Email to Dr Lee Wei Ling

To : Dr Lee Wei Ling
c/o Sim Hwee Peng [ hwee_peng_sim@nni.com.sg ]

Dear Dr Lee

I had a hard time trying to find your email address. I gave up eventually and decided just to send my mail to you through your staff. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that Ms Sim will automatically block things that she feels are irrelevant to your work, and protect you from unnecessary disturbances.

I read your article titled “Why compare? Work together instead” featured in the Think-Tank column of The Straits Time today. You believe that people are gloomy because Singaporeans are comparing their wealth and income today to what they had in 2008. Also, the more unfortunate sub group is resentful that there is another group that is “luckier”.

Dr Lee, because I am not a monkey but in fact, someone who believes in a Supreme Being that will one day come and judge me for all the things that I have done on earth, please allow me to share with you my perspective.

We are born who we are and we should learn to live with it. Some people are born pretty and some ugly. Some are born rich and some poor. That is okay with me, because I know if I work hard, network with people, I might be able to improve my situation.

Therefore, if I am ugly, I don’t resent those who are pretty. If I am poor, I don’t resent those who are rich. You might be rich, and I might be poor. That does not matter to me, as long as it does not matter to you. I know of some rich people who are very nice. I also know of some poor people that I would want to stay far far away from.

To some of us, it is not about the poor being unhappy with the rich. Money is all relative and transient. One can be rich today and poor tomorrow. Or poor today and rich tomorrow.

Some of us are gloomy (in fact out right p***ed ) not because of income inequality. It is because we think our government has not exercised leadership, transparency and accountability. All our politicians try to do is to remain in power. There is nothing wrong with that. They should try their best to keep their jobs, and I would do the same thing if I were them too.

The issue here is, while trying to keep their jobs, the politicians and their friends become extremely rich because their pay are linked to “performance”. And now we are asking: Who should be accountable for the economy, loss of reserves, competition of low skill jobs by cheap foreigners, etc?

That is why some of us despair for Singapore.

http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26051.2

Lee Wei Ling : Why compare? Work together instead

March 11, 2009

THINK-TANK

Why compare? Work together instead

By Lee Wei Ling

RECENTLY, when I looked out of the window of my room at the Singapore General Hospital onto the junction where Chin Swee Road and the Central Expressway cross Outram Road to join the Ayer Rajah Expressway, I saw bumper to bumper traffic between 7.30am and 8.30am.

Isn't Singapore supposed to be in a recession - indeed, the worst recession we have experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s? Yes it is, and Singaporeans are groaning.

Comment We compare our present to our past, often forgetting the bad times and remembering only the good. We also compare ourselves with our peers. If we see others suffer as we do, we resent our situation less. If a particular sub-group of the population suffers more than other sub-groups, the comparison is invariably noticed by the unfortunate sub-group. RELATED LINKS Why compare? Work together instead

Yet the wealth and income of most Singaporeans today are more rather than less than they were 10 years ago, even after accounting for inflation. So why the rather gloomy mood? The answer is that everything is relative. Singaporeans are comparing their wealth and income today to what they had in the boom years preceding 2008.

Consider a scientific experiment conducted on capuchin monkeys and reported in the journal Nature in 2003. The monkeys were trained to hand a token to a human experimenter in exchange for a cucumber. When two monkeys were able to see that each received one cucumber in exchange for one token, both felt satisfied and happily ate their cucumbers.

But when the experiment was changed so that one monkey received a grape and the other a cucumber, in full view of each other, the second monkey became upset, a grape being more desirable than a cucumber. When both were asked to hand over a token after that, the second monkey became uncooperative.

If one monkey was given a grape without giving the experimenter a token, the other monkey would become even more uncooperative and would toss either the token or the cucumber out of the test chamber. But if the first monkey was removed and a grape placed where it had been, after a while, the other monkey would gradually settle for the cucumber, seeing that no other monkey was getting a grape.

If capuchin monkeys can become dissatisfied comparing themselves to their peers, more so humans. We compare our present to our past, often forgetting the bad times and remembering only the good. We also compare ourselves with our peers.

If we see others suffer as we do, we resent our situation less. If a particular sub-group of the population suffers more than other sub-groups, the comparison is invariably noticed by the unfortunate sub-group. The perceived iniquity would rub salt into their wounds, aggravating the resentment they feel and causing jealousy towards those they perceive to be luckier than they.

A study last year reported in the journal Industrial Relations revealed that employee well-being is dependent upon how their wages compare with those of others in the comparison group, as opposed to the individual's absolute pay. Researchers Gordon Brown, Jonathan Gardner, Andrew Oswald and Jing Qian asked undergraduates to rate how satisfied they would be with the wages they might be offered for their first job after college. Subjects expressed feelings about each potential wage in the context of a set of other wages. The researchers also analysed data from 16,000 employees who reported on workplace satisfaction.

Employees did not care solely about their absolute level of pay. They were more concerned about how their incomes compared to those of the people around them in the workplace. And individuals were not influenced solely by their relative income but rather by the rank-ordered position of their wages within a comparison set.

'Our study shows how ordinal rank has a statistically significant effect upon well-being,' the authors concluded. 'Human well-being depends in a particular way upon comparisons with others.'

The lesson to be learnt by organisations like the one I lead, the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI), is that every employee must know how he has been appraised so he will know his salary, bonus, annual increments and promotions are fair. It is not enough for the system to be fair; the staff must be able to see clearly that the system is fair.

NNI has implemented peer appraisal to supplement the reporting officer's appraisal. When the two diverge, the countersigning officer must try to figure out the reason for the discrepancy and come to a fair decision about the person being appraised. I usually ask both the reporting officer and the peer the reasons for their appraisals.

But I hope everyone at NNI does not judge his or her worth by the remuneration he or she receives. We each contribute to NNI in different ways; yet we all succeed or fail as a team. In addition to the doctors, the administrators, nurses and medical technicians at NNI all play a role in enabling the institute to deliver the best neuro-medical care we can to our patients.

At the national level, it is important that sub-groups in the population that are suffering more than others in the current recession receive more help. At the same time, the entire population must feel that the Government has tried its best to look after everyone fairly. The richer members of our community should not flaunt their wealth. It would be even better if those who can afford it, donate their time and resources to help the less fortunate.

We are all in this economic downturn together, and we should strive as a nation to pull through together. That way, we will emerge from this crisis more resilient and more united than we are now. That is my hope for Singapore.

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute. Think-Tank is a weekly column rotated among eight leading figures in Singapore's research and tertiary institutions.

http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26051.1

Lee Wei Ling on global economic crisis

Lee Wei Ling on global economic crisis

In 2007, in an end-of-year message to the staff of the National Neuroscience
Institute, I wrote: 'Whilst boom time in the public sector is never as
booming as in the private sector, let us not forget that boom time is
eventually followed by slump time. Slump time in the public sector is always
less painful compared to the private sector.'

Slump time has arrived with a bang.

While I worry about the poorer Singaporeans who will be hit hard, perhaps
this recession has come at an opportune time for many of us. It will give us
an incentive to reconsider our priorities in life.

