Devi Shetty targets medical tourism in Cayman Isles

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands: A renowned Indian heart surgeon has struck a deal to build a 2,000-bed healthcare city in the Cayman Islands to target American patients and insurers searching for deeply discounted medical care.

The British Caribbean territory agreed to the deal with Dr. Devi Shetty , a low-cost healthcare pioneer renowned as Mother Teresa's heart surgeon. The Caymans fulfilled its part of the bargain last week by passing legislation that caps medical negligence claims at U.S.$600,000.

The tiny, affluent territory west of Jamaica has 55,000 residents and is under pressure from Britain to diversify its economy and move away from its tax haven image.

The healthcare city will cost about $2 billion and encompass a hospital, medical university and assisted-living facility and target American patients and insurance providers seeking deep cost reductions.

Construction is set to begin this year on the initial $100 million phase, with a 200 to 300-bed facility expected to be complete in about 18 months.

The project has attracted significant interest. Templeton emerging markets expert Mark Mobius, who oversees some $50 billion in assets, recently said the project could be very attractive to outside investors.

Shetty would not discuss specific investors, although JP Morgan Chase & Co, American International Group Inc and the chairwoman of Biocon Ltd , a large Indian biotechnology firm, already own more than 25 percent of the Shetty family's Bangalore-based hospital group, Narayana Hrudayalaya Private Ltd.

Its 1,000-bed flagship hospital performs more than twice as many cardiac bypass surgeries and pediatric surgeries in a year than similarly sized U.S. hospitals.

Citing his high-volume, low-cost hospitals in India as his model, Shetty estimates the Cayman facility will draw 50 percent of its patients from the United States.

U.S. insurers and employers are under pressure to reduce costs for high-tech procedures for heart, cancer, orthopedics, nuclear medicine and organ transplants, Shetty said.

"It will be much easier for insurance companies to buy an air ticket and ask them to go to the Cayman Islands and get a heart bypass done and have a two-week beach holiday and come back at perhaps less than 50 percent of the cost," he said.

The Cayman Islands are politically stable, English-speaking and close to Miami, which makes the modern large-scale facility an attractive medical tourist destination for Americans, Shetty said.

The Caymans' incentive package for the new hospital includes duty waivers on $800 million of medical equipment, recognition of Indian medical credentials and a discount of up to 30 percent on work permit fees for the influx of foreign workers expected to staff the hospital.

The average cost for a heart bypass is $144,000 in the United States, five times higher than neighboring Mexico at $27,000. Costa Rica charges $25,000 and Colombia $14,800 for the same procedure, the Medical Tourist Association said.

Even with the higher cost of doing business in the Cayman Islands, Shetty estimates a heart bypass will cost less than $10,000.

Medical tourism is still considered a niche market. But an estimated 1.3 million Americans will seek medical care outside of the United States in 2011 with 35 percent annual growth, according to a Deloitte report.

President Barack Obama's year-old healthcare overhaul faces significant challenges in court. But as it is implemented, millions of Americans will be brought into the insurance market in 2014, escalating costs well into the double digits, said industry expert Irving Stackpole.

"That will push medical tourism across the chasm from being a sector filled with early adopters to a mainstream solution for healthcare consumers," Stackpole said.

As Americans travel abroad for medical care, competition will increase in Latin America and the Caribbean to get a piece of the lucrative market, said Dr. Steve Tomlinson, head of the private Chrissie Tomlinson Memorial hospital in the Caymans.

Last month, a 4-year-old Cayman girl was flown to Shetty's hospital in Bangalore for successful surgery to repair two holes in her heart. Surgeons in Jamaica said the operation was too complex and the child's medical insurance was insufficient to cover the $800,000 cost of the surgery the United States.

"We could do it virtually free. It is all because of volume," Shetty said.

What is a Golf Ball Worth?

The ball was in the pond on Hole 16 at Oak Crest Golf Club in Norway, Michigan. It was a brand new Titlelist with the Verso logo on it and he didn't want to loose it or take the two stroke penalty as he was already behind in points!!!


NEVER PUT YOUR ARM IN THE WATER TO RETRIEVE A GOLF BALL!!!!!!!!!!!

