Centre rejects Andaman & Nicobar tribes plan.A PROPOSAL submitted by Hyderabad- based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) is a pioneer organization in the field of biotechnology and molecular biology in India. It is a constituent national laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. ( CCMB) to " immortalise Verb 1. immortalise - be or provide a memorial to a person or an event; "This sculpture commemorates the victims of the concentration camps"; "We memorialized the Dead" immortalize, memorialise, memorialize, commemorate, record " cell lines of vanishing tribes of Andaman and Nicobar islands Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ăn`dəmən, nĭk`ōbär), union territory (2001 provisional pop. 356,265), India, in the Bay of Bengal. Port Blair (1991 pop. 74,955), in the Andamans, is the capital. has been rejected by the Centre. The Centre does not want these tribes to be used as " guinea pigs" for laboratory experiments. The Negrito tribes of Andaman and Nicobar islands, such as Onges and Sentinelese, are supposed to be the descendants of the first man who moved out of Africa and are ancestors of the present Indian population. " These tribes are now on the verge On the Verge (or The Geography of Yearning) is a play written by Eric Overmyer. It makes extensive use of esoteric language and pop culture references from the late nineteenth century to 1955. of extinction and their total number does not exceed a couple of hundreds. Our effort is aimed at preserving their genome by immortalising their cell lines, which would help in a number of clinical studies to help mankind in future," said former CCMB director Lalji Singh. A team of scientists from the CCMB, led by Singh, in association with the Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University. It is a prestigious American medical school located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. , the Harvard School of Public Health The Harvard School of Public Health is (colloquially, HSPH) is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Longwood Area of the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Mission Hill, next to Harvard Medical School and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, made extensive studies to trace the genetic history the Indian population and came up with findings that have important medical implications. Singh said he had submitted the proposal to the department of science and technology. " All that we needed was permission to take blood samples of these rare tribes and immortalise them using Epstein- Barr Virus transformation technology, which would result in multiplication of the cells," he said. However, it was difficult to get permission from various ministries such as home affairs and tribal welfare and the Indian Council for Medical Research. " We need to create laboratory facilities in the islands, as the experiments on blood samples should start within 24 hours," he said. " I am writing to all these departments again for permission in the wake of the worldwide acknowledgement of my research, as published in Nature ," Singh said. Copyright 2009 India Today Group. All Rights Reserved. Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion