Indian woman fights for 'rape' baby

By Tinku Ray BBC News, Chandigarh

The care home where Lakshmi was allegedly raped

The story of a pregnant teenager has been making the headlines in India.

Lakshmi (not her real name) is 19 years old, but her mental age is said to be only around eight.

She became pregnant after allegedly being raped in a government-run care home, and the state authorities petitioned the local courts to allow them to carry out an abortion.

Their contention was that she wouldn't survive the trauma of childbirth, and that she wouldn't be able to take care of a baby.

That court ruled that an abortion should go ahead.

But then came the twist - her lawyers and several disability rights groups appealed to the Supreme Court. It overruled the original judgement - allowing her to have the baby she said she wanted to keep.

'Clothes for the baby'

Today, Lakshmi lives in a different government-run home in Chandigarh.

At first glance, she seems like a shy girl with a lovely smile whose answers are monosyllabic and barely audible.

Lakshmi had told the high court in Chandigarh that she wanted to keep the baby.

When I asked her if this was so, her answer was the same: "Yes."

So I asked her if she had ever looked after a baby before.

Lakshmi's lawyer, Tanu Bedi, says no one else can decide on her behalf

"Yes," she replied again.

One of the women in the Nari Niketan, the care home where she was allegedly raped, had a baby and Lakshmi said she fed him milk with a spoon and cleaned him up when needed.

Lakshmi was found two years ago wandering the streets of Chandigarh and placed in Nari Niketan.

She was allegedly raped earlier this year and a guard of the care home has been arrested and is awaiting trial.

I asked her nurse if Lakshmi ever talked about what had happened to her.

"At first she was ashamed. When no one knew about it, she didn't talk about it. But now everyone knows and she talks non-stop about her baby.

"And when anyone comes to visit her, she asks them to bring new clothes for the baby. She wants a swing as well."

However, medical professionals who examined Lakshmi said she could not look after a baby. Psychologists say she suffers from "mild mental retardation" and has a low IQ.

Moral questions

"After consultations we thought that since she's mentally challenged, an orphan and has been raped in a government institution... it would be in her interest to have the termination," says Prof Raj Bahadur, director of the Government Medical College in Chandigarh and the man in charge of the shelter where Lakshmi lives.

But Lakshmi's lawyer, Tanu Bedi, disagrees.

"Can we say just because she has a low IQ, anybody can decide for her and against her specific wish to have an abortion, which has the medical complications and problems for all times to come for her health? In my view it would have been a judicial rape."

Mr Gupta questions whether the case should be before the courts

The Supreme Court agreed with Ms Bedi. In its ruling, the court said: "Nature will take care of the orphan mother and child."

There was plenty of outrage at the Supreme Court's decision.

Many questioned whether the law courts were the place to decide such moral and ethical cases.

Lawyer Anupam Gupta fought the case on behalf of the state government. He says even the local judge raised the issue when the case came before him.

"On the very first day when the matter came up before the chief justice, he appeared reluctant to interfere. This is your baby - he wasn't referring to the foetus of course - but in a more metaphorical sense. He said this problem is of your making, don't come to the high court."

But, Mr Gupta says, "because Lakshmi had been allegedly raped while in the state's custody, the authorities had no choice. They had failed to protect her and so approached the court to make a decision on what to do."

'Arbitrary'

The National Trust for the Welfare of persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Mental Disabilities - a government organisation - has offered to take care of Lakshmi and her baby.

It has offered to put her in an independent home, either in the southern city of Bangalore or closer to Chandigarh.

"There she will be able to blossom and develop her life skills," says Poonam Natarajan, who heads the trust.

"The IQ score is very arbitrary in our country. The whole world is only talking about her as eight years old. But she's 19 years old, so her life experience is very different.

"Everyone has the capacity of evolve, the capacity to grow if in the right environment. But somehow in the minds of people when it comes to mental retardation, it's static.

"That is a medical concept that we have to challenge."

A decision on when and where Lakshmi will be sent is to be taken soon.

At the shelter, Lakshmi is looking forward to being a mother - her baby is due in December.

"I want a baby girl," she tells me shyly. And as I prepare to leave, she says: "Please visit me again."

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Gaza sewage 'a threat to Israel'

The UN's Maxwell Gaylard made his appeal by one of Gaza's sewage lakes

The UN and international aid agencies say Israel must relax its blockade of the Gaza Strip to allow urgent repairs to the water and sewage systems.

In a joint appeal, the bodies say the hazards to health and the environment threaten not only Gaza but Israel too.

More than 13m gallons (50m litres) of raw or partially treated sewage flows into the sea every day from Gaza because of a lack of treatment plants.

The cross-border aquifer is low and raw sewage floats back to Gaza and Israel.

