Category Archives: Lebanon

Help Out Lebanese Band “Adonis” in Pepsi’s Band Slam

Lebanese band Adonis is participating in a competition held by Pepsi that’s bringing together bands from the region and getting them to compete in order to become the band that would open up Pepsi Night, which will conclude the Dubai Music festival.

Adonis are late for the competition – they’ve already missed one day out of the 4-day competition, because, as I’m sure you have guessed by now, they faced visa issues in traveling to the UAE.

Adonis Lebanese band Pepsi Band Slam

 

In order to vote, go to the following website (link), click on Rate The Band and vote for Adonis.

Let’s Talk About How Nabil Habib & Kalam Ennas Blew A Cancer “Cure”

I am furious.

There’s nothing I’d love more than to have my field discussed openly among people. There’s nothing more I’d love than to make people more aware about cancer, about the different treatment modalities. I’d even teach people all the pharmacology I know about cancer drugs if I were able to.

I approached the latest – currently airing – Kalam Ennas episode with caution. I had a faint clue who Nabil Habib was. They were discussing one of the most funded, most controversial, most challenging aspects of medicine lately. I figured I’d tune in.

Yes, I’m furious.

I’m not a chemist nor do I aim to be. But when it comes to protocol – when it comes to every single facet of what makes medicine works, what makes this branch of our lives that has cured so many people all around the world functional, he has blown to bits. And he’s condescending about it.

I have no idea who figured it was a scientifically sound idea to get a chemist who has a proposal for a cancer drug on air to discuss his work, have almost no opposite scientific opinion to what he was saying save for the few questions the show’s host got spoon-fed moments before going on air. But do you want to know what’s the great idea? It’s quoting the bible left and right for some scientific credibility.

First, an accomplished scientist wouldn’t need to go on media to discuss his work in order to convince people about it. Regular viewers are not those who need to be convinced about any scientist’s work – other scientists need to be. Getting a one-sided opinion on a talk-show is not having a scientific discussion. Getting people who have been “cured” by your methods is not science. You know what’s science? It’s having data that supports what you’re presenting without any shred of doubt. And then people will follow.

Second, the thing about scientific data is that there are ways for it to be amassed. And those rules exist for a reason: because science takes time, because such “cures” have to be so thorough as not to give people false hope, because arguments such as “this disease is ripping our societies” are not valid scientifically. Each step of the development of the drug from the lab to the clinic has to be monitored and submitted to the FDA. Nabil Habib has not done that. These are the steps to be followed for a drug development (link – you need to create an account to read it). Nabil Habib has blown these steps to pieces. But fear not, he has patented it – never mind that he used it on people as a “secret recipe” prior to the patent process.

Drug development

Third, the drug development procedure is a process that costs at least half a billion dollars. I’m sure Dr. Habib doesn’t have such means under his disposal. If his drug had been as wondrous as he’s making it out to be, then he would have definitely sold it to a major pharmacological company by now. He would have been a billionaire already and the drug would have been much further along development. And he’d have had the chance to cure much people than the 600 he claims he’s currently treating, an odd claim since I didn’t know chemists usually have patients who are people that suffer from a disease where any glimpse of hope is enough to get them going.

Such a TV show is not the platform to host a scientific discussion. I have no idea if the molecule in question is as beautiful as it has been portrayed to be simply because there has been no opposite opinion to its merits. I have no idea if the claim that this molecule has no side effects is valid: a molecule that can affect so many different types of cancers, affect different types of tissues cannot not have absolutely no side effects worth mentioning. I have no idea if what this man is claiming, even when it pertains to all the different kinds of cancers, is correct or not. But fear not, I have no right to know whether what he’s saying is a fact or not.

Such a TV show, aiming to capitalize on the interest of people, doesn’t get to screw over physicians who either refused or are not allowed to be hosted on it just because it’s what gets viewers. Dr. Georges Chahine will face hell tomorrow because the segment he gave prior to the Lebanese syndicate of physicians issued its decision on the episode was not amended to reflect that decision. The excuse? “It’s not our property anymore.” Excuse me? Whose property is it?

Such a TV show doesn’t serve to educate people. It doesn’t serve to expose a facet of Lebanese society that’s troubling us all. It doesn’t even better things for any of us. What it does is serve as a marketing ploy, nothing more and nothing less, to this chemist and his molecule while ridiculing every single physician who has taken more than a decade of his life to know how to do his job and get guests to tell everyone that those physicians are nothing but ignorants trying to ride people’s backs.

Lebanese TV doesn’t discuss science. Lebanese TV only deals with trash. There are Lebanese scientists who are working tirelessly on ways to deal with cancer (link). But we get this instead. My mother, a current cancer patient, felt this show ridiculed her struggles with her disease. But let’s just keep on making shortcuts, bypassing regulations and proclaiming persecution in order to emerge as messiahs. We’re Lebanese and we just roll like that. There are absolutely no standards whatsoever that can faze us.

