He's a physician who survived 9/11, a heart attack and cancer, too

Members were surprised to learn that Prof. Charles Plotz found the time from his practice in New York to sail on 'Queen Elizabeth II'

The guest speaker at the last meeting of 2007 was a short, stocky man full of laughter and fun from New York. He was supposed to speak on "The medical stakes . India vs. US" but focused, instead, on "Medicine in the 21st century".

A rheumatologist and "one of the world.s leading physicians and rheumatologists", Prof. Charles Plotz indeed provided several insights into the current and forthcoming breakthroughs in medical research. He peppered his talk with a lot of wit, humour and self-deprecating banter.

He came across as a man who knew his bunions and who did not spare even himself when it came to raising a good guffaw on a dull, lazy afternoon.

He joked about his own tryst with the Nobel Prize (he didn.t come even close to winning) and brought the house down by declaring with a straight face that he had decided how he would die.

"At the age of 100, I hope to be shot by a jealous husband."

And this from a physician who suffered a heart attack as he witnessed the horrific events of 9/11.

He survived both 9/11 as well as the heart attack; and, later, a virulent form of cancer when he was given up for dead.

Man will start playing God with the help of the emerging nano technology, says Prof. Charles Plotz

With the guest speaker. Prof. Charles Plotz is seen in the company of (from left), Dr. Ameet, President Dr. Rumi, Dr. R.D. Lele and Dr. Vikram Lele

The first computer unveiled before the world was so huge that it occupied an entire room. Today, you can swallow a computer and it .tells. doctors everything about all that.s going on inside you.

Soon, nano technology will make it possible to enter and peep inside a cell, and also the molecules within cells, in order to change dead or dying tissue into living, healthy tissue.

And man will soon be able to play God with the help of stem cells. Stem cells, in case you didn.t know, are undifferentiated undefined) cells which can take up any role assigned to them and behave accordingly.

Human cloning is within man's grasp and it will be an electrifying moment when a part of the body that is unwell or dying will be cloned in a healthy avatar to replace the dying part.

All these exciting possibilities are just round the corner, according to Prof. Charles Plotz, former Dean of the Brooklyn Hospital in New York and member of the Alpha-Omega Society, the membership of which is open only to the world's top scientists and Nobel Laureates.

Prof. Plotz, who was speaking at the last meeting on "Medicine in the 21st century", was introduced by Dr. Ameet Pispati, whose father Dr. Prakash Pispati is a senior rheumatologist (like Prof. Plotz) and who has long been his friend.

Practising in New York, Prof. Plotz is known for his phenomenal contribution to medicine and to mankind. He is the inventor of the "RA Test", or the rheumatoid arthritis test, which is the definitive test used throughout the world for the detection of rheumatoid arthritis.

A special keepsake. Two Past Presidents, Dr. Kekoo Kavarana and Dr. Zerxis Umrigar, photographed with Prof. Charles Plotz

In a serious talk peppered with large doses of wit and humour, Prof. Plotz recalled that 150 years ago when the Industrial Revolution was taking place in the West, in countries like England, France, Germany and the USA, most people did not understand the amazing things being wrought by the Revolution. All of a sudden, machinery started doing things that man had to do himself before.

A similar thing was happening in the world right now but it was all being taken for granted.

"We are living in one of the greatest times in human history; we are living through the communication revolution; we are living through a time when knowledge is not confined to a few brilliant men sitting in a laboratory in a tower somewhere. We are living in a time when knowledge is instantaneously transferred throughout the world.

"The computer and its equivalent have simply changed the way mankind lives. I can tell you... sitting in New York, if I have a problem with my computer, I call my local computer company and in seconds I am connected with a computer expert in Mumbai who tells me what to do with my computer in New York - and he or she is usually right.

Oh, so you have been named the President-Nominee? Well, good luck to you. Prof. Plotz congratulates Pradeep Saxena. Dr. Ameet Pispati is in the centre

"What this means is that we don.t have to do all the preliminary work. It has been done somewhere and it is available to us."

