Education

Two-and-a-half quintillion (18 zeros!)
 -- The number of new data bytes
Generated every day.
Yet our inferences
About our world
Are often incorrect.

Here's an example
Of inappropriate use
Of information.
We look at outliers
Like Bill Gates
And conclude that
Education
Is unessential for us average beavers.
Inappropriate use of information.
Even irresponsible.

For most originating from
Middle and low income families,
Lifetime earnings are higher
With high school diplomas and college degrees
Than without.
And nothing replaces the
Broadening of horizons;
Exposure to diversity of views
That come with general education.

Yes, life is more than our earnings,
But not everybody finds opportunities
To travel;
Move in social circles
Inherently different from theirs; Or
Learn leadership qualities
Without access to formal education.

Don't be a sceptic.
Embrace
Your education
As well as
That of others.
Say yes
To good,
Affordable
Public Education.

Wildlife vs. people (natives vs. tourists)

With her last statement, the writer, Akhila Vijayaraghavan, undoes every previous argument for ecocentric, non-anthropocentric approach to conservation: With the state of Madhya Pradesh already on the map for a sizeable tiger population, it could soon become the only state in India with both the big cats *which would make it an exciting visit for wildlife enthusiasts.*  Emphasis mine.  Access the article here.

Compare with the words of Neha Sinha, whose op-ed Vijayaraghavan is highlighting. "Placing the persistence of species at its heart, the judgment calls for directives based on an ‘eco-centric approach’ and not a human or anthropocentric approach. Combined with the idea of doing what is best for the species, rather than the whims of policies, planning and politics, the judgment makes a powerful call for a new conservation paradigm, based on both science and ethics, for our most threatened species.”

Despite our best intentions, we always have an eye on our benefits as humans, however, tangible or intangible.  Until the next study comes along and quantifies the cumulative effects of well-meaning wildlife visits, we will continue to believe visits as benign activities while local dwelling as exploitative.  My generation (of wildlife enthusiasts) was brought up with the thought that if you bring people to the wildlife, people will find value enough to want to conserve these species.  But I don't know...Maybe the new paradigm in justifying, planning, arguing for conservation should be to value species and habitat protection whether or not non-local people get to see them.

Contrast with the story of relocation of a whole village.         

How much critical mass of scientist potential results in one award-winning young scientist?

Facebooker 1: Why can't we invent something like that [American teen who won the Intel award for creating an energy storage device that can charge cell phones in 20 seconds so we don't have to pause between text messages]?
Facebooker 2: We are not THAT smart.
Facebooker 3: You are smarter than you think. Unless you put limits on yourself. Your brain will believe it.

Eavesdropping Facebooker 4, which is moi, can't keep some thoughts to herself.  So, here, they tumble out:

The constraints do not come from individuals imposing limits on their own smartness, but from governments and societies passing up organized opportunities to tap into their citizens' smartness.  If every country, every government, every society, invested in and developed the collective potential of their peoples, then more 18-year-olds across the globe will have solutions to problems most pressing to them and their neighbors--and this may or may not include a focus on charging cell phones on the go.

And if you have not heard that Ionut Alexandru Budisteanu, 19, of Romania, won the Gordon E. Moore Award for using artificial intelligence to create a viable model for a low-cost, self-driving car, don't feel bad.  You are not alone.  I am with you.  I was so taken up by the promise of charging my ever-dead cell phone in 20 seconds in the near future that I did not dig up the news story that promises freedom from having to drive myself on the interstate.  Thank you, Romania, for investing in *your* smart and thoughtful teen.

When a picture hides thousands of words

In India, what is the source of information on animal welfare and animal husbandry issues?  Animal Rights groups with a narrowly-focused mission?  Forgive me for that conclusion but it seems that way.  And information, it seems, is disseminated by these groups in the form of photographs that are shared through social media sites.  Cows that already benefit from an underlying universal human reverence for draft animals in agrarian societies, also occupy a special place in various Hindu subcultures. Therefore, it is not surprising that the most 'popular' graphic photographs doing the rounds in India, seem to be of cows slaughtered or on the verge of being slaughtered.     
  
The problem with well-meaning people sharing graphic, gross, bloody pictures of 'callously' wounded or dead cows lying in pools of blood is that one has no idea why these cows are dead. Have they been slaughtered for meat in an inhumane, unhygienic manner because of state-level slaughter bans rather than despite such bans?  (Refer to this article to get a picture of the unintended consequences unfairly affecting only the marginalized sections of South Asia's populations.)  Have they been killed because of caste/religious wars where one group takes vengeance against another by destroying the others' means of livelihood and their limited sources of wealth?  Or are they dead from an acute infectious outbreak which has little to do directly with people, but plenty to do with the accidental nature of this world that guarantees life for no one (except the rich and the powerful, maybe?)  