Deadly flash flood

The UN says about 10,000 Gazans have no access to a water network - while about 60% of the 1.4m population receive water only intermittently.

Water consumption in the Strip is less than a third of that of Israelis living just a few kilometres away.

Israel, and Egypt on its south-western side, have kept Gaza largely sealed since a violent takeover of the territory by the Islamic militant Hamas group in 2007.

Israel says it is trying to weaken Hamas, end its rocket attacks against Israeli towns and get back an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was captured and taken to Gaza in 2006.

"The deterioration and breakdown of water and sanitation facilities in Gaza is compounding an already severe and protracted denial of human dignity in the Gaza Strip," said UN humanitarian co-ordinator in the Palestinian territories, Maxwell Gaylard.

Mr Gaylard and other humanitarian workers and officials launched the appeal with a news conference near one of northern Gaza's sewage lagoons to highlight the problem.

In 2007, one of the lagoons overflowed and five people were killed by a flash flood of sewage.

Aid agencies said Israel's bombardment in December and January worsened an already bad situation.

Israeli officials had no immediate comment to the appeal on Thursday.

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Antibodies 'may aid HIV jab hunt'

Developing an HIV vaccine has proved difficult

Two powerful new antibodies to HIV have been found which could aid development of a vaccine, researchers say.

Researchers, led by the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), say the discovery reveals a potential new Achilles heel in the virus's defences.

The antibodies are the first of their type to be identified in more than a decade, and the first to be isolated from donors in developing countries.

Details of the breakthrough feature in the journal Science.

The researchers hope it could lead to more similar antibodies being found, which in turn could aid the hunt for an effective HIV vaccine.

Identifying antibodies that act against a broad range of HIV types will be critical for the development of an effective vaccine Keith Alcorn NAM

Wayne Koff, of the IAVI, said: "The findings themselves are an exciting advance toward the goal of an effective Aids vaccine because now we've got a new, potentially better target on HIV to focus our efforts for vaccine design.

"And having identified this one, we're set up to find more, which should further accelerate global efforts in Aids vaccine development."

The new antibodies - broadly neutralising antibodies - are produced by a minority of people with HIV.

They are distinct from other antibodies to HIV because they neutralise a high percentage of the many types of HIV in circulation worldwide.

It is widely believed that to prevent HIV infection a vaccine would need to teach the body to produce these powerful antibodies before exposure to the virus.

Animal experiments suggest that conceptually such a vaccine would work.

Before this finding only four antibodies to HIV had been discovered that were widely agreed to be broadly neutralising.

However, all four worked by binding to a place on HIV that has proven difficult for vaccine-makers to exploit.

Accessible target

The latest duo are potentially much more useful because they bind to the virus at sites which scientists believe are more accessible.

In theory that should make it easier to produce a vaccine which could stimulate the body to start producing these key antibodies.

And because the antibodies are very powerful they would not have to be produced in very large quantities to confer protection.

The two new antibodies target one of the proteins that form a spike used by HIV to infect cells.

These proteins are highly-variable and thus difficult for the immune system to attack.

But the new antibodies target an area of one protein that does not change.

Keith Alcorn, of the HIV information service NAM, said: "Identifying antibodies that act against a broad range of HIV types will be critical for the development of an effective vaccine.

"We need to remember that this is an early stage of research.

"HIV vaccine research will be a long-term effort and we certainly shouldn't expect these findings to lead to a vaccine in a few years.

"A lot more work on antibodies and vaccine design is going to be needed to come up with vaccines that can be put into clinical trials."

The IAVI team joined forces with the Scripps Research Institute, and the biotechnology companies Theraclone Sciences and Monogram Biosciences on the project.

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India Moon mission is 'mixed success'

The mission's objective was to map the resources of the Moon

India has abandoned its inaugural Moon mission, 10 months after it was launched. Science writer Pallava Bagla examines the mission's performance.

So was India's inaugural Moon mission a success or a failure?

Neither. By all accounts, it has been a mixed performance. Also, a definitive answer is not easy to give - it is possibly as grey as the surface of the Moon.

This was an expensive scientific experiment with many objectives and conducted in full public glare. Most engineering goals have been fulfilled, but pious promises to deliver "good science" from the mission are still to be met.

Big achievement

India launched its $100m unmanned space craft on 22 October 2008 from Sriharikota on the coast of the Bay of Bengal.

First, the spacecraft designed and built by the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) survived huge odds and successfully reached the Moon's orbit.

This in itself was a big achievement since neither Russia or America succeeded in their maiden attempts; and there were several failures even before they got anywhere near the Moon.

So did India ride on the shoulders of earlier successes?

Certainly not, since the know-how and technologies to go to the Moon are just not available for the asking. Each nation has to learn on its own. India experimented and did that with complete success.