Do Dogs go to Heaven?

Do Dogs go to Heaven? Hysterical! Absolutely unreal that this actually happened! These two churches face each other across a busy street

World's most expensive dog: Tibetan Mastiff sold for $1.5 million

A male Tibetan Mastiff puppy has created a stir in the dog breeding world and gained the title of the world's most expensive dog after being sold in China for a record 10 million yuan ($1.5 million).
The 11-month-old Tibetan Mastiff male puppy named 'Big Splash' and 'Hong Dong' is red in color, a rarity in the breed. He was purchased by a Chinese coal baron who will reportedly use him for breeding, earning as much as $100,000 yuan in stud fees for each female bred to the pricey pooch.
Big Splash took the coveted title of most expensive dog from another Tibetan Mastiff pup that was sold last year for $600,000, as reported by Digital Journal.
"The Tibetan Mastiff, also known as Do-khyi , meaning 'home guard' has been used for centuries to guard herds of domesticated farm animals, villages, monasteries, palaces and private homes," according to Wikipedia. The males can grow to heights of 31 inches tall and can weigh as much as 275lbs.
The dog is considered a primitive breed with a temperament that can vary from one dog to another. They are considered to be both 'noble and impressive animals', said the AKC.
"According to legend, both Genghis Khan and Buddha had them, and they are known to be great guard dogs. They are rarely found outside Tibet and China, making them an especially exclusive breed. In China, they are considered a state protected animal, and there are reportedly just 15,000 in the country, most belonging to the wealthy," reports Yahoo's The Week.

Butt Power

Butt Power by drallah

'Three-parent' mitochondrial IVF technique to be assessed

Scientists have been invited to advise whether the new "three-parent IVF" procedure should be approved to help couples affected by devastating conditions.
An expert panel from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) will consider its safety and effectiveness before reporting to Health Secretary, UK Andrew Lansley.
The technique could help couples have healthy children even if they are affected by mitochondrial diseases.
At present, babies born with one of the rare diseases can suffer fatal liver, heart and neurological disorders.
Mitochondria are located in every human cell and act as "power houses" to provide the energy for cells to function.
Mitochondrial DNA is not present in the nucleus of a fertilised egg, meaning scientists could extract the nucleus and place it into another egg from a donor.
The resulting embryo would have almost 100 per cent inherited genetic material from its mother and father.
Alison Murdoch, head of the department of reproductive medicine at Newcastle University, which has developed the technique, said: "We are not ready to do this in patients now but the science is progressing very rapidly and we need to get Parliament to discuss this again now.
"We anticipate that the process of review could take about a year so we are asking for this process to start now.
"Of course there is no guarantee that we will have all the evidence we need to secure a licence in a year but we need to anticipate that we may have and prepare accordingly.
"We recognise this process is necessary and will co-operate fully.
"As doctors we have a duty to treat disease and where possible to prevent disease. With diseases for which there are no treatments the imperative to develop new treatments is even greater.
"Of course no treatment is ever risk free and if there are risks we will need to quantify these so that doctors can discuss the relative risks and benefits with patients and their families."
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "We have asked the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to co-ordinate an expert group to assess the effectiveness and safety of a new technique to treat mitochondrial disease.
"This is in response to a request from researchers asking the Department of Health to make new regulations under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act to allow this treatment.
"This treatment is not currently possible under current legislation.
"We welcome scientific innovation and this group will investigate the safety of this technique reporting back to us.
"When the group reports back, and based on the evidence available, we can decide whether it is the right time to consider making these regulations."

How the inventor of the pill changed the world for women

Among certain people – Catholics, moralists, social conservatives – the urge to make Carl Djerassi regret his invention seems to be overpowering. He brought us the pill. The more you think about it, the more crucial it has been to the world as we now know it. We used to talk about it as the facilitator of promiscuity, the chemical agent behind sexual liberation. That's just the warm-up act. The rest is monumental: women taking on professional identities, waiting longer to become mothers, ageing populations, smaller families – every stamp of the household of the developed world can be traced back to this discovery. Furthermore, every new direction of the fertility industry – which, after the postponement of death, is the major focus of medical enquiry – can be attributed to this breakthrough. No one would be researching egg storage or ICSI (fertilising an egg with a single implanted sperm) or IVF if it weren't for this discovery.