These developments, so far as the world of medicine was concerned, ensured that as soon as someone, somewhere confirmed an advance, it became available to everyone all over the world, whether in Africa or Antarctica. As a result, scientists did not have to start working from scratch.

Such revolutionary progress usually led to "great huge things". But it also led to "great small things".

Man now was in the age of miniaturisation. The first television sets were massive and the first computers occupied a room or more of space, but today it was possible to swallow a computer that would "tell" people all that was going on inside the body.

With the advent of nano technology, it would become possible to "get inside" cells and to "get inside" the molecules within cells - "in order to change bad things into good things and to change dead or dying tissue into living, healthy tissue".

Several of these discoveries and inventions were already widely known and available to all. However, several other areas were at present undergoing thorough (and exciting) research.

For example, the field of stem cells. Explaining the world of stem cells in simple terms, Prof. Plotz said stem cells were all about creation.

"It"s almost as if man were playing God. It (stem cells) means taking a cell which is not differentiated, which can become anything, and making it become what you want it to be.

"That's going on. We clone animals now. I am certain that if we wanted to, we could clone a human being. I don't thing anybody really wants to do that, but wouldn't it be exciting if you could clone a part of you that.s ill, about to die, and clone it before you die and replace it?

"That's happening and that.s what the 21st century is going to bring all of us. It's getting so that we can now attack diseases that we couldn't even think about attacking at the beginning of this century - and that's only seven years ago."

Prof. Plotz reminded his audience that at the beginning of the 20th century nobody believed that it would be possible to cure tuberculosis and most infectious diseases, because things like antibiotics were not even dreamed of then; but today, at the beginning of the 21st century, all these were taken for granted.

Starting from the head and going down to the toes, there was nothing that would not be improved in the 21st century. Even Alzheimer.s disease was being successfully attacked. Most diseases, including cancer, would be detected even before they occurred. It would be possible to detect people likely to contract them and advise them how to protect themselves, to avoid the stimuli (thus changing what would be a simmering problem into a boiling problem).

It was now possible to know which women were more likely to develop breast cancer. About 30 years ago it became known that smoking cigarettes could cause lung cancer; therefore, people were advised not to smoke. (Unfortunately, some people still smoked).

"But we are at that time, we are at that brink. of these new developments. We know which people are going to get colon cancer and we can advise them on dietary and medication measures which will delay or maybe even prevent the development of what would otherwise be a deadly disease.

"We know how to delay and even prevent heart disease, which is a common cause of morbidity and mortality. We know about controlling dietary factors, about controlling diabetes, we know about controlling high blood pressure, which is a cause of heart disease and strokes.

"These things are currently preventable in many cases - and will be preventable in most if not all cases in the course of the coming century. We know about babies, about birth defects. Women know that when they get pregnant they can do an ultrasound of the foetus; and if it is a badly deformed foetus, we can advise a woman to abort it to avoid giving birth to something that is going to be a problem from Day One.

"These are things that we know, that we know now. Just how much more are we going to know in the next 90 and odd years?"

Prof. Plotz acknowledges growing interest in the USA in Yoga, holistic medicine, acupuncture, non-medical treatment and so on

Prof. Plotz said he had himself conquered two fatal diseases - heart attack and cancer. He suffered a heart attack (both his father and grandfather died of heart attacks) when he saw the havoc and destruction wrought by planes flying into the World Trade Center in New York - he lived across the river from the WTC.

He wound up in hospital where the doctors put a stent in place and helped him survive.

Later, he developed a serious form of cancer and was "given up for gone; I felt I was dying". But researchers had found a new biological product which was injected into him; luckily, he responded and now did not have even a trace of the cancer.

Prof. Plotz said he did not know how people were going to die in the 21st century. Maybe there was a need for more wars, he said wittily. But the truth, he added, was that man would always find a way to kill himself in one way or another. This was the natural order of things.

As far as he himself was concerned, he said, tongue firmly in cheek, that he had already fixed the way he would prefer to die - "At the age of 100, I hope to be shot by a jealous husband."