The only other country to have managed a similar maiden feat was China - its mission Chang'e-1 in 2007 lasted 16 months in space, according to the Chinese National Space Administration.

The Indian mission survived for about 10 months in space; most other missions to the Moon have been much more short-lived.

So did the Indian space agency, in its naivety, over-stretch and over-estimate the craft's life when it planned for a 24-month mission?

The mission lasted 10 months in space

Possibly. The answer may emerge in the findings of the "failure analysis committee" that Isro has put in place after this debacle.

Despite being dubbed by Isro as an "engineering success", the mission had a rough ride around the Moon.

A fuel leak from the rocket almost aborted its lift-off. Within days of reaching the Moon a power system failed, and a back-up system had to be activated.

Soon, the spacecraft started overheating due to the intense summer heat on the Moon. Isro scientists say it was deft mission management that saved it from a total burnout.

A few months into the mission the spacecraft lost its fine guidance system when the onboard "star sensor" packed up in the intense radiation around the Moon.

But, every time an instrument on this 1380kg robot gave way, mission controllers at Isro found an innovative solution to keep the mission alive.

Finally on 29 August 2009, the space agency lost all contact with Chandrayaan after a catastrophic failure - possibly in its power supply system. A day later the mission was "terminated", although Isro chief G Madhavan Nair declared it had been a "complete success".

'Two-in-one mission'

The Indian mission was in certain respects much more challenging than the Chinese maiden lunar mission which was a simple national orbiter.

Chandrayaan-1 was literally a two-in-one mission, since the main satellite was to orbit at 100km above the Moon and then a tiny gadget the size of a computer monitor was to attempt a landing on the Moon surface.

The mission did this on 14 November 2008. No nation to date had succeeded in both a lunar orbiter and an impactor at the first attempt.

Mr Nair says the mission is a 'complete success' (Photo: Pallava Bagla)

This was more than an experiment. It was also a brave global geo-political statement since the probe that crash landed on the Moon also permanently placed India's flag on the Moon.

Having done this, India became the fourth nation to have done this after Russia, America and the European Space Agency.

This is hugely significant because, if ever the Moon's resources are to be divided, India's rightful share can be claimed having achieved what others have not been able to do.

There are many other firsts to this mission.

In a highly un-Indian trait, the Indian space agency delivered the Moon mission with no cost or time overrun at $100m and within eight years of it first being suggested.

The spacecraft carried 11 different sophisticated instruments, one of the largest suites of experiments ever carried to the Moon.

The objective was to remotely map the resources of the Moon, prepare a three-dimensional atlas of it and look for water.

All instruments worked for about 10 months in the hostile lunar environment. Dr Nair calls it a "more than 100% success of Indian technology".

India also created a new model of international partnership.

On its own initiative India announced that it would be happy to piggyback instruments from global partners.

After a huge competition six instruments sourced from the European Space Agency (Esa), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) and Bulgaria were chosen.

Chandrayaan peered into the deepest craters searching for water

Bernard Foing, the chief scientist for Space Sciences at Esa calls the Indian mission "the first multi-continent, multi-country lunar mission ever to be undertaken".

A little known fact is that India did not charge any money to fly these instruments 400,000km away: all got a free ride to the Moon, merely in exchange for sharing the scientific data.

Search for water

Chandrayaan-1 was also the first and the most detailed search for water on the Moon - to date water has never been found.

A miniature American radar onboard the Chandrayaan peered into the Moon's deepest craters searching for "water ice".

The Moon's surface is so parched that scientists feel the only location where water could exist would be in the permanently shadowed craters on the lunar poles.

But these are so deep and dark that sunlight never reaches them - hence the only way to peep inside is to send a radar signal down into them.

The global collaborative team of the mission is very excited about the findings.

"Never seen before images of the permanently shadowed craters Moon have been captured," says Paul D Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, USA and principal investigator of the payload sent to search for water.

"The new radar images are not only visually arresting, but they will be extremely useful in unravelling the complex geological history of the Moon as a whole," he says.

Other scientific reports on findings are in the offing. But unless the results are published, questions will continue to be asked about whether the mission fulfilled its exalted scientific objectives.

The termination of the Moon mission will, however, not affect India's plans in space.

The country is already planning a second mission to the Moon, Chandrayaan-2, with Russian collaboration in 2011-12; a mission to an asteroid; an unmanned mission to Mars in 2013 and a human space flight in 2015.

Upbeat Isro scientists are saying "Chandrayaan-1 is dead, long live Chandrayaan". The jury will be out - until the scientific papers come in.

Pallava Bagla is the Science editor for New Delhi Television (NDTV) and author of the book Destination Moon - India's quest for Moon, Mars and Beyond.

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