January 30, 2012
Azra Raza explains her work
by S. Abbas Raza
My sister Azra is an oncologist and one of the leading authorities in the world on Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) which refers to a group of diseases in which the body does not make enough red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. About a third of patients with MDS go on to develop leukemia. MDS afflicts around 55,000 Americans at present (but the number is increasing).
In her characteristically modest way, she did not tell me (or anyone else in the family) that about a year ago she made a number of videos that her patients can watch to get an idea of her background as well as information about the nature of MDS, what treatment options are available, what sort of current research is being done on it, etc. I happened to find the videos on YouTube yesterday as I was looking for something else, and so I have asked her if I can post them here, because I think they provide excellent insight into how scientists think in general, and her own work in particular.
There may be some bias in my infinite admiration for my sister but it is hardly as if she doesn't have admirers from outside of the family, especially among her colleagues as well as her patients. Some readers may still accuse me of promoting my own family. Yes, I am guilty as charged. If you have a sister as accomplished as mine, you should be promoting her work too! :-)
Azra Raza, M.D., is Professor of Medicine, and Director of the Myelodysplastic Syndromes Center, at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. Of course, she is also a fellow editor at 3QD. The videos have been shot in her office. I hope you'll find them as interesting as I did.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 12:35 AM | Permalink
Comments
How moving and wonderful. Thank you for posting, Abbas.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jan 30, 2012 9:59:39 AM
You have much reason for having pride in your sister. Very moving piece. I often hear people -- even friends whom I consider bright and compassionate -- make disparaging remarks about Western medicine and its practitioners and it makes me sad and perplexed to hear them. These videos are a grat way to communicate directly to a distrustful public. Good for her.
Posted by: Sarah D. | Jan 30, 2012 10:07:54 AM
Thanks for sharing this, and thanks to her for allowing it.
Posted by: Dredd | Jan 30, 2012 10:46:29 AM
Despite my partial bias (being married to another 3Quarks editor), I feel I can say with full objectivity that this is wonderful and much appreciated. The world is a better place for having Dr. Raza in it--she and this video are a gift to all of us. I'm glad to have seen this today.
Posted by: Maeve Adams | Jan 30, 2012 1:01:09 PM
I am curious about one thing that Dr.Raza said in the first video -- she mentioned that her patient had an urge to sniff at gasoline. Does Dr. Raza think that this urge might have been an early presenting symptom of MDS?
Posted by: Mary Carter | Jan 30, 2012 3:39:13 PM
Yeah I was wondering about the gas sniffing bit as well. . .
Anyways, your sister is a friggin' rock star!
Posted by: DrunktankDan | Jan 30, 2012 3:47:48 PM
Thank you for posting this, and Azra, thank you for your incredible work in this field and your inciteful explanations.
Posted by: Ronit Rose | Jan 30, 2012 3:48:09 PM
An absolutely amazing woman. Eloquent and brilliant. And it is somehow particularly compelling to hear a scientist speak with such poetry and clarity. These are great videos, for all and sundry.
Posted by: tom | Jan 30, 2012 3:55:53 PM
Totally impressive. Anything more sounds trite.
Posted by: John Ballard | Jan 30, 2012 4:14:39 PM
These videos are absolutely wonderful and this work nothing short of inspiring! Thanks for making them.
Posted by: Anjuli | Jan 30, 2012 5:12:02 PM
Thank you so much for sharing your sister's passion and lifework. These videos are a remarkable was to share a concise and overarching explanation of this inspiring and admirable Dr and her work.
What a dedicated and brilliant woman!
Posted by: Janet Kerr | Jan 30, 2012 8:56:23 PM
You are more subdued than I would have been to have such a sister. I admire her knowledge and her ability to explain to us, laypersons, about the subject. Her explanations remind one of speakers like Dawkins. Her dedication towards curing illnesses is nonpareil. May her tribe increase!
Posted by: s krishna | Jan 30, 2012 9:53:47 PM
I came to 3QD through Azra after becoming aware of Per Bak and wanting to learn more of this remarkable man. I found correspondence between Azra and Per Bak that blew my mind. Azra's intelligence and compassion came through so powerfully that I can honestly say it was unmatched in my modest readings.
Posted by: yakinsea | Jan 31, 2012 3:13:22 AM
A fabulous and brilliant woman! Thanks for sharing this.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jan 31, 2012 8:58:27 AM
This is wonderful, but hardly a complete picture of this amazing woman. I wish I could find the video of Azra performing Urdu poetry at the Asia Society, but it seems to have disappeared. I wish she was *my* sister.
Posted by: Zara | Jan 31, 2012 12:04:16 PM
Zara, I too saw that tape, and, in watching these, was mindful of how it showed Azra following her passion for poetry in a way that -- I believe -- would be deeply recognizable to people who know her as a gifted and intensely committed scientist.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jan 31, 2012 12:57:59 PM
Tehri na baath akhir haldi aur udrak-pey hee akey? Beysani roti zindabad.