 

Annahar’s 80 Years Anniversary “Little Leaders” Ad… Stolen?

I loved the recent ad by Annahar for their 80th anniversary, featuring different Lebanese politicians during their early days – with slight jabs at how they turned out today – then ending it with one of the most spot-on taglines I’ve recently seen: We were writing history when they were just children.

The ad, however, it turns out is not as original as I had hoped it would be. I was recently sent the following UN ad for refugees, dating back to 2009, featuring a very similar theme that is centered around important characters as children:

Advertising is definitely not within my scope. But is it really difficult not to get this loosely “inspired” from other people’s material? Have ideas become this scarce? Or do those running such ads believe their original source would never be uncovered?

Either way, despite the Annahar ad being extremely effective, I – for one – am disappointed it didn’t turn out to be the stroke of genius I thought it was.

Lack of Money Can Cost One Year Old Elie Sadaqa His Life

One year old Elie Sadaqa is suffering from a form of vasculitis – inflammation that affects blood vessels – and his parents, like so many others in Lebanon, cannot afford the medical measures required to save their son’s life.

I don’t have more information on the child’s diagnosis to explain it. LBC had listed it as temporal arteritis – a condition that affects one of the arteries reaching the head – but I notified them that such a diagnosis is unlikely given its age of onset is usually above 50. But exceptions in medicine do exist. They have since changed their wording on their news link.

According to the child’s father, the lack of a medical code for the procedures required to help Elie – a pure bureaucratic measure – means the ministry of public health in the country won’t cover it. I guess they need any excuse not to pay the approximated $150,000 for treatment. Or it could be that Elie Sadaqa simply doesn’t have the required wasta to save his life. Welcome to Lebanon, where your life is contingent upon your connections.

Elie Sadaqa is not a lone case in the country. Lebanon has next to no primary care. Our hospitals are in competition amongst each other and many of them are, as such, so specialized they are borderline unaffordable to people who don’t have insurance, aren’t super rich, or – like Elie’s case – do not belong to the inner circles of the minister of health.

What will happen to Elie Sadaqa? I can tell you that it’ll take some doctor with very, very good intentions to help. It’ll take a hospital who puts aside the business aspect of medicine for a moment. It’ll take a lot of people who are willing to pitch in with whatever means they can afford. The question, though, is what happens to the other Elie Sadaqas whose stories don’t make it to national TV amidst the situation of medicine in Lebanon today?

LBC hasn’t listed a way to help the family so if anyone knows how, let me know. And for those who are interested, I intend to write an article soon detailing why medicine in Lebanon is the way it is. Until then, hopefully Elie Sadaqa finds the ways to grow up, go to school and give joy to his family and friends.

112 Foreigners Get Lebanese Citizenship. Children of Lebanese Mothers? Nope

There are a lot of injustices that take place in Lebanon daily. For the past few days, it has been the horrid traffic that has overtaken the Lebanese highway due to some serious incompetence – is that a shock? But I daresay a bigger injustice has taken place recently, one that reflects the serious inequality that half of our population goes through daily.

112 people  were granted the Lebanese citizenship yesterday via a presidential decree. Many of those 112 people are from Lebanese origin and as such should get the Lebanese citizenship. Others, however, are most probably not as is the case of Mary Fontinato, an Italian.

I have no idea what criteria are employed to grant citizenship to foreigners in Lebanon as I don’t believe there’s a clear path to citizenship here. To be honest, up until yesterday I didn’t know anyone wanted it.

Mary Fontinato, incidentally not the only woman granted the citizenship yesterday, is an odd case indeed because her children – if any – will never be able to have the honor of being Lebanese bestowed upon them like her. Such a bummer, yes I know.

The list of people who were granted Lebanese citizenship also contains many Jordanians. Those of you who have now gotten worried about the country’s fabric, fear not: the sectarian composition of the list is well preserved. For every “Muslim” addition to our country, you’ll find an Italian priest or a French “Francois.” Lebanon is anything but atypical in that regards.

The list of 112 “foreigners” who were granted citizenship does not contain the children of Samira Sweidan, a Lebanese mother who tried for years to get her government to acknowledge the existence of her children. A judge, who ruled in her favor, soon had his ruling overruled by a governmental decree for it being unconstitutional.

Samira Sweidan is one in a sea of Lebanese mothers who cannot pass on their citizenship just because a solution around the Palestinian dilemma has yet to be found. My cousin, an American, recently got married to another American. Her children will never be Lebanese. My other cousin will soon be married to another American – and her children will only know of their mother’s homeland only by name and the occasional visits, if any.

I’d like to think that our president felt a tinge of regret as he signed that decree into effect. I’d like to think our prime minister thought about all the Lebanese women who have been fighting for years to get to where those 112 people got. I guess I’m being too sentimental. Why would anyone who’s American, Australian, Italian, Austrian or any other decent nationality want the Lebanese one is beyond me.

Check out the list of those 112 people here (Arabic link).