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ShareIn 1983, I spent some months in Tata Memorial Hospital and KEM Hospital after my mother was diagnosed with cancer. Though I used to pray for a miracle, two doctors I made friends with -- Lopa Mehta and Manu Kothari -- told me that "no medicine can alter biological trajectory, it can only supplement the deficiencies and the body will take its own course, and it is our job to identify that deficiency. So stop praying for a miracle."
With that wisdom, we fought the dreaded disease collectively till 1995, when my mother succumbed.
Cut to 2009: I'm astonished to see the success of Dr Munir Khan, a self-proclaimed scientist, involved in selling a liquid drug that claimed to cure every disease in the world, including cancer.
The 'miracle worker', with no scientific background, placed advertisements on local cable networks and also distributed promotional CDs, spreading his message. In the communication, he claimed that Nostradamus was talking about him when he said that a great scientist in the 21st century would rid mankind of all major diseases with a single medicine. As many as 200 patients visited Khan's clinic everyday.
The cost of the 'wonder drug' was Rs16,000 for a vial of 100 ml.
Despite several complaints against him, it took the police six years to send his panacea for an FDA test, which revealed the fraud. Khan is now absconding after police raided his Versova clinic early this week. He made his millions deceiving thousands of educated people afflicted with various contagions. Most of his victims shelled out Rs16,000 for 100ml of a spurious concoction. I wonder how we Mumbaikars believed him and paid the huge amount when the best medicines for cancer do not cost more than Rs4,000.
It is easy to take the moral high ground and blame the victims. But we need to ask why intelligent, educated people put their faith in a charlatan, what it is about purported medical miracles that make them so successful even in this day and age in an urban city like ours? From my own experience with my mother's illness, I know why.
For me the problem is different. If Khan was a crook, how did he set up shop and thrive in Mumbai for six years? In a society everybody is allowed their beliefs and hopes. A disease in the family can be devastating. It is foolish and insensitive to assume that science will kill people's belief in a miracle. But it is criminal to ignore quacks who feed on the hopes of innocent people, that too for six long years.
That is where the key to Khan's success lies. He didn't thrive because there were victims ready to be cheated. He thrived because the system went to sleep. How did Khan manage to keep his nefarious enterprise away from the eyes of the government? For me, that is the miracle. When he stands in the dock, corrupt police officers and bureaucrats must also bear the cross.