Decades of the good life have made us soft. The wealthy especially, but also
the middle class in Singapore, have had it so good for so long, what they
once considered luxuries, they now think of as necessities.

A mobile phone, for instance, is now a statement about who you are, not just
a piece of equipment for communication. Hence many people buy the latest
model though their existing mobile phones are still in perfect working
order.

A Mercedes-Benz is no longer adequate as a status symbol. For millionaires
who wish to show the world they have taste, a Ferrari or a Porsche is deemed
more appropriate. The same attitude influences the choice of attire and accessories. I still
find it hard to believe that there are people carrying handbags that cost
more than thrice the monthly income of a bus driver, and many more times
that of the foreign worker labouring in the hot sun, risking his life to
construct luxury condominiums he will never have a chance to live in.
The media encourages and amplifies this ostentatious consumption. Perhaps it
is good to encourage people to spend more because this will prevent the
recession from getting worse. I am not an economist, but wasn't that the
root cause of the current crisis - Americans spending more than they could
afford to?

I am not a particularly spiritual person. I don't believe in the
supernatural and I don't think I have a soul that will survive my death. But
as I view the crass materialism around me, I am reminded of what my mother
once told me: 'Suffering and deprivation is good for the soul.'

My family is not poor, but we have been brought up to be frugal. My parents
and I live in the same house that my paternal grandparents and their
children moved into after World War II in 1945. It is a big house by today's
standards, but it is simple - in fact, almost to the point of being shabby.
Those who see it for the first time are astonished that Minister Mentor Lee
Kuan Yew's home is so humble. But it is a comfortable house, a home we have
got used to. Though it does look shabby compared to the new mansions on our
street, we are not bothered by the comparison.

Most of the world and much of Singapore will lament the economic downturn.
We have been told to tighten our belts. There will undoubtedly be suffering,
which we must try our best to ameliorate.

But I personally think the hard times will hold a timely lesson for many
Singaporeans, especially those born after 1970 who have never lived through
difficult times.
No matter how poor you are in Singapore , the authorities and social groups
do try to ensure you have shelter and food. Nobody starves in Singapore .
Many of those who are currently living in mansions and enjoying a luxurious
lifestyle will probably still be able to do so, even if they might have to
downgrade from wines costing $20,000 a bottle to $10,000 a bottle. They
would hardly notice the difference.
Being wealthy is not a sin. It cannot be in a capitalist market economy.
Enjoying the fruits of one's own labour is one's prerogative and I have no
right to chastise those who choose to live luxuriously.
But if one is blinded by materialism, there would be no end to wanting and
hankering. After the Ferrari, what next? An Aston Martin? After the Hermes
Birkin handbag, what can one upgrade to?

Neither an Aston Martin nor an Hermes Birkin can make us truly happy or
contented. They are like dust, a fog obscuring the true meaning of life, and
can be blown away in the twinkling of an eye.
When the end approaches and we look back on our lives, will we regret the
latest mobile phone or luxury car that we did not acquire? Or would we
prefer to die at peace with ourselves, knowing that we have lived lives
filled with love, friendship and goodwill, that we have helped some of our
fellow voyagers along the way and that we have tried our best to leave this
world a slightly better place than how we found it?
We know which is the correct choice - and it is within our power to make
that choice.

In this new year, burdened as it is with the problems of the year that has
just ended, let us again try to choose wisely.
To a considerable degree, our happiness is within our own control, and we
should not follow the herd blindly.

Lee Wei Ling

http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26028.1

Rumoured 8-month Bonus for CDC Staff is 'In Line with NWC Guidelines'

Updated: 6th March 2009, 1800 hrs

Rumoured 8-month Bonus for CDC Staff is 'In Line with NWC Guidelines': People's Association

Rumours have been circulating online that two employees of Northwest Community Development Council received bonuses of 8 months last year, including the 13th month bonus. This first surfaced when a writer by the name of johnlaw2012 brought it up on the Channelnewsasia forum on the first of this month. This prompted Eugene Yeo, Chief Editor of the blog - Wayang Party Club, to write a letter to Northwest District Mayor Dr Teo Ho Pin. Mr Yeo wanted to confirm the rumour with Dr Teo. 938LIVE wasn't able to reach Dr Teo, who's overseas. Northwest CDC also declined comment, re-directing all queries instead to the People's Association or PA which manages the staff at all 5 CDCs here. In its email reply to 938 LIVE, the PA neither confirmed nor denied the rumour. It would only say that 'salaries are in line with the National Wages Council Guidelines'. This means they're performance-based and come with variable components based on economic and individual performance. This is to reward and incentivise staff fairly and responsibly. The PA adds that it is only staff at the lower-end of the salary range who will receive a higher performance bonus range. This allows such officers to move closer to the norm of other staff performing the same kind of job, but who have a higher basic monthly pay. It also helps the PA to retain outstanding performers. Overall, 'only a small proportion among top performers receive a higher bonus range'. The PA says performance bonus ranges and other salary components are reviewed regularly and go up or down in tandem with economic and market conditions. Given the current economic climate, it has cut its performance bonus pool, but the PA did not clarify by how much when asked. They say they're working within a 'smaller budget'. 938 LIVE however, understands from two previous CDC staff that the performance bonus payouts are part of what's known as the 'Loyalty Bonus Scheme'. This is paid out only to staff of a certain rank and above and payment is in two instalments. Bonus for work done in 2008 for instance, would be given out partially in 2008 and the other half in 2009. This scheme has been in place since 2005. Eligiblity criteria and salary details and bonus of staff are decided by the People's Association. As a statutory board, the PA is also free to implement a pay structure that best suits their staff, unlike ministries which come under the purview of the Public Service Division. http://938live.sg/portal/site/938Live/menuitem.43735da1634c4377d21b2910618000a0/?vgnextoid=bc14d2c8b1bdf110VgnVCM1000001f0aa8c0RCRD&mcParam=18d2638896593110VgnVCM100000e101000aRCRD

Welcome!

You are welcome here!

Online Civil Disobedience in Singapore

Online Civil Disobedience in Singapore

That there has been online civil disobedience is a fact. Vivid evidence of it has been present with the blog positing of articles and rally pictures in particular during GE 2006.

Yet during the Institute of Policy Studies forum “Getting Their Hands Dirty: Recent Developments in Singapore’s Political Blogosphere” on 4 March 2006, its researchers, in particular Ms Tan Simin, went out of the way to persuade the audience present that what we have now in Singapore is “online civic participation”. Weighing in, IPS director Ong Keng Yong intervened and spoke at length during the Q&A when discussion heated up surrounding the term online civil disobedience. He said “online civil disobedience” should be countered least it is picked up by bloggers and the media and its use by them becomes widespread.

However, choosing not to acknowledge that in the context of Singapore’s internet regulation that online civil disobedience has taken place and is perhaps even ongoing is to ignore that there is a problem with the current state of regulation governing the breath of online political expression.

The term online civil disobedience is important because to some extent because the regulation surrounding online political expression is still unclear, many sites and bloggers maybe still operating illegally.

For instance, during the initial period of Think Centre in 1999, several of its online activities were investigated and its members administered police warnings for their online political expression. The fact that there has been no wide spread current governmental persecution of new online actors does not make such acts legal or illegal.