Then it was time for questions and answers, when Prof. Plotz put his ample supply of wit to good use.

Sitaram Shah asked whether treatment really helped arthritis patients, or whether it was better to allow nature to take its course by way of "the natural process of developing and fighting against diseases".

Prof. Plotz said there was no way of answering the question - "how do you know that it (the healing or cure) would not have happened naturally?"

The only way out was to conduct an extensive, controlled study of a large population of (a) people to whom no treatment was given, versus (b) people who were administered treatment; and to assess which group fared better as far as healing or cure was concerned.

He went on to say that it was well known that the French people consumed a lot of wine and had less heart disease; Germans drank a lot of beer and yet they had far less heart disease than Americans; the Japanese consumed a lot of sake and also had less heart disease than the Americans.

"So, it's clear that the major risk factor for heart disease is speaking the English language!"

When Dr. R.D. Lele, attending a meeting after a long gap to hear Prof. Plotz speak, requested him to narrate the story of how he "narrowly missed" bagging the Nobel Prize, the speaker's face lit up. He said it was a sad story but "far more interesting than if you win it".

On learning that Japanese scientists had found an excess of an amino acid called tryptophane in the urine of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, his team decided to put patients with this condition on a diet free of tryptophane.

Since tryptophane was present in almost every food item, it was difficult to create the desired diet. Finally, his team devised the "Turkey diet" which consisted of just three elements - the white meat of turkey, fruit juice and sweet cream.

A patient with very bad rheumatoid arthritis was admitted in the metabolic ward (where everything that went into a person and everything that came out, including perspiration, was measured). For six weeks this man had nothing but white meat of turkey, fruit juice and sweet cream.

At the end of six weeks he was much better; "and that's when I started to think about Stockholm" (where the Nobel Prizes are decided).

Another patient was to be studied in a similar way. But the team could not find a bed in the hospital, so this female patient was carefully instructed to consume only white meat of turkey, fruit juice and sweet cream. She went home and returned to the clinic two weeks later - and much improved. "Then I really thought about Stockholm".

Soon, word spread around the hospital that something exciting was happening in Dr. Plotz's clinic. This time, a huge crowd came to attend the clinical conference.

"Usually, I let one of the junior people present the patient. But not this time - this time I was going to do it. So I gave the patient's history and then they wheeled the patient in. I said, .How're you, Mrs. So and So?"

"And she stood up from her wheelchair, the first time anyone had seen her standing! And she said, "God bless you, Dr. Plotz, and God bless all these fine doctors. I feel better than I have felt in years. As a matter of fact, I feel so good, that I haven.t even had to follow your diet'!"

When (Dr.) Arun Vakil wanted to know his views on the common cold, Prof. Plotz said it was difficult to get people interested in studying it because it got better quickly; besides, nobody seemed to be interested in finding a cure (for a cold) that would act in two days instead of five.

"We're learning prevention, but it's going to be very hard to find a cure for something that cures itself so quickly."

Throwing more light on the common cold, he said that the 21st century would probably show new ways of preventing the transmission of the viruses that caused the common cold. Already, significant work had been done in this area.

Twenty years ago it was believed that the common cold was transmitted through the air; hence patients were told to cover their mouths while coughing and to avoid breathing into another person.s face.

But now it had been established that the common way of transmitting the common cold was through the hands; and the best way to prevent the common cold was to keep washing one's hands. Every hospital now had a sign at the patients' bedside saying, "Wash your hands before you touch me".

PP Haresh Jagtiani asked, "What do you think about Yoga and holistic medicine?"

Prof. Plotz said there was a lot of interest, at least in the USA, in Yoga and holistic medicine, acupuncture, non-medical treatment and so on.

All of these were very good approaches - because the people who tried them and persisted in doing them (rather than just trying them once and giving up), also believed in them.

"And anything that you believe in, that thing is going to help you. (Like) prayer is going to help you... Yoga has one big advantage over the others, that is, it exercises muscles which otherwise might not be exercised," Prof. Plotz concluded.

Dr. Ashok Kirpalani proposed the vote of thanks.