Wow Azra! How very wonderfully impressive.
Posted by: maniza | Feb 1, 2012 11:47:56 AM
Very eloquent presentation. Flowed like poetry. Abbas, please find video of Azra performing Urdu poetry at the Asia Society and post that too. Thanks.
Posted by: Raza | Feb 1, 2012 6:42:28 PM
Importance of iodine in diet of humans and animals.
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/138/11/2060.full
http://www.micronutrient.org/resources/Salt_CD/4.0_useful/4.1_fulltext/pdfs/4.1.1.pdf
http://www.saltinstitute.org/Uses-benefits/Salt-in-Food/Essential-nutrient/Iodized-salt
Every living person has the benefit of the knowledge produced from those having gone before, but only if that knowledge is understood and transmitted by education and information.
For example, those living today know which snakes and spiders and plants to avoid lest they be poisoned by them. We know to not operate our cars in a closed space lest we die from carbon monoxide poisoning, etc.
The scientific understanding of human and animal diseases evolves very slowly at a glacial pace. What were formerly called diseases are in many cases today only vitamin deficiencies or element or substance deficiencies.
Common examples of this are Vitamin C to prevent scurvy and Iodine to prevent goiter or enlargement of the thyroid gland in the neck of humans or also in animals. Both of these “diseases” have been mainly eliminated in the U.S. and certain other developed parts of the world today, but still remain in less developed ones. Yet, if a doctor was presented with a patient with the symptoms of scurvy today, the doctor might likely treat it with the wrong treatment since it is such a rarely observed disease, instead of simply giving the patient some Vitamin C tablets or recommending a diet high in vitamin C. Most animals make vitamin C, but humans do not. A small amount of only about 60 mgm per day is necessary to prevent scurvy.
However, this miracle vitamin has many other advantages at low to high doses of the order of hundreds of grams per day. A great article on this is available by Fred Klemmer, M.D. at: http://www.nutri.com/wn/klenner.html It has even been proved to kill cancer cells at high doses of about hundreds of grams per day, published in medical articles in 1969. Of course our myopic and criminally negligent FDA has obstructed the study of this fundamentally important vitamin at any doses over the trivial amounts to prevent scurvy. They have blood on their hands.
While iodine is not considered a vitamin as such, it is now known to be vitally important for health and development, especially of bones and brains, of humans and animals. If you don’t get about 150 micrograms of iodine every day, you will get a goiter (enlarged thyroid gland in your neck), possibly be mentally impaired and have stunted growth of bones, and many other problems. The first article above discusses the history of the understanding of the deficiency of iodine in humans in the U.S. and Switzerland where iodine deficient regions led to these horrible diseases.
In a certain sense, every “disease” is some sort of deficiency of some nutrient or substance. If you don’t get enough oxygen constantly you die. If oxygen is slowly impaired from your heart and lungs you may have heart disease. If oxygen is impaired over a long period of time (decades) from the 100+ trillion cells in your body, those cells either die from lack of energy, or slowly switch to running on glucose rather than oxygen as Otto Warburg, M.D., Ph.D. demonstrated from experiments and facts in the laboratory as early as 1923 for animals and the 1955-1965 period for humans. The time period for making the switch from one type of metabolism to the other may be quite long and permit intervention to reverse the process, which, however, is irreversible once the full transformation is complete; he called these “sleeping cancer cells”. In other words, the diseases of the heart and cancer are similar, only differentiated by short term or long term oxygen deficiency.
Dr. Warburg made a number of relatively simple recommendations for preventing cancer which would not have placed anyone’s health at risk and therefore were not unethical, but so far no authorities have approved or implemented his suggestions. His recommendations were ignored and obstructed very much like the early recommendations to place iodine in salt to prevent goiter as discussed above in the excellent article. Most important advances in medicine were obstructed at the beginning. Read the obstruction to the simple act of washing hands and utensils to prevent germs. In fact, many of our problems even today from germs in hospitals are from doctors failing to wash they hands!
In his fascinating speech in 1994, Joel Wallach, D.V.M, N.D., stated that when any person dies of “natural causes” they die from a nutritional deficiency. This is a most enlightening and fundamental observation. The name of his speech was “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie”.
The above comments are not intended to be critical of the interesting comments of Dr. Raza.
Winfield J.Abbe, Ph.D., Physics
Posted by: WJAbbe | Feb 1, 2012 10:25:23 PM
I blogged about this when the Asia Society made the video available late last year—Azra's fine reading of two poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz is here (@ 49 mins, following intro by Reza Aslan).
Posted by: Namit | Feb 2, 2012 2:47:47 AM
She is a marvel. Her resolve to
drone this malady is as intense today as it was thirty years ago.
Never have enough words to thank her for the support and help at the Roswell Park, Buffalo.
Posted by: Nas R | Feb 2, 2012 7:32:31 PM
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