Thus it was not surprising that among the registered attendees included representatives from the Strategic Planning and Development and Policy and Operations divisions of the Ministry of Home Affairs as well as from the Public Communications Division of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts.

The crux of the review by IPS was to understand the political blogosphere landscape and to speculate its potential to make an impact on Singapore’s politics. Hence, the emphasis was equally on anonymous sites and bloggers in particular with high hit sites such as Wayang Party Club.

But the sub text that emerged from the presentation was that there is some ambiguity over the legality of these expressions in Singapore’s political blogosphere.

What is also important is that IPS researcher Mr. Tan Tarn How clearly acknowledged that anonymous bloggers are in reality only blogging in pseudonymous because governmental agencies in Singapore have the technical capacity to find out the identity of such bloggers or already know their identity.

There were several themes in the IPS seminar that came up that are worth highlighting here which give an indication on how the researchers view Singapore’s political blogosphere:

There was an attempt to suggest that anonymously run sites’ content may not be authentic or reliable.
Even sites that were not run anonymously were admonished for not being fully “professional”.
In the IPS sample, there is a clear attempt to avoid analysing or including political sites or sites of activists.
The term “online civic participation” is actively promoted while trying to simultaneously negate terms like “activism” and “online civil disobedience’.

The IPS forum apart from providing an insight into research on the political blogosphere in Singapore also provided an insight into the research culture and choice of analytical terms promoted within such institutions and among some of its researchers.

Online civil disobedience is an important concept to mull over because in Singapore’s short internet history, it possible to make the claim that online civil disobedience is a precursor to the current offline civil disobedience which is organised with the help of online mobilization tools.

Trying to water down such terms does not help sharpen our analysis of the emerging political blogosphere and its political impact in Singapore.

http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=25430.1

Vaccines as Biological Weapons?

Originally published March 3 2009

Vaccines as Biological Weapons? Live Avian Flu Virus Placed in Baxter Vaccine Materials Sent to 18 Countries

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) There's a popular medical thriller novel in which a global pandemic is intentionally set off by an evil plot designed to reduce the human population. In the book, a nefarious drug company inserts live avian flu viruses into vaccine materials that are distributed to countries around the world to be injected into patients as "flu shots." Those patients then become carriers for these highly-virulent strains of avian flu which go on to infect the world population and cause widespread death.

There's only one problem with this story: It's not fiction. Or, at least, the part about live avian flu viruses being inserted into vaccine materials isn't fiction. It's happening right now.

Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc. has just been caught shipping live avian flu viruses mixed with vaccine material to medical distributors in 18 countries. The "mistake" (if you can call it that, see below...) was discovered by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The World Health Organization was alerted and panic spread throughout the vaccine community as health experts asked the obvious question: How could this have happened?

As published on LifeGen.de (http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/showne...), serious questions like this are being raised:

"Baxter International Inc. in Austria 'unintentionally contaminated samples with the bird flu virus that were used in laboratories in 3 neighbouring countries, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease'. Austria, Germany, Slowenia and the Czech Republic - these are the countries in which labs were hit with dangerous viruses. Not by bioterrorist commandos, but by Baxter. In other words: One of the major global pharmaceutical players seems to have lost control over a virus which is considered by many virologists to be one of the components leading some day to a new pandemic."

Or, put another way, Baxter is acting a whole lot like a biological terrorism organization these days, sending deadly viral samples around the world. If you mail an envelope full of anthrax to your Senator, you get arrested as a terrorist. So why is Baxter -- which mailed samples of a far more deadly viral strain to labs around the world -- getting away with saying, essentially, "Oops?"

But there's a bigger question in all this: How could this company have accidentally mixed LIVE avian flu viruses (both H5N1 and H3N2, the human form) in this vaccine material?

Was the viral contamination intentional?

The shocking answer is that this couldn't have been an accident. Why? Because Baxter International adheres to something called BSL3 (Biosafety Level 3) - a set of laboratory safety protocols that prevent the cross-contamination of materials.

As explained on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosaf...):

"Laboratory personnel have specific training in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents, and are supervised by competent scientists who are experienced in working with these agents. This is considered a neutral or warm zone. All procedures involving the manipulation of infectious materials are conducted within biological safety cabinets or other physical containment devices, or by personnel wearing appropriate personal protective clothing and equipment. The laboratory has special engineering and design features."

Under the BSL3 code of conduct, it is impossible for live avian flu viruses to contaminate production vaccine materials that are shipped out to vendors around the world.

This leaves only two possibilities that explain these events:

Possibility #1: Baxter isn't following BSL3 safety guidelines or is so sloppy in following them that it can make monumental mistakes that threaten the safety of the entire human race. And if that's the case, then why are we injecting our children with vaccines made from Baxter's materials?

Possibility #2: A rogue employee (or an evil plot from the top management) is present at Baxter, whereby live avian flu viruses were intentionally placed into the vaccine materials in the hope that such materials might be injected into humans and set off a global bird flu pandemic.

It just so happens that a global bird flu pandemic would sell a LOT of bird flu vaccines. Although some naive people have a hard time believing that corporations would endanger human beings to make money, this is precisely the way corporations now behave in America's ethically-challenged free-market environment. (Remember Enron? Exxon? Merck? DuPont? Monsanto? Need I go on?)

Make no mistake: Spreading bird flu is a clever way to create demand for bird flu vaccines, and we've all seen very clearly how drug companies first market the problem and then "leap to the rescue" by selling the solution. (Disease mongering of ADHD, bipolar disorder, etc.)

Why it all suddenly makes sense

Until today, I would not have personally believed such a story. I personally thought talk of bird flu vaccines being "weaponized" was just alarmist hype. But now, in light of the fact that LIVE bird flu viruses are being openly found in vaccine materials that are distributed around the world, I must admit the evidence is increasingly compelling that something extremely dangerous is afoot.

Baxter, through either its mistakes or its evil intentions, just put the safety of the entire human race at risk. Given all the laboratory protocols put in place to prevent this kind of thing, it is difficult to believe this was just a mistake.

There is some speculation, in fact, that the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed up to 50 million people worldwide (http://images.google.com/images?hl=...), was intentionally started by injecting servicemen with "experimental" flu vaccines that actually contained live, "weaponized" flu material just like the material being distributed by Baxter today.

Examine the historical record. You'll find that the 1918 flu originated with servicemen. Even more interestingly, it began in multiple cities, simultaneously! There is no single point of origin with the 1918 flu. It appears to have "spontaneously" sprung up across multiple cities all at once, including a military base in Kansas. (Kansas? Yep. So how did it get to Kansas in an era when air traffic was virtually non-existent? Vaccines, of course!)

All those cities and servicemen have one thing in common: Flu shot vaccinations given to them by the military.

If you put the pieces together on this, it's not too difficult to suspect that influenza could potentially be used as a tool of control by governments or drug companies to catalyze outrageous profit-taking or power grabbing agendas. A desperate, infected population will gladly give up anything or pay anything for the promise of being cured.

Or was it just an innocent mistake? Oops!