Some of my friends claim that their commitment to Animal Rights and their choice of a vegan lifestyle is merely personal.  (To some of my friends, being vegan implies not just dietary restrictions, but also an end to use of all kinds of animal products and labor).  To these friends, I usually say: Don't assume your choice of cause is personal when you are actually part of a socio-political and economic movement that, if it has its own way, will result in further marginalization and poverty of hundreds of millions of humans, and not just in India, but elsewhere as well.   If you accept the concept of animal rights, you must have some sympathy for the rights of humans (who are also animals) who still make a living through a symbiotic arrangement with animals, as our own ancestors have done, directly or indirectly, for the last 10,000 years.
 
If you really want to understand and ask questions, take a book and read; don't rely on shock-instilling images that hide more complexities than they depict or pretend to communicate.  Pictures may convey as much as 1,000 words, but they hide 10,000 more.  Don't assume that people who study animals, work with animals, coax animals into giving what we as humans need from animals, know nothing about animals. Don't act like urban sophisticates and intellectuals have been put on this earth to teach rural people the 'true' value of animals.  Nothing is more insulting and obnoxious than this top-down attitude with an intent to change this world overnight. I have found that some North American hunters (for food) are so much more knowledgeable, nuanced and appreciative of this complex biological world than some privileged Mylaporeans who have never had to grow even a single tomato in their lifetime or collect cow dung for a day.  In other words, some humility in some new converts to veganism would be nice. And, in this age of progressive thinking, maybe we would do well to listen to those who work with animals in our backyards, if not farmyards. Listening to only those from our privileged class (and caste) is highly irresponsible when your words are going to affect those who have no choice in how they earn a living.

In the meanwhile, academic letters are a good place to start to critically think beyond pictures that target the emotions alone.  Here is my recommendation for a good read: Animal welfare in animal agriculture: Husbandry, stewardship, and sustainability in animal production.  Ed. by Wilson G. Pond, Fuller W. Bazer, and Bernard Rollin.  A must-read is Paul Robbins' paper, Meat Matters: Cultural Politics along the Commodity Chain.  Available freely for those who care to know.  Robbins argues that the numbers of large cattle in India are decreasing (while the numbers of small ruminants like goat and sheep are increasing) because of the economic implications of not slaughtering cows.

"...The cow, it should be pointed out, is not disappearing as a result of slaughter but instead precisely because it is not being slaughtered. While small-scale, illicit and local consumption of beef is not unheard of, the lack of a viable meat component to the cattle economy makes them less valuable in the growing meat economy.  Both sheep and goat populations, on the other hand, have steadily grown in recent years."

Robbins is not alone in his argument.   Ashok V. Desai came to a similar conclusion as early as in 1971.  Rural ecologists in India have long pointed out that cows with reproductive problems and/or low milk yield, are abandoned by farmers (just like male dairy calves early in their lifetimes) because of the lack of a safe, legal, economically-meaningful slaughter system. These abandoned cattle compete for limited resources (fodder and water) with wild herbivores.  The unintended (and sometimes, unseen) consequences of protection of one over-populated domesticated species is its role in the habitat destruction of another species. Some overnight urban ethicists and activists think little about the ripple effects of no-kill policies.

And lastly, if you choose to be a neo-vegan propagandist, I suggest that you first kindly consider giving up all your medications and vaccinations, your vitamin and mineral supplements, your make-up and plastic surgery, and what-whats and what-nots, before you get on your soapbox. Because hundreds of thousands of lab and farm animals before us have contributed to the miracle of our continued living even after a heart attack or a cataract removal or an attack of depression.  That's right.  Antibiotics, immunizations (active and passive), ECGs--all examples of therapeutic, prophylactic, diagnostic discoveries and developments--are medical miracles that come to you, your children, your parents and grandparents courtesy of the animals that you so advocate that none of us have a right to use anymore.  If that is hard to give up, I understand. I am with you, and so is almost all those who use animals for every other purpose.  The way they show their gratitude -- should show their gratitude -- is to respect and honor "the symbiotic contract humans made with ... animals."       

 For a creatively written approach to the uniquely human habit of contemplating the tragic source of our vital nutrients, please read Margaret Visser's "Sins of the Flesh" in Granta 52.  

How far do you want to go to live your dream?

Every cliched South Asian article on the burden of being South Asian and student/graduate of Medicine (Engineering, Dentistry, Pharmacy science) easily categorizes careers into science with money vs. glamour professions (with or) without money.

