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From The Editor In Chief
Cancer.
There is a finality in that word that has made it among the world's most
dreaded afflictions. In the West, modern medicine has tried year after
year to overwhelm the cancer cell with brute force, slicing it out with
surgery, zapping it with radiation or poisoning it with chemotherapy.
But it remains among the top killers there-especially breast cancer for
women. Now the disease is poised to strike in India in a big way. Statistics
show breast cancer is rapidly replacing cervical cancer as the most common
cancer to afflict urban Indian women. Cervical cancer is a developing
world's malaise, caused mainly by unhygienic conditions and infections.
Ironically modernisation has brought about its own set of diseases. Doctors
say that the personal choices women make in everyday life-like marrying
late, having fewer children, that too relatively later in life, and breast
feeding only for a few months before returning to their careers-leave
them susceptible to breast cancer.
 Earlier,
the onset of this disease spelt a nightmare of pain, disfigurement and
uncertainty too terrifying to contemplate. A seemingly healthy woman with
a small lump in her breast could have a biopsy performed and not know
whether she would die within six months. But thankfully much has changed
today. Breast cancer is curable if detected early and doctors now employ
surgical methods that are minimally invasive and cause little trauma.
As Principal Correspondent Farah Baria, who wrote the story, puts it,
"What women have to do is inculcate a mindset of prevention."
Weed out the cancer before it is too late.
That is
a lesson that should have been applied to the cancer of Veerappan too.
The other major story in this issue deals with Dr Rajkumar's release and
how the Supreme Court's firm stand facilitated this. The apex court rightly
pointed out that the governments of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu let Veerappan
grow into a monster instead of arresting him earlier. The moral in both
stories: act now or pay later.
(Aroon
Purie)
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The
Indian industry has increased its decibel level of whining. Instead, it
should get the government to deliver, says INDIA TODAY Associate Editor
V. Shankar Aiyar in 