But for the skeptics who dismiss any such talk of conspiracy theories, let's examine the other possibility: That a global avian flu pandemic was nearly unleashed unintentionally due to the outrageous incompetence of the companies handling these viral strains.

As we just saw, this is a very real possibility. Had this live bird flu virus not been detected, it could have very easily found its way into vaccines that were injected into human beings. And this, in turn, could have unleashed a global avian flu pandemic.

If the drug companies making and handling these materials are so careless, then it seems like it's only a matter of time before something slips through the safety precautions again and gets unleashed into the wild. And that leads to essentially the same scenario: A global pandemic, widespread death, health care failures and a desperate population begging for vaccines.

So either way -- whether it's intentional or not -- you essentially get the same result.

Why a global pandemic is only a matter of time

I am on the record stating that a global pandemic is only a matter of time. The living conditions under which humans have placed themselves (crowded cities, suppressed immune systems, etc.) are ideal for the spread of infectious disease. But I never dreamed drug companies could actually be accelerating the pandemic timeline by contaminating vaccine materials with live avian flu viruses known to be highly infectious to humans. This, it seems, is a whole new cause for concern.

You can believe what you will. Maybe you agree with the nefarious plot theory and you agree that corporations are capable of great evils in their quest for profits. Or perhaps you can't accept that, so you go with the "accidental contamination" theory, in which your beliefs describe a very dangerous world where biohazard safety protocols are insufficient to protect us from all the crazy viral strains being toyed with at drug companies and government labs all across the world.

In either case, the world is not a very safe place when deadly viral strains are placed in the hands of the inept.

We are like children playing God with Mother Nature, rolling the dice in a global game of Viral Roulette where the odds are not in our favor. With companies like Baxter engaged in behaviors that are just begging to see the human race devastated by a global pandemic wipeout, it might be a good time to question the sanity of using viral strains in vaccines in the first place.

Vaccine-pushing scientists are so proud of their vaccines. They think they've conquered Mother Nature. Imagine their surprise when one day they learn they have actually killed 100 million human beings by unleashing a global pandemic.

We came close to it this week. A global pandemic may have just been averted by the thinnest of margins. Yet people go on with their lives, oblivious to what nearly happened.

What's inescapable at this point is the fact that the threat of a pandemic that looms for all of human civilization, and that drug companies may, themselves, be the source of that threat.

http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28091.1

Lee Wei Ling: Nobody knows tomorrow

Lee Wei Ling: Nobody knows tomorrow

By Lee Wei Ling, for the Sunday Times, 01 Mar 2009

The Straits Times carried last week a story about a group of Singaporeans whose rented minibus had careened off the highway and plunged down an embankment near Milford Sound in New Zealand.

Two passengers had to be airlifted to hospital. The most seriously injured was a 59-year-old woman who fractured her spine, arm and collarbone and required surgery.

Police believe that the driver was driving too fast and may also ‘have been distracted by the spectacular view’. Those injured had not worn their seat belts.

The report brought back memories of my own close brush with death on Dec 23, 1995. I was on a hiking holiday in New Zealand, having arrived in Christchurch the preceding day.

A car rental company had delivered a brand new Holden direct from the factory to my hotel on the morning of Dec 23. I drove across Arthur’s Pass to Punakaiki (Pancake Rocks) on the west coast of South Island. After walking around a scenic lookout, I drove south along the coastal road to Greymouth, where I had reserved a motel room.

On my right, a sheer drop thousands of metres below, was the azure Tasman Sea. On my left was the mountain, into the sides of which the road with hairpin bends was carved. I kept one eye on the road and the other on the sea with its pounding surf. The scenery was magnificent.

Suddenly, I noticed a road sign - ‘30km/hr’ - just before a very sharp bend in the road. I stepped on the brakes. The next moment, the car was spinning out of control.

‘Damn it, what an inconvenient place to have an accident,’ I thought as I pictured in my mind’s eye the car on the ocean bed, divers trying to cut open the car door, people leafing through my wet passport, and the Singapore High Commission in Wellington telephoning my parents in Singapore.

The car crashed into the mountainside with such tremendous force it turned 180 degrees. The front of the car faced the road, while the rear end was ramped up the mountainside as it slid into the ditch beside the road. If I had not had my seat belt on, I would have been flung against the windscreen. Instead, to my astonishment, I was totally unharmed.

My next problem was to get the car out of the ditch. I walked down to a village a few kilometres from the site of the accident and went into a house that had its door wide open. A man appeared in response to my loud ‘Hello, hello’.

After hearing my story, he fetched a thick rope, drove his car to the site of the bashed-up Holden, tied his car to it and managed to tow it out of the ditch. He then test-drove the Holden. He told me that I could drive the short distance to my motel but to be careful because the bonnet was no longer secure and might at any moment spring up and obscure my vision. I thanked him profusely and thought to myself: ‘New Zealanders are kinder than Singaporeans. I am not sure I would have done the same if our situations had been reversed!’

I got to my motel safely but found that there was no vacancy for Dec 24. By hook or by crook, I had to get the rental car replaced and drive on to my next motel near the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers the next day.

Next morning, the rental car company replaced my car and I continued on the rest of my holiday as planned. I was pleased with myself for having been calm and cool throughout the episode and had no intention of letting my parents know what had happened.

On Dec 31, I returned to Singapore as planned. When I arrived at Changi Airport, I phoned my mother and said: ‘Hi Ma, I am home safe.’ A few weeks later, my cousin told me that my mother had subsequently said to her: ‘Something happened to Ling on that trip. I’d rather not know what.’

My mother knew me better than I knew myself. She sensed that the phone call from Changi Airport indicated that I must have encountered danger during the trip.

I have been hiking since my youth, usually alone. By hiking alone, I break the first rule in any hiking book. I know the risk I am taking. I always calculate my risks. Where hikes are concerned, I balance the pleasure of solitude, the beauty of nature and the physical challenge of the hike against the risks of each particular route, as determined by the terrain and the weather. I have had many close calls but the incident in New Zealand was the closest.

My hiking and my occupation as a doctor bring home to me the saying that no one knows tomorrow; in fact, we don’t even know our next moment. I go hiking alone, courting danger, yet fate has spared me many times. On the other hand, while safely in Singapore, medical mishaps have on several occasions put me in very precarious situations.

The two lessons of this story that I hope to share with readers are:

To not wear a seat belt in a moving vehicle is foolhardy. Why risk life and limb unnecessarily? I go hiking alone because I like the thrill of taking on nature single-handedly and to prove to myself that I am not a coward. An analogy would be why people risk their lives climbing Mount Everest. But one proves nothing by omitting to wear a seat belt other than that one is foolish.

Never put off till tomorrow something that one can and should do today. There may be no tomorrow.

Lee Wei Ling

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute

http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26026.1

Life with the Lees

Feb 1, 2009

Life with the Lees

Ouyang Huanyan looked after MM Lee's household from the 1940s. Mavis Toh and Lim Ruey Yan report

		PM Lee Hsien Loong as a child, posing for a photograph with a maid.
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In 1945, Madam Ouyang Huanyan found employment as a housekeeper with a Lee family.