"For the last 50 years, the leitmotif was contraception. The present 50 years, it's conception," says Djerassi, 88, as though it's the simplest leap in the world, which in a sense it is. Medicine follows the money – once people knew how not to conceive, the issue became how to conceive. It wasn't just ageing parity – women waiting until their mid-30s to have a child – that forced the change. The smaller, deliberated families of the developed world, post-pill, lent cultural credence to the idea of a child as a right and a necessity.

But besides the technology, it is also a conceptual leap larger than the fall of communism, larger than the advances in communication that we hold so vital. Women were hitherto enslaved by biology; and suddenly we weren't. To be in the presence of Djerassi, emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford University, is so momentous that I fancy at one point I've gone a bit deaf in one ear.

And yet precisely because the world has changed so much, hinged on one discovery, what you want to know is: has he any regrets? Knowing how much can be attributed to his work, at 26 years old, 60 years ago, is there nothing he would change? "To me, the greatest disadvantage is what it has done in the 80s, 90s, perhaps not so much recently: modern, intelligent men won't take responsibility, wouldn't even use condoms. They shrugged and said: 'All women are now on the pill, I don't need to bother.' This has become another woman's burden."

How burdensome is it, though? He wonders, would women believe a man, if he said he'd taken the pill? That's a moot point, since this hassle has now ossified into a fact of life. "Of the 20 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, not one is working on male contraception. They wouldn't touch it with a 10ft pole. The first question a man would ask is: would it affect my potency? There have been clinical trials – it has no effect on potency. The second question is erection. The third one is prostate cancer. There would be questions we would not be able to answer. Medicine is mainly geared towards geriatric concerns, Alzheimer's, cancer, anti-inflammatories, and people there are not concerned about side effects. No cancer patient has ever sued for vomiting during chemotherapy or losing their hair. But if you lost your hair because of your oral contraceptive, male or female, I can assure you that there would be lawsuits."

This is where we are (literally, not culturally): Austria-born Djerassi has a flat in London. It's beautiful: the corridors and landings could hold a diplomatic reception. The flat itself is laden with art (he is the largest private collector of Paul Klee in the world – those are at his San Francisco estate). The bookshelves are full of Frankfurt School Marxists and science giants. He is a theoretically impossible person: entirely erudite, and nevertheless still concerned about whether or not people can have sex without negative consequence.

"How many acts of sexual intercourse would you guess occur every 24 hours?" he asks. "I often do this with my students, and they say a billion. I say: 'No, no, no, you're dreaming. There are six billion people. Well, you need two for sexual intercourse, so there are only three billion. And some of them are five years old, so they're out.' So then they say a million. Well, now you're underestimating, because you're sitting here and you're not having sex. It's actually 100m, every 24 hours. And they produce about a million conceptions, about half of which are unexpected. Of the 500,000, half of them are unwanted. As a result, every 24 hours, 150,000 abortions occur; of these, over 50,000 are illegal." He doesn't labour the point; rather, leaves a moment for it to sink in, how much squalor and danger still surrounds unwanted pregnancy, even so long after its means of prevention should be universal.

Naturally, though, there are countries such as the UK and the US that have moved on, where the pressing issue is conception. He is droll on the subject of egg freezing and casts himself as a 20-year-old woman: "So, I am a young woman, I collect my eggs – I haven't the foggiest idea yet whether I want children, I have not yet met the man with whom I would like to have children, I do not know yet whether I want to be a single mother, I have not made up my mind yet but I have it in the bank. Men could do this, but men don't do this unless they have testicular cancer, because we produce sperm all the time."

Ultimately, while he admits to some slight reservation about sex selection, he is clear, in his creative writing (taken up over the past 20 years), in his lectures, in everything he does: sex and reproduction have been severed. This is the future – you freeze your material, then get yourself sterilised. It looks a little bald written down. But when you think about it, you want to stand up and cheer.

Zoe Williams,The Guardian,UK