Veterinary medicine has always defied such categorizations.  A science -- with or without money, with glamour borrowed from the charisma of the species worked on  -- it is a profession that becomes what you decide to do with it.  It tests your ability to survive, be creative, grow up and grow out. (If you do all that before you grow old, you are lucky. If you do all that, and still grow old, you are luckier, as suggested by rumors of slightly high suicide rates among vets -- which may or may not have anything to do with career-related stress, burnout or success.)  Above all, this beautiful profession tests how far you would go to live your dream.

In the new world order, geographical distances hold little meaning, but the price that you pay to live (in) your dream, is no small feat. And even American veterinarians are beginning to understand what the rest of the world has always known--that vets do relatively well when the economy does well.  These debates have been going on inside the profession, forever, it seems, but now this New York Times article lays it all out neatly for future veterinarians (their parents), South Asians or not.  Don't let it scare you, instead allow it to inform you about respecting outside powers that effectively force a balance between dreams and reality.

High Debt and Falling Demand Trap New Vets

Puppy Love Can Cost You. 

The American Veterinary Medical Association's (AVMA) response to the article can be found here. 

The instinct to eat animal protein

The hungry doe that I met at the campground certainly had no idea about any of this evolution business. She didn’t know about differing levels of protein, iron, or salt. She smelled a steak cooking, she wanted to eat it, and it wound up in her mouth. Come to think of it, this was pretty much the same reason why I started eating meat after growing up as a vegetarian.
--Jackson Landers, When herbivores attack! Plant-eaters' secret meat snacks, Slate.com

Somewhat of a sensational title for an article, but a moderately-referenced article that summarizes several known case reports in one-liners for busy readers interested in evolutionary explanations for nutritional niches as well as breaches.  Like Jackson Landers confesses, I too was raised vegetarian but started eating meat early in life, despite the guilt, the fear, and the confusions, because, as the adult in me rationalizes, my body, more so than the principled adults responsible for my welfare, knew when it needed the protein it lacked.  Divya, my 8-year old vegetarian-leaning daughter, goes through periodic cycles of requests for ham sandwiches, chicken curries, fried eggs, or tuna salads, unprompted by the more omnivorous members of the family.  Legacy (the dog), whom some might consider the most carnivorous member of the family, chomps on grass every 3rd day, and especially when given boiled meats and a bone to gnaw on.  These are but anecdotal suggestions from my family's experience that nature can hardly afford to be rigid, as survival is such a flimsy exercise with no guarantees on outcomes as well as the means to those outcomes.

But most vegetarians I meet, like the doe that Landers met, are not rationalizing their decisions and choices in evolutionary terms.  They invoke ethics, morality, religion, animal rights (or lack thereof), culture, reluctance to kill, disgust about killing, sense of right (vs. wrong) and several more socially constructed arguments including social politics and agricultural economics. While each of these stances interest and engage the comfortable, grateful, and balanced omnivore in me, I am quite appalled when people bring no curiosity, knowledge or questions about the role of biology or evolution to the discussion table. In certain circles, judgements about the meat-eating habits of other human beings, even whole societies, based on uninformed opinions are quite the norm. And opposition to meat-eating, either in the form of gentle persuasion or outright disapproval, is on the rise.

It seems like the title of Landers' article has been changed to something more mild and appropriate such as 'Bambi ate Thumper: Why herbivores sometimes eat meat.'    
 

Managing Growth in Medical Education

Raghavan M, Martin BD, Ripstein I, Sandham JD.

University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine.

Abstract of article published in the Journal of the International Association of Medical Science Educators in 2010.

In response to concerns about future physician shortage, urgent calls have been issued in the USA and Canada to increase medical student positions by 20-30% from current numbers. Yet very little information has been published on how to successfully plan for and manage medical school expansions.

Between 2000 and 2008, the University of Manitoba gradually managed a 53% expansion in Undergraduate Medical Education (UGME) class-size. The latest installment of UGME expansion occurred in 2008-09, amidst concurrent growth in Postgraduate Medical Education. In the same year, a program to evaluate and educate international medical graduates expanded 58% and, a new Physician Assistant Education Program was implemented. To meet the challenge of maintaining quality education for all learners and to appropriately plan for resource development, a systematic inventory of teaching responsibilities and an analysis of the gap between teaching capacity in 2007-08 and future demands were done. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, pre-clinical teaching was expressed in instructor-hours while clinical teaching was expressed as learner-weeks in clinical teaching units.

The methodology and the guiding principle that data should be expressed numerically using common units across all departments and programs, aided in unequivocally identifying scarce resources and competing needs. The results, allowing for a Faculty-wide accounting of future commitments, set in motion a teaching-based pro-rating system to allocate funding across departments in a transparent manner. Our methodological approach and experience will be of interest to faculty and administration involved in expansion of health professionals’ education.

Reference: Raghavan M, Martin BD, Ripstein I, Sandham JD. Managing growth in medical education. JIAMSE 2010; 20 (2): 143-152. [Link]