Never did she expect the eldest son of the family to eventually become the Prime Minister of Singapore.

She also witnessed the wedding of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Madam Kwa Geok Choo, his classmate from Cambridge University. It was a simple affair where relatives were invited to dinner.

This anecdote and others are published in a book titled Zishu Nu From Shunde, by China Women Publishing House in 2006.

It features the history and stories of Madam Ouyang and other women who left China to work as housekeepers and nannies in South-east Asia in the early 1900s. They all came from the Shunde district in Guangdong province.

The book came to the attention of National Neuroscience Institute chief Lee Wei Ling recently. Dr Lee, Mr Lee's daughter, told The Sunday Times that a friend had chanced upon the book while visiting a village in China.

In one of the chapters, Madam Ouyang, now 91 and still healthy (see box below), recounted her life in Singapore.

Born in 1918, she left her hometown in Cangmen at the age of 14 to join her sister in Singapore.

They were women - known variously as majie, zishu nu and amah - who took vows of celibacy so they could commit to serving their masters, and were a common sight then.

Her first employer was the famous Tan Kah Kee, a rubber magnate and Chinese community leader who gave money to start numerous schools. But she had no idea who he was. Her sister was already working in the household.

The Tans thought highly of the Ouyang sisters. When Japanese troops invaded Singapore in 1942, the Tan family had wanted to leave together with the sisters, but Madam Ouyang's sister did not want Madam Ouyang to go to a faraway place as she was still young. The Tans left their youngest daughter in the care of the two women as they fled the country.

After the war, so grateful were they to the women for keeping the girl safe that Mrs Tan asked the sisters to live with the family. Recalled Madam Ouyang in the book: 'She said, 'I've always treated you sisters like my daughters, please stay'.'

But by that time, Madam Ouyang was already working for the Tans' neighbour - the Lee family.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew returned home from his studies in Britain during her second year with the family. She witnessed his wedding - a simple affair where relatives were invited to a meal to celebrate the occasion.

Madam Ouyang recalled that although Mr Lee's home was big, it was furnished simply 'and was in fact a little bit old'. She and the other workers felt at ease there because the family was friendly and warm.

She remembered how Mrs Lee, a lawyer, was especially kind to the majie. She once told them: 'We're busy in the office and will arrive home late, so please have your meals first and do not go hungry. You can prepare the dishes after we get home from work. Everyone will not be inconvenienced this way. Is it all right?'

Hence, the practice in the household was for the workers to eat before the employers.

Most of the workers in the Lee household came from the Pearl River Delta because Mr Lee felt that they were 'well-disciplined, refined and hardworking'.

The family also welcomed other majie when Madam Ouyang invited them over for chats and visits. Mrs Lee addressed them as 'jie' (sister) and Madam Ouyang would feel a sense of pride.

Even after Mr Lee became prime minister, his style remained simple, she remembered.

She recalled that the maids used to address Wei Ling by her name. When Mr Lee took office, Madam Ouyang started addressing her as 'Da Xiao Jie', a term used for the employer's eldest daughter.

But the young girl told her sternly: 'It's my father who's the prime minister, not me. So please address me by my name.'

The Lees often took her on their outings so she wouldn't be cooped up at home. As she watched Mr Lee hold the hands of his children, Madam Ouyang felt that the prime minister was more like a patient father and a friendly friend. 'Someone you can trust and be at ease with.'

Mr Lee also valued tradition. She recalled one Chinese New Year where he ordered a set of mandarin jackets for the children.

She added that he told his elder son Hsien Loong: 'We are Chinese, so we should follow the traditional customs when celebrating the Spring Festival.'

In the late 1980s, Madam Ouyang returned home to Cangmen due to her poor health. She often received letters from Dr Lee inquiring about her health and asking her to return to Singapore.

Dr Lee, who still refers to Madam Ouyang as 'Yan Jie' today, had been raised by her since young. She told The Sunday Times that Madam Ouyang's voice was strong when she phoned her last year.

'She said her nieces and nephews were taking good care of her,' said Dr Lee. 'She remembers all the time with us and invited me to stay and visit.'

Having worked under two historical leaders, people are always interested in hearing about their stories from Madam Ouyang, noted the book.

But in her eyes, her employers were ordinary people. 'The only difference is that they were very busy, working constantly with hardly any time to rest,' she said.

She added that her encounters with the historical figures have made her life memorable.

'I have not lived my life in vain,' she said.

mavistoh@sph.com.sg

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Lee Wei Ling: What keeps me rooted to Singapore

Lee Wei Ling: What keeps me rooted to Singapore

By Lee Wei Ling, for the Sunday Times
01 Feb 2009

This is an era when international mobility is a privilege that many of our bright young men and women enjoy. The world is their oyster.

They were born and raised in Singapore. Some may have completed their tertiary education here, while others did so overseas. But I have cousins whose children have chosen to exchange their pink Singapore identity cards for United States passports.

If ever there is a major crisis in Singapore, those who would be able to emigrate, be accepted by another country and get jobs there would invariably be people who are wealthy and/or professionals with marketable skills.

The Government knows that talent is mobile and that Singapore must compete with other countries to offer an attractive living environment and vibrant culture so as to retain talented Singaporeans and attract foreign talent here.

I am a paediatric neurologist. I can pass any medical examination that Canada, the US, Australia or New Zealand may impose before accepting me as a high-skilled immigrant or ‘exceptional alien’. Would I take such opportunities?

Perhaps in a moment of madness, when my yearning for hiking outweighs all the other factors that keep me in Singapore and make me want to fight for it if the need should arise.

I have been fortunate in having true friends in Singapore. They and my nuclear family are the main reason I will stay if foreign armies invade or bombs are dropped on Singapore.

In 1975, the year South Vietnam fell, I was a medical student training in paediatrics. Paediatricians are especially kind and decent people, for only such people would be drawn to work mainly with children. Still, there was serious talk of emigration among my paediatrician mentors. One did emigrate with his entire family.

My parents called a family meeting in their bedroom soon after Saigon fell. My father, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, then Singapore’s Prime Minister, told us: ‘Mama and I will stay here to the bitter end. Hsien Loong is already in the SAF and must do his duty. But the three of you need not feel obliged to stay.’

In the end, the Vietnamese communists did not march down Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore thrived, Hsien Yang followed Hsien Loong in accepting both the SAF and President’s Scholarships, and my brothers both served out their bonds.

I myself had accepted a President’s Scholarship in 1973 to study medicine at the University of Singapore. It was a five-year course for which the Public Service Commission paid me approximately $3,000 to $4,000 annually. Most of it went towards my medical school fees. I was bonded for eight years.

Subsequently, I accepted several more scholarships from the Government and have served a total of 16 years of bond. I stayed on in the public sector after completing my bond and am now in my 31st year in service. I have also had the opportunity to live and study overseas for four years. I enjoyed living in North America.

As a nature lover, I appreciated the magic of the seasons. I enjoyed observing spring trying to announce its arrival with crocuses that may subsequently be buried by a late spring snowfall.

Spring in its full-blown splendour of trees, with budding leaves in the most tender hues of green…The daffodils…The cherry blossoms in full bloom along the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts…Running alone at first dawn or twilight, as petals fluttered down on you, was a magical experience.

