9 Follow me

The Fox without a Tail: A fox was ensnared by a trap. In his desperate attempts to escape from the trap, he lost his tail. He thought that others would ridicule him unless he glorified the loss. He called a meeting of all the foxes in the vicinity and advised them to cut off their tails. "The tail is ugly, heavy and gets dirty. It is good to be rid of it," he explained. But one fox observed, "My friend, if your tail had been intact, you would not be so keen to get our tails removed."

Meera was a health and fitness freak. She read about the health giving powers of pyramids. She thought, "Why not a pyramid for myself?" and constructed a four metre tall pyramid in her garden. It had a central chamber where she used to sit and 'gather neutrinos and other health giving cosmic rays'.

Her neighbours and friends asked her about her latest fad. In reply, Meera glorified the pyramid, its powers and how she bathes in the cosmic rays every day. Then one of her smart friends said, "Meera, if you had not wasted time and money in constructing this monstrosity in your beautiful garden, you would not be so keen on selling us this stupid idea."

Comments

Meera is an example of innovative path breakers who avidly and often uncritically accept anything new and novel. They also try to propagate and popularise these into fashion statements. It is in fact quite easy for the gullible to imagine 'the Emperor's new

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clothes'. It calls for a critical, unbiased and bold mind to see the stark truth and spell it out. I wish there were more like Meera's sceptical friend in our society. Healthy scepticism helps prevent silly superstitions and crazy ideas from turning into prevalent fashion in the society. However, the way our society handled the "milk drinking God" and the "herbal petrol" episodes in the recent past indicates the relative ease of stimulating our collective gullibility.

Globally, the health professionals too, like lemmings, repeatedly fall prey to the follow-the-leader syndrome. Episodically they push certain disease-labels and treatments because everyone else is doing the same, and it would be unfashionable not to do so. Dr Buram (1987) listed some examples:

1. Treatments of fashion. The use of a third generation cephalosporin, an expensive and powerful antibiotic for community acquired pneumonia (an unwarranted and irrational practice). 2. Fashions in medical jargon.

Stress has been a perennial favourite undermany names: - in 1930's as "fight or flight" response - in the 50's as Selye's "alarm reaction" - in the 70's as "type A personality" of Friedman - in the 80's as "Hot reactor" of Eliot 3. Disease of Fashion. Chronic fatigue syndrome that was known by many other names earlier. 4. Fashions in Surgery. Tonsillectomy, stomach-freeze for peptic ulcer, and gastric balloon inflation for obesity are some humbling examples of fashions of the past. Bernard Shaw (1906) had this to say on surgical fashion: "There is a fashion in operations as there is in sleeves and skirts: the triumph of some surgeon, who has at last found out how to make an once desperate operation fairly safe, is usually followed by a rage for that operation not only among the doctors but actually among the patients."

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The silent sufferer

There is yet another group of persons who also help to propagate myths and fashions. They are the silent sufferers who follow a silly advice and get conned; unlike Meera, they keep quiet about it so that others would not tease them. Thousands get cheated this way before the whistle is blown by a bold person or a group of persons (see bust-developer - campaign in Chapter26).

The current craze for and uncritical acceptance of all complementary and alternate medical practices is an example of a fashion born of collective gullibility of the society. It is similar to the scenario of 1930's in the West that prompted Shaw to say "The condition of the medical profession is so scandalous that unregistered medical practitioners obtain higher fees and are more popular with educated patients than registered ones."

One day, wisdom will dawn upon us and we too shall realise that most of these fashions have been merely illusory, like the 'emperor's new clothes'.

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