We should all follow Dr Narasimhan’s health habits to avoid becoming reliant upon the slow death grip of pharmaceutical’s over priced drug scam. This article discussed in detail his morning routine but had no mention of the US financial health crisis. For example I would have loved to hear about how type 1 diabetics without health insurance can get sustainable access to the most effective types of insulin instead of dying from meager rationing or using ineffective cheaper insulin types.
This article is a smooze piece. Vas you can still redeem yourself.
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Modern medicine doesn’t cure anything...what’s the profit in that?
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As soon as I see that someone worked for McKinsey, for any length of time, I am comfortable knowing that I don't care to hear their opinions about anything. This goes double for when they start talking about public policy, or entering a political race.
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We have been hearing this nonsense for 20 years. Guess what, times have changed. There have been various scares including Bird Flu, Ebola and Plague but none turned into a Pandemic because humans understand how microorganisms transmit and they know how to break the transmission chain whether it is vector borne, by air, contact or through sex. Vaccines and drugs are quick to come on the market too. Pharma companies don't like to spend a whole lot on Infectious disease because there is no money to be made in it. Whatever research is done, is done as a form of charity. This is not the 1920's where Typhoid Mary infected the whole city.
It sounds like he’s trying to save the world. Good luck with that.
He mentions one of his five long-term priorities to build trust with society. Yet, where is the urgency behind this? It seems that the overall strategy of Novartis is to develop very innovative products in areas that lack competition and are difficult to genericize, so that a very high price can be be maintained for an extended period. For-profit big-Pharma has no other options for long-term success. So, it's hard to gain any trust.
Overall, He is intelligent and polished and seems very straightforward and direct, but it seems a bit too much a reflection of a calculating mind and someone who has been thoroughly media trained.
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Mr. Narasimhan might have some really useful advice about how to prepare for the increase in the number of pandemics and other pending public health disasters. Climate change is already a public health emergency and will get worse.
I would have loved to hear his suggestions or at least more discussion about these challenges. Instead we got fluff about personal interest stuff.
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Would have been nice if he'd been asked about Novartis's drug pricing policies and how he justifies making huge profits when patient's cannot afford his medications without gold-plated healthcare. interesting guy, but this interview seemed more like something his PR folks create than a journalistic interview.
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Interesting interview. He seems to take a lot of responsibility for his own personal health (fasting, sleeping, meditating, exercise, eating for health, etc, etc.) I know about those health practices, and have a goal to follow them, too, but something tells me this guy does better than I do....
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Of course we’re not. We’re human beings. We respond to crisis, at least those of us who survive the crisis. Planning is not really our thing. Maybe we’re all, at core, fatalists.
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A pandemic is a worldwide spread of a new disease. Autism used to be extremely rare; a few decades ago new residents were told they might never see a case.The rates have since risen alarmingly with some statistics placing boys at a 1 in 38 risk, numbers never before seen and shocking in the extreme. The medical field has spent enough time preening over their “better diagnosis”. The increase is real, yet unmentioned. Not cool! Ask yourselves how will this country survive if parents, schools and healthcare have to support an increasing number of seriously impaired children? This crisis is here now. We don’t have to wait for it.
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Not everyone now diagnosed with autism today would have even been considered as autistic in the past. This is the reason for the increase in diagnoses. I have two kids with autism. One is quite severely autistic, with complex needs. The other was not identified, even by us, until quite late, because compared to their sibling, their presentation was not as severe and gender also played a role in masking autistic characteristics. This is not a pandemic. It is a change in diagnostic approach, a change in awareness (from parents, teachers and the public), and increase in willingness of same to take their kids to be assessed for autism or other disabilities. You can argue the merits of this change based on your own views (was it better to have more ‘eccentrics’ in the past than autistics now), but this does not mean there are vastly more autistic people now. It means better identifying, labeling, and awareness, particularly of girls on the spectrum.
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Most of the gain in life expectancy is not because of modern medicine. It's because chlorination has removed typhoid and cholera from the water, and because of immunizations, most of which were developed before "modern medicine".
Smallpox vaccination was announced in 1798, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and polio all by 1955. TB is mostly gone because of improved living conditions (we don't even immunize in the US). "Modern medicine" produces the occasional miracle, but it does not deserve credit for improved life expectancy.
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@Jonathan Katz
Immunizations are modern medicine, and vaccine development is critical. It requires genetic manipulation of the virus or viral proteins to develop vaccines that won't kill you. Very few viruses have weak relatives we can use, like smallpox and cowpox. Antibiotics have saved millions of lives. There was a time a small cut could lead to infection and then amputation or death. People with heart disease, cancer and other old age diseases live much longer lives. It is legitimate to question whether big pharma has played a constructive role in the implementation, but to claim that science and medicine have made no difference is to ignore all factual evidence.
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