Then fall with its burst of colours, turning what was an almost uniformly green landscape into a tapestry of yellow, gold, rust, red and green that met your eyes as you jogged. And then winter announcing the end of the year - time to go cross-country skiing or find an indoor track to run.

The changing seasons enhanced the quality of life in a way that only someone who has lived in New England for three years, as I did, can appreciate. But I always returned home. I never doubted that home was anything other than Singapore.

I suffered a serious surgical complication on Jan 9 and am now recuperating in Singapore General Hospital as I write this.

I was in pain earlier this afternoon and, unable to do much, I dozed off. When I woke, my friend Gino was quietly sitting in the next room.

He had brought along with him brand-new running shorts and socks. I had messaged him at noon to ask him to get them for me but did not expect him to do so immediately. Gino is an excellent physiotherapist who helped me through an extremely difficult rehabilitation in 2002. We have been close friends since.

He had recently resigned from the Singapore Sports Council and we discussed the best location for him to set up shop. He gave me a sports massage and we chatted for some time until I felt up to doing my step aerobics.

This morning, one of my cousins dropped by, followed by my doctor-friends from the National Neuroscience Institute.

I am now staring at the skyline that I had stared at from the same window in 2002 and 2003. Then as now I was hospitalised for prolonged periods because of serious surgical accidents, which I later pulled through against great odds.

There are many more tall buildings now than there were in 2002 and 2003. This is a city-state. I am unlikely ever to go hiking again - in Hawaii or Bhutan, Kerala or New Zealand - my one and only real hobby.

What keeps me rooted here are my nuclear family and my friends. We enjoy good times together and help and support one another during bad times. They - rather than Olympic medals or National Day Parades - are the main reason why I feel this place is home and why it is worth fighting for if the need should arise.

The idea of dying does not scare me. But to be willing to stay on and fight for Singapore - that goes beyond simple logic. It is the result of the emotional bond I have with those who are important in my life as well as with those for whom I feel a sense of responsibility.

Lee Wei Ling

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.

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Heart-attack care: Transparency the best policy

Heart-attack care: Transparency the best policy

January 25, 2009

ST letter by Ms Lee Wei Ling

IN MY column, ‘Righting a wrong comes from the heart’, last Sunday, I described the status of treatment of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in the public health-care sector. I stated the facts which were accurate up to Jan 1 this year. I felt that both the public and general practitioners (GPs) should have the relevant information about the capabilities of all our public-sector hospitals.

I wrote about it because my medical school classmate, a GP, was flabbergasted when I told her that Tan Tock Seng Hospital had no round-the-clock capability to open up obstructed heart arteries by ‘ballooning’ on an emergency basis.

Another medical school classmate, a specialist in the private sector, was forced by the SCDF ambulance to have her mother admitted to Tan Tock Seng last month and there was no doctor capable of doing ballooning on an emergency basis until she found one to do so.

Alexandra Hospital had no such capability and my classmate advised all her patients to go to the nearest hospital if they suspect AMI. She subsequently obtained feedback from other doctors that the ballooning service at Changi General Hospital was not great. I chose not to mention Changi General Hospital in my column, nor did I say that ‘only the National Heart Centre and National University Hospital are able to handle heart-attack patients after office hours’.

But in yesterday’s report, (’Most hospitals offer 24/7 heart-attack care’), Tan Tock Seng Hospital, the Ministry of Health and the Singapore Civil Defence Force seem perturbed by what I wrote.

Instead of looking forward to improving care of AMI patients, all three organisations expressed unhappiness about this public disclosure.

My view is that the public will be understanding and forgiving if they know this is the best service the Government can provide, given the various constraints. Giving the public the knowledge means AMI patients can make an informed and wise choice when deciding where to go for treatment.

Prof Lee Wei Ling

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Lee Wei Ling: Righting a wrong comes from the heart

Lee Wei Ling: Righting a wrong comes from the heart

January 20, 2009

Since young, I have always been upset with myself if I knew something was wrong and I could put it right but didn’t.

Hence, I often find myself on ‘quests’ or ‘missions’, ‘jousting with windmills’. Sometimes, I criticise my friends, saying, perhaps impatiently, ‘you have lost the fire in your belly’.

If there is something wrong that we know of, I believe we should try to set it right whether or not it is our business to do so. Not to do so implies we condone the wrong and hence we would be guilty of committing the wrong too.

The concept of ‘guilty by omission’ is not one that is held commonly here. But it is enshrined in the legal systems of the United States and France.

You can be sued in the US if you do not clear the ice on the sidewalks around your home and as a result, someone slips and fractures a bone. You did not cause the fracture but you would be guilty by virtue of having omitted to clear the ice.

Let me give a concrete example closer to home of the consequences of such omission: A few months ago, a colleague’s mother suffered a heart attack and was rushed by ambulance to Tan Tock Seng Hospital at night.

Horror of horrors, there was no cardiologist there. My friend desperately called one of several private cardiologists she knew personally, being a doctor herself. But what could a layman have done in similar circumstances? Nothing.

Neither Alexandra Hospital nor Tan Tock Seng outside of office hours has the resources to handle acute myocardial infarctions (AMI) or heart attacks.

Thus, they are not in a position to give patients the best chance of surviving heart attacks. Of those who survive, the chance of impaired function of the heart would be higher than for patients treated in hospitals where cardiologists and facilities were available as in the National Heart Centre (NHC) or National University Hospital (NUH).

These problems are beyond my areas of responsibility. But I am a doctor; I know what is wrong; and I know what needs to be done. I would have been guilty by omission if I had not tried to solve this problem.

So I engaged the ambulances which come under the Singapore Civil Defence Force, NHC, NUH and got them all to agree that when their ambulances pick up patients with AMI, they would bypass Alexandra and Tan Tock Seng and go only to NUH or NHC.

I do not believe homo sapiens are necessarily at the top of the evolutionary pyramid. But it is indisputable that we are different from other species in several ways.

Scientists once assured us that we were the only species that possessed language. Then research with gorillas and chimpanzees showed that they too could master sign language. Another distinguishing trait of humans was thought to be our capacity to use tools. But then we learnt otters could smash molluscs with rocks and apes could strip the leaves from twigs to use them to fish for termites.

The one feature that definitely does separate us from other animals is our highly developed sense of morality. We seem to have a primal understanding of good and evil, right and wrong, of what it means to suffer not only our own pain but also the pain of others.

Morality may be a hard concept to grasp, but we acquire it fast. A preschooler, for instance, may learn that it is not all right to eat in class because a teacher says so. If the rule is lifted, the child will happily eat in class. But if the same teacher says it is okay to push another student off a chair, the child would hesitate. He will think: ‘No, the teacher should not say that.’

In both cases, somebody would have taught the child the rules, but the rule against pushing has a stickiness about it. It resists coming unstuck even if someone in authority countenances its breach. That is the difference between a moral imperative and mere social convention. Some psychologists like Michael Schulman believe children can innately intuit the difference.

Of course, the child might on occasion hit some other child and won’t feel particularly bad about it - unless, of course, he is caught. The same is true of people who steal or despots who slaughter their people.

