groups. Enter Yee and colleagues. They thought of novel ways of making the body's own cells fight back against cancers. So they cultured CD8+ cells outside the body, which remember, are the ultimate cancer exterminators, and infused them back into the body. Unfortunately, CD8+ cells only live for around 20 days, and the cancer cells simply outlived them. Yee and co-workers then thought of a novel approach. They turned their attention to the much longer lived CD4+ cells, the instigators, and cultured these outside the body in close contact with melanoma (skin) cancer cells bearing a prominent antigen called NY-ESO-1. They then infused around a 100 million of these cells into the blood of a patient with malignant melanoma that had spread to several parts of the body. Interleukin-2 and other agents had already been tried on this man, and unfortunately failed to halt the spread of his cancer. What happened? Within 2 months, every trace of cancer had disappeared from the man's body. It was unprecedented and remarkable, a happenstance never before seen with any sort of cancer. The investigators had essentially used the body's own cells, selected out to target the cancerous tissue, to get rid of a growth that had spread far and wide, and would have otherwise proved fatal. Nor did the vigilante CD4+ cells damage the patient in the process. Minor side effects such as mild fever, were seen for a couple of days, and then remitted. The treatment was really as safe as could be imagined. No chemotherapy side effects such as hair falling out, gut wrenching sickness, nothing like that. The implications of this piece of research, published in the latest issue of New England Journal of Medicine, are far reaching, and might well change the way we treat many cancers. Identify a prominent antigen on the cancer cells, incubate cells bearing those antigens with CD4+ cells, and infuse these cells into a patient with the specific cancer. Sit back and watch the cells seek out the malignant cells and kill them one by one in true "chun chun ke maarenge" style. Like all new discoveries, this one too is likely to run into roadbocks. What if the cancer cells are clever enough to disguise themselves from the body police by getting rid of the prominent antigen? This is a distinct possibility and one of the major reasons why the treatment may not be universally successful. Nevertheless, it is an enormous breakthrough, a seminal discovery that is likely to change the face of oncology and many, many cancer patients the world over for ever. Time to put your two bob on Yee and gang.

ScienceDaily (June 30, 2008) — Scientists at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center are about to embark on a human trial to test whether a new cancer treatment will be as effective at eradicating cancer in humans as it has proven to be in mice. The treatment will involve transfusing specific white blood cells, called granulocytes, from select donors, into patients with advanced forms of cancer. A similar treatment using white blood cells from cancer-resistant mice has previously been highly successful, curing 100 percent of lab mice afflicted with advanced malignancies. Zheng Cui, Ph.D., lead researcher and associate professor of pathology, will be announcing the study June 28 at the Understanding Aging conference in Los Angeles. The study, given the go-ahead by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, will involve treating human cancer patients with white blood cells from healthy young people whose immune systems produce cells with high levels of cancer-fighting activity. The basis of the study is the scientists' discovery, published five years ago, of a cancer-resistant mouse and their subsequent finding that white blood cells from that mouse and its offspring cured advanced cancers in ordinary laboratory mice. They have since identified similar cancer-killing activity in the white blood cells of some healthy humans. "In mice, we've been able to eradicate even highly aggressive forms of malignancy with extremely large tumors," Cui said. "Hopefully, we will see the same results in humans. Our laboratory studies indicate that this cancer-fighting ability is even stronger in healthy humans." The team has tested human cancer-fighting cells from healthy donors against human cervical, prostate and breast cancer cells in the laboratory -- with surprisingly good results. The scientists say the anti-tumor response primarily involves granulocytes of the innate immune system, a system known for fighting off infections. Granulocytes are the most abundant type of white blood cells and can account for as much as 60 percent of total circulating white blood cells in healthy humans. Donors can give granulocytes specifically without losing other components of blood through a process called apheresis that separates granulocytes and returns other blood components back to donors. In a small study of human volunteers, the scientists found that cancer-killing activity in the granulocytes was highest in people under age 50. They also found that this activity can be lowered by factors such as winter or emotional stress. They said the key to the success for the new therapy is to transfuse sufficient granulocytes from healthy donors while their cancer-killing activities are at their peak level. For the upcoming study, the researchers are currently recruiting 500 local potential donors who are 50 years old or younger and in good health to have their blood tested. Of those, 100 volunteers with high cancer-killing activity will be asked to donate white blood cells for the study. Cell recipients will include 22 cancer patients who have solid tumors that either didn't respond originally, or no longer respond, to conventional therapies. The study will cost $100,000 per patient receiving therapy, and for many patients (those living in 22 states, including North Carolina) the costs may be covered by their insurance company. There is no cost to donate blood. For more information about qualifications for donors and participants, go to http://www.wfubmc.edu/LIFT (Web site will be available the evening of 6/27.) Cancer-killing ability in these cells is highest during the summer, so researchers are hoping to find volunteers who can afford the therapy quickly. "If the study is effective, it would be another arrow in the quiver of treatments aimed at cancer," said Mark Willingham, M.D., a co-researcher and professor of pathology. "It is based on 10 years of work since the cancer-resistant mouse was first discovered." Volunteers who are selected as donors -- based on the observed potential cancer-fighting activity of their white cells -- will complete the apheresis, a two- to three-hour process similar to platelet donation, to collect their granulocytes. The cancer patients will then receive the granulocytes through a transfusion -- a safe process that has been used for more than 30 years. Normally, the treatment is used for patients who have antibiotic-resistant infectious diseases. The treatment will be given for three to four consecutive days on an outpatient basis. Up to three donors may be necessary to collect enough blood product for one study participant. "The difference between our study and the traditional white cell therapy is that we're selecting the healthy donors based on the cancer-killing ability of their white blood cells," said Cui. The scientists are calling the therapy Leukocyte InFusion Therapy (LIFT). The goal of the phase II study is to determine whether patients can tolerate a sufficient amount of transfused granulocytes for the treatment. Participants will be monitored on a regular basis, and after three months scientists will evaluate whether the treatment results in clear clinical benefits for the patients. If this phase of the study is successful, scientists will expand the study to determine if the treatment is best suited to certain types of cancer. Yikong Keung, M.D., a medical oncologist, is the chief clinical investigator of the study. Gregory Pomper, M.D., assistant professor of pathology and the director of the Wake Forest Baptist blood bank, will oversee the blood banking portion of the study.

[Dhondy]

Gambo, could you please move this thread to the Chit chat section until it finds a proper home? Holy, thanks for the article. I read through it. It would be exciting if the idea envisioned comes through, but I have grave reservations for two reasons. First, mice experiments rarely translate to human beings. I have seen too many concepts fail to make the transition, for reasons that are difficult to explain. Secondly, in human beings, granulocytes pay very little role in scavenging cancer cells. Their primary role is to weed out infections. A prototype of granulocyte malfunction is seen in the rare disorder called Chronic Granulomatous Disease, where patients develop severe fungal and bacterial infections...but no cancer. There's little reason to suspect therefore that this particular experiment will succeed, unlike Yee's case report, where T cells, the definitive cancer fighters of the human body, were used instead.

[Gambit]

Dhondy's blog can be found here. http://www.indiancricketfans.com/Blog/?q=blog/4