Indira Nath, Talked to Nature Medicine About the Changes She Has Seen in Her Work Environment During Her Long Career
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
NEWS India’s leading female scientist, Indira Nath, talked to Nature Medicine about the changes she has seen in her work environment during her long career. In what might seem surprising for a developing country, she reveals that India’s biomedical research community is both respected by government and also respects its female members. Indira Nath It was 45° Celsius in New Delhi the day I what he could do for them during his largest country for leprosy,” says Nath. talked with Indira Nath by telephone. Too tenure. “We told him about the amount of Nevertheless, she is encouraged that in hot to work. Nearly too hot to think. permission needed for customs clearance her lifetime at least the clinical picture of Unbearable temperatures were the least of and he fixed that within less than a year.” the disease has changed. Earlier detection the problems that Nath faced when she re- Applying for foreign research money and better treatment means that the awful turned to her native India to pursue a ca- was, and still is, even harder. “Grant appli- disfigurements that were commonplace reer in research in the early 1970s. Meager cations had first to be sent for local scien- are now rare. resources—both material and financial— tific peer review and receive government By the mid-1980s, Nath wanted to intro- and incalculable layers of bureaucracy clearance by political and economic bodies duce more of a molecular slant to her work, plagued scientific investigation. But two et cetera. It used to take years. By the time it a desire that luckily coincided with the things that Nath had in abundance were reached the international government’s drive to in- leprosy patients and the determination to agencies it might not even be crease its biotechnology ca- make a homespun contribution to leprosy relevant.” pabilities. “They decided to research on an international level. And there was one further increase biotech manpower As a young medical student, Nath, like drawback to leprosy research. by setting up a new acade- many of her peers, wanted exposure to the By the 1980s, the World mic institution. The job practice of medicine abroad. But unlike her Health Organization (WHO) was offered to me on a plat- colleagues, she did not want to be part of was beginning to announce ter,” she says. And in 1986, the brain drain. So she and her husband set that leprosy could be eradi- she became the first Head themselves a rule to return to India after cated. The effect was a drop of the Department of three years absence. “Those who went for in the availability of research Biotechnology at AIIMS. longer found it more difficult to return, funding and the subsequent One project currently run- they couldn’t readjust to India,” she re- transfer of many leprosy re- Fighting the brain drain ning in her laboratory is members. “Still, it was quite an exciting searchers to other diseases. “I the infection of time to come back because you felt you am upset that international research was macrophages with Mycobacterium leprae to could really play a role in building up re- reduced just as we were getting some- examine gene activation. © http://medicine.nature.com Group 2002 Nature Publishing search.” In the 1970s, after working as a where. We knew we couldn’t eradicate lep- Being a woman, it seems, is not a draw- House Officer in various UK hospitals, she rosy because its incubation is so long and back within the Indian research commu- returned to the All India Institute of we don’t know enough about its transmis- nity. The former Director of AIIMS was Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi. sion,” says Nath. At the time, investigators female. “Although women in rural areas Dissatisfied with pathology, Nath be- in southern India had monitored a leper are still oppressed, once you reach a certain came interested in the immunology of lep- colony and found that the numbers of new social level, there’s no problem. We don’t rosy after a yearlong Nuffield Fellowship cases never dropped, despite intervention have a difference in salaries, we don’t have spent at London’s National Institute of and treatment with dapsone. any gender-related problems.” In fact, it Medical Research. Immunology was in its “Eradication is a strong word,” says seems that being a woman scientist is more infancy—it was the time of T- and B-cell Nath, “But this kind of word was required of an issue elsewhere, evidenced by the fact discovery. to push governments into action. Now that Nath was one of five women chosen Then, as now, India had the largest WHO has changed the terminology to to receive the UNESCO/L’Oreal award this number of leprosy patients in the world— ‘elimination’ and they’re ready to accept a March to honor women scientists on 4.5 million people showed signs of disease. prevalence of 1:10,000.” India currently International Women’s Day. Yet the reagents for studying the immunol- has a population prevalence rate of 5.7 per Next year, Nath finishes her five-year as- ogy of human leprosy were limited as stud- 10,000. signment as a professor with the Indian ies had hitherto been based largely on On the positive side, the WHO intro- National Science Academy, which has mouse models. To add insult to injury, ob- duced multidrug therapy (MDT) for lep- been funding her work. Over the years she taining these materials was extremely diffi- rosy (rifampicine, clofazimine and has been drawn into serving on several cult for Nath. “Customs clearance was dapsone). Prime Minister Indira Gandhi set committees, and this experience has given impossible for reagents. You had to have eradication as her goal and the necessary her a sense of two areas that need atten- approval from two ministries: one to cer- infrastructure fell into place. But although tion—the drop in the number of physi- tify that what you were buying wasn’t India was the first country to accept MDT cians entering scientific research and the manufactured in India—that could take a at the government level, there is no end in need to entice women to return to medical few months—then another to give final sight. “We’ve had 17 years with MDT, plus science after childbirth. Thus, her project clearance.” substantial non-governmental organiza- for the coming years will be to stem the The situation has since improved. When tion support and in spite of this our inci- country’s internal brain drain as she once Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister, he dence of leprosy remains the same. The did her bit for its external losses. gathered together 100 scientists to ask same thing is happening in Brazil, the next Karen Birmingham, London NATURE MEDICINE • VOLUME 8 • NUMBER 6 • JUNE 2002 545.