Marc Hauser, professor of psychology at Harvard University, has written: ‘Moral judgment is pretty consistent from person to person - that is, we all know what is right and what is wrong. Moral behaviour, however, is scattered all over the chart.’

The rules we know, even the ones we intuit, are by no means the rules we follow. There are people who have no moral instinct - psychopaths and anti-social people who commit crimes and seem incapable of being reformed. They stand out precisely because their behaviour is so bizarre.

Of the rules that we do follow, it is easier for most people to follow rules that require passively not doing anything wrong. Actively doing something right, especially if that something does not fall within our area of responsibility, is uncommon.

It is good for any country to have an active citizenry. And that is precisely why the concept of ‘guilt by omission’ should be a part of our ethos.

As Singapore climbs the economic ladder, its need for people who would feel guilty if they omitted to do something right - not merely passively do no wrong - will increase.

A rich middle-class society encircled by the material pleasures of life, happily oblivious of social inequities and the suffering of the less fortunate among us, will never become a civil or gracious society.

On the other hand, a country with little financial reserves, a middle class that is not wealthy but is socially active, that tries to lift the lowest common denominator in that society, is one that would be heading in the right direction.

Some things cannot be legislated but must come spontaneously from the heart. The desires to right wrongs and help others are examples.

Singapore is a great place for social experiments to improve both the country and the individual.

Lee Wei Ling

# The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.

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Lee Wei Ling: My house is shabby, but it is comfortable

Lee Wei Ling: My house is shabby, but it is comfortable

Written by Lee Wei Ling, for the Sunday Times, 04 Jan 2009

In 2007, in an end-of-year message to the staff of the National Neuroscience Institute, I wrote: ‘Whilst boom time in the public sector is never as booming as in the private sector, let us not forget that boom time is eventually followed by slump time. Slump time in the public sector is always less painful compared to the private sector.’

Slump time has arrived with a bang.

While I worry about the poorer Singaporeans who will be hit hard, perhaps this recession has come at an opportune time for many of us. It will give us an incentive to reconsider our priorities in life.

Decades of the good life have made us soft. The wealthy especially, but also the middle class in Singapore, have had it so good for so long, what they once considered luxuries, they now think of as necessities.

A mobile phone, for instance, is now a statement about who you are, not just a piece of equipment for communication. Hence many people buy the latest model though their existing mobile phones are still in perfect working order.

A Mercedes-Benz is no longer adequate as a status symbol. For millionaires who wish to show the world they have taste, a Ferrari or a Porsche is deemed more appropriate.

The same attitude influences the choice of attire and accessories. I still find it hard to believe that there are people carrying handbags that cost more than thrice the monthly income of a bus driver, and many more times that of the foreign worker labouring in the hot sun, risking his life to construct luxury condominiums he will never have a chance to live in.

The media encourages and amplifies this ostentatious consumption. Perhaps it is good to encourage people to spend more because this will prevent the recession from getting worse. I am not an economist, but wasn’t that the root cause of the current crisis - Americans spending more than they could afford to?

I am not a particularly spiritual person. I don’t believe in the supernatural and I don’t think I have a soul that will survive my death. But as I view the crass materialism around me, I am reminded of what my mother once told me: ‘Suffering and deprivation is good for the soul.’

My family is not poor, but we have been brought up to be frugal. My parents and I live in the same house that my paternal grandparents and their children moved into after World War II in 1945. It is a big house by today’s standards, but it is simple - in fact, almost to the point of being shabby.

Those who see it for the first time are astonished that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s home is so humble. But it is a comfortable house, a home we have got used to. Though it does look shabby compared to the new mansions on our street, we are not bothered by the comparison.

Most of the world and much of Singapore will lament the economic downturn. We have been told to tighten our belts. There will undoubtedly be suffering, which we must try our best to ameliorate.

But I personally think the hard times will hold a timely lesson for many Singaporeans, especially those born after 1970 who have never lived through difficult times.

No matter how poor you are in Singapore, the authorities and social groups do try to ensure you have shelter and food. Nobody starves in Singapore.

Many of those who are currently living in mansions and enjoying a luxurious lifestyle will probably still be able to do so, even if they might have to downgrade from wines costing $20,000 a bottle to $10,000 a bottle. They would hardly notice the difference.

Being wealthy is not a sin. It cannot be in a capitalist market economy. Enjoying the fruits of one’s own labour is one’s prerogative and I have no right to chastise those who choose to live luxuriously.

But if one is blinded by materialism, there would be no end to wanting and hankering. After the Ferrari, what next? An Aston Martin? After the Hermes Birkin handbag, what can one upgrade to?

Neither an Aston Martin nor an Hermes Birkin can make us truly happy or contented. They are like dust, a fog obscuring the true meaning of life, and can be blown away in the twinkling of an eye.

When the end approaches and we look back on our lives, will we regret the latest mobile phone or luxury car that we did not acquire? Or would we prefer to die at peace with ourselves, knowing that we have lived lives filled with love, friendship and goodwill, that we have helped some of our fellow voyagers along the way and that we have tried our best to leave this world a slightly better place than how we found it?

We know which is the correct choice - and it is within our power to make that choice.

In this new year, burdened as it is with the problems of the year that has just ended, let us again try to choose wisely.

To a considerable degree, our happiness is within our own control, and we should not follow the herd blindly.

Lee Wei Ling

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.

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Lee Wei Ling: Medicine is not just a career, but a calling

Medicine is not just a career, but a calling

By Lee Wei Ling

I have always felt keenly the suffering of animals. Since I was a child, I had wanted to be a vet. My parents persuaded me to abandon that idea by using the example of a vet whose university education was funded by the Public Service Commission. When he returned to Singapore, he was posted to serve his bond at the abattoirs. That was enough to persuade me to select my second career choice - a doctor. I have never regretted that decision.

There are still many diseases for which medical science has no cure, and this is especially true of neurological diseases because nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord do not usually regenerate. Hence, a significant percentage of patients seeing neurologists, of which I am one, cannot be cured. But as in all areas of medicine, we still try our best for the patient, 'to cure, sometimes; to relieve, often; to comfort, always'.

An example is a 70-year-old woman who sees me for her epilepsy. Her husband has taken a China mistress whom he has brought back to his marital home. He wants my patient to sell her 50 per cent ownership of their HDB flat and move out. Her children side with the husband because he is the one with the money and assets to will to them.

When this patient comes, I always greet her with a big smile and compliment her on her cheongsam. She will tell me she sewed it herself, and I will praise her for her skill. Then I ask her whether she has had any seizures since the last time she saw me. She sees me at yearly intervals, and usually, she will have had none.

Next, I ask her how she is coping at home. She would say she just ignores her husband and his mistress. I would give her a thumbs-up in reply, then ask her whether she still goes to watch Chinese operas. She would say yes.

By then, I would have prepared her prescription. I hand it to her, pat her on her back and she would walk out with a smile on her face, back straight and a spring in her step.

It takes me only five minutes to do the above. I can control but not cure her epilepsy. But I have cheered her up for the day.

One very special patient, Jac, has idiopathic severe generalised torsion dystonia. By the age of 11, she was as twisted as a pretzel and barely able to speak intelligibly. She did well in the Primary School Leaving Examination, but was a few points short of the score needed for an external student to be accepted by Methodist Girls' School (MGS).

I had done fund-raising for MGS prior to this and knew the principal. I phoned her and explained Jac's disease as well as her determination and diligence.

I told the principal that the nurturing environment of MGS would be good for Jac, and that it would be a good lesson for the other students in MGS to learn to interact with a peer with disability.

At the end of Secondary 2, Jac mailed me a book and a typed letter. The book was a collection of Chinese essays by students in MGS.

There were two essays by Jac. In addition, she had topped the entire Secondary 1 and, subsequently, Secondary 2 in Chinese. She was second in the entire Secondary 2 for Chemistry. She was happy at MGS, and her peers accepted her and helped wheel her around in her wheelchair.

Medication merely gave Jac some degree of pain relief from her dystonia. Being admitted to MGS gave her the opportunity to enjoy school and thrive in it.

I was walking on clouds for the next few hours after I received the book and letter. Jac showed that an indomitable human spirit can triumph over a severe physical disability. As a doctor, I am not just handling a medical problem but the entire patient, including her education and social life.

I have been practising medicine for 30 years now. Over this period, medical science has advanced tremendously, but the values held by the medical community seem to have changed for the worse.

Yearning and working for money is more widely and openly practised; and sometimes this is perceived as acceptable behaviour, though our moral instinct tells us otherwise.

Most normal humans have a moral instinct that can clearly distinguish between right and wrong. But we are more likely to excuse our own wrongdoing if there are others who are doing the same and getting away with it.

These doctors who profit unfairly from their patients know they are doing wrong. But if A, B and C are doing wrong - and X, Y and Z too - then I need not be ashamed of doing the same. Medical students who see this behaviour being tacitly condoned will tend to lower their own moral standards. Instead of putting patients' welfare first, they will enrich themselves first.

The most important trait a doctor needs is empathy. If we can feel our patient's pain and suffering, we would certainly do our best by our patients and their welfare would override everything else.

Medicine is not just a prestigious, profitable career - it is a calling. Being a doctor will guarantee almost anyone a decent standard of living. How much money we need for a decent standard of living varies from individual to individual.

My needs are simple and I live a spartan life. I choose to practise in the public sector because I want to serve all patients without needing to consider whether they can pay my fees.

I try not to judge others who demand an expensive lifestyle and treat patients mainly as a source of income. But when the greed is too overwhelming, I cannot help but point out that such behaviour is unethical.

The biggest challenge facing medicine in Singapore today is the struggle between two incentives that drive doctors in opposite directions: the humanitarian, ethical, compassionate drive to do the best by all patients versus the cold, calculating attitude that seeks to profit from as many patients as possible. Hopefully, the first will triumph.

Doctors do have families to support. Needing and wanting money is not wrong. But doctors must never allow greed to determine their actions.

I think if a fair system of pricing medical fees - such that doctors can earn what they deserve but not profit too much from patients - can be implemented, this problem will be much reduced. The Guideline of Fees, which previously was in effect, was dropped last year. I am trying to revive it as soon as possible.

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.

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Lee Wei Ling: Doing what's right without fear or favour

Doing what's right without fear or favour
Lee Wei Ling
30 July 2008,Straits Times

I WAS born and bred in Singapore. This is my home, to which I am tied by family and friends. Yet many Singaporeans find me eccentric, though most are too polite to verbalise it. I only realised how eccentric I am when one friend pointed out to me why I could not use my own yardstick to judge others.

I dislike intensely the elitist attitude of some in our upper socio-economic class. I have been accused of reverse snobbery because I tend to avoid the wealthy who flaunt their wealth ostentatiously or do not help the less fortunate members of our society.

I treat all people I meet as equals, be it a truck driver friend or a patient and friend who belongs to the richest family in Singapore.

I appraise people not by their usefulness to me but by their character. I favour those with integrity, compassion and courage. I feel too many among us place inordinate emphasis on academic performance, job status, appearance and presentation.

I am a doctor and director of the smallest public sector hospital in Singapore, the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI). I have 300 staff, of whom 100 are doctors. I emphasise to my doctors that they must do their best for every patient regardless of paying status. I also appraise my doctors on how well they care for our patients, not by how much money they bring in for NNI.

My doctors know I have friends who are likely to come in as subsidised patients. I warn them that if I find them not treating any subsidised patient well, their appraisal - and hence bonus and annual salary increments - would be negatively affected. My doctors know I will do as I say.

I remind them that the purpose of our existence and the measure of our success is how well we care for all our patients - and that this is the morally correct way to behave and should be the reason why we are doctors. In NNI, almost all patients are given the best possible treatment regardless of their paying status.

My preference for egalitarianism extends to how I interact with my staff. I am director because the organisation needs a reporting structure. But my staff are encouraged to speak out when they disagree with me. This tends to be a rarity in several institutions in Singapore. The fear that one's career path may be negatively affected is what prevents many people from speaking out.

This reflects poorly on leadership. In many organisations, superiors do not like to be contradicted by those who work under them. Intellectual arrogance is a deplorable attitude.

'Listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story,' the Desiderata tells us. It is advice we should all heed - especially leaders, especially doctors.

I speak out when I see something wrong that no one appears to be trying to correct. Not infrequently, I try to right the wrong. In doing so, I have stepped on the sensitive toes of quite a few members of the establishment. As a result, I have been labelled 'anti-establishment'. Less kind comments include: 'She dares to do so because she has a godfather'.

I am indifferent to these untrue criticisms; I report to my conscience; and I would not be able to face myself if I knew that there was a wrong that I could have righted but failed to do so.

I have no protective godfather. My father, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, would not interfere with any disciplinary measures that might be meted out to me.

And I am not anti-establishment. I am proud of what Singapore has achieved. But I am not a mouthpiece of the government. I am capable of independent thought and I can view problems or issues from a perspective that others may have overlooked.

A few months ago, I gave a talk on medical ethics to students of our Graduate Medical School. They sent me a thank-you card with a message written by each student. One wrote: 'You are a maverick, yet you are certainly not anti-establishment. You obey the moral law.' Another wrote: 'Thank you for sharing your perspective with us and being the voice that not many dare to take.'

It would be better for Singapore's medical fraternity if the young can feel this way about all of us in positions of authority.

After the Sars epidemic in 2003, the Government began to transform Singapore into a vibrant city with arts and cultural festivals, and soon, integrated resorts and night F1. But can we claim to be a civilised first world country if we do not treat all members of our society with equal care and dignity?

There are other first world countries where the disparity between the different socio- economic classes is much more extreme and social snobbery is even worse than in Singapore. But that is no excuse for Singaporeans not to try harder to treat each other with dignity and care.

After all, both the Bible and Confucius tell us not to treat others in a way that we ourselves would not want to be treated. That is a moral precept that many societies accept in theory, but do not carry out in practice.

I wish Singapore could be an exception in this as it has been in many other areas where we have surprised others with our success.

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.

Think-Tank is a weekly column rotated among eight heads of research and tertiary institutions.

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