“I'm not great at the advice. Can I interest you in a sarcastic comment?”

This is what ‘Friends’ actor Matthew Perry’s character Chandler Bing was known for. He was known for being funny. However, he had his own struggles in his personal life and those struggles were acute depression. He was treating it with ketamine infusion therapy which is legal in the US and the UK.

What is Ketamine infusion therapy?

Ketamine is an anaesthetic used to treat depression, anxiety and pain under supervised and controlled medical settings. However, it does have its side effects, which can lead to distortion of sight, sound and time. It can also produce calming and relaxing effects.

Ketamine increases a person’s heart rate and blood pressure. If overdosed, it can leave users confused and agitated and can cause them to hurt themselves without even realising it. It can also lead to liver damage and bladder problems.

However, when used in moderation and under the supervision of medical doctors, it can treat depression where traditional antidepressants have failed.

Prof Rupert McShane, a University of Oxford psychiatrist who runs an NHS ketamine treatment clinic told BBC that ketamine “probably turns off the area of the brain that is involved in disappointment.”

Can Ketamine Infusion Therapy Kill Someone?

In simple terms, it cannot, be if the dosage is given in a controlled setting and as prescribed. Ketamine infusion therapy uses drugs in small doses than those used for anaesthesia. It acts faster than traditional anti-depressants, but the effects also wear off way quickly. Which is why it is important to monitor patients’ mental state for relapsing back into depression and discouraging them from overdosing on it.

There are ways of giving people ketamine. One of the ways is through “infusing”, which means to use an IV drip. However, injections, nasal sprays and capsules are also methods used to give people ketamine.

Since the dosage of ketamine used in the infusion treatment is small, it being the reason of actor Perry’s death was ruled out. The medical examiner also noted that Perry’s last ketamine infusion therapy session happened more than a week before his death, which means by the time he had died, it must have worn off.

So, What Happened To Perry?

Though Perry’s last session was more than a week before, his post-mortem showed that his blood contained a high concentration of ketamine. He had died of the “acute effects” of ketamine.

If it was not his session, then how did he get ketamine?

Prosecutors alleged that his assistant gave him at least 27 shots of ketamine in four days before his death, reported BBC.

Perry has been open about his personal struggles and this is what the doctors and dealers used against him. Martin Estrada, the US attorney for California’s Central District told the BBC that people took advantage of his condition. They charged him 165 times more than what vials of ketamine cost.

Names that have come up include Dr Salvador Plasencia, drug dealers “Ketamine Queen” aka Jasveen Sangha and Eric Fleming, and Perry’s live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa.

Who Are These Names And What Did They Do?

Ketamine Queen or Sangha supplied drugs that led to Perry’s death. Her home was a “drug-selling emporium,” said Estrada. More than 80 vials of ketamine, and thousands of pills including methamphetamine, cocaine and Xanax were allegedly found in her house known as the “Sangha Stash House.”

Sangha is known to deal with high-end celebs and was a “major source of supply for ketamine to others as well as Perry,” said Estrada.

Dr Plasencia called Perry a “moron” while charging him $2,000 for vials that cost only $12. He sold Perry 20 vials of ketamine between September and October 2023, costing $55,000.

He was the one who taught Iwamasa, who had no medical knowledge to inject the drug. This is after he knew that “Perry’s ketamine addiction was spiralling out of control,” as per what the investigators told the BBC.

Another dealer Fleming was told by Sangha to “delete all our messages.” While Fleming pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute drugs unlawfully, he also allegedly messaged Sangha: “Please call...Got more info and want to bounce ideas off you. I’m 90% sure everyone is protected. I never dealt with [Perry] only his assistant. So the assistant was the enabler.”

The court documents also revealed that he asked Sangha on whether the ketamine stays in your system or “is it immediately flushed out.”

Dr Pepper, Bots, Cans

The people who allegedly exploited Perry used coded language for ketamine and called it “Dr Pepper”, “bots”, or “cans.”

Selling overpriced drugs, taking advantage of Perry’s mental condition and falsifying medical records to make the drugs given to him look legitimate by Dr Plasencia is what took Perry’s life.

Iwamasa is said to have administered more than 20 shots of ketamine and three on the day Perry died. Whereas ketamine is only administered by a physician. Authorities also found that weeks before Perry’s death, Dr Plasencia allegedly bought 10 vials of ketamine and intended to sell to Perry.

He also injected Perry with a large dose, two days later. This caused him to “freeze up” and spiked his blood pressure.

When I Die, I Want Helping Others To Be The First Thing That’s Mentioned

Perry had always been open about his drug addictions, struggles with alcohol and his depression. He said that his openness would help others who are also struggling and wanted to be remembered by his quote which also is on the homepage of the Mattew Perry Foundation that helps others struggling with the disease of addiction: “When I die, I want helping others to be the first thing that’s mentioned.”

Five arrests have been made in the case so far.

India is witnessing a shift in its disease landscape. While greater awareness, improved hygiene and national health policies have helped curb communicable and preventable diseases, the country is now facing a growing burden of metabolic conditions such as fatty liver and colorectal cancer, alongside persistent infections including Helicobacter pylori and intestinal worm infestations, health experts said.

The concerns come ahead of the World Congress of Gastroenterology (WCOG) 2026, to be held in India for the first time from September 30 to October 3 at Yashobhoomi, Dwarka, under the theme “Transforming Gastrointestinal Health, Preserving Nature.”

Fatty Liver a Major Concern

Fatty liver disease has emerged as a key metabolic health challenge in India. An AIIMS-led systematic review and meta-analysis found the condition in 38.6 per cent of Indian adults and 35.4 per cent of children. It is closely associated with diabetes, obesity and hypertension and can remain silent until liver damage progresses.

A recent study found that one in four patients with type 2 diabetes has clinically significant fibrosis.

“India is facing an epidemiological shift at this time. We have made significant strides in controlling preventable disease through awareness, vaccinations and improving quality of life, however alongside these we are now seeing metabolic disease on a scale we have never handled before,” said Dr. Pramod Garg, Professor and Head, Department of Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition, AIIMS, New Delhi.

“Fatty liver is the clearest example. The disease is easy to find if we look for it, and we become aware only after the patient falls ill. This is a greater challenge than before—we must move away from only treating diseases—we must now actively promote good health,” he added.

To address the rising burden, India included fatty liver disease in its National Programme for Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases in 2021, followed by guidelines for its detection at the primary-care level.

Colorectal Cancer Cases Growing Among Young

The experts also flagged colorectal cancer as a growing concern, with cases increasingly being seen among younger adults. India recorded 40,430 new cases among men and 24,433 among women in 2022.

“India has never been short of gastroenterologists or technology. What we have lacked is the habit of taking early symptoms seriously. We often misattribute our symptoms to stress or simply overlook them,” said Dr. Govind Makharia, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition, AIIMS, New Delhi.

“Every time we fail to identify a disease early, we lose the opportunity to potentially modify its natural history. Any symptom that persists beyond two to three weeks should be evaluated,” he added.

Persistent Infections and Chronic Gut Diseases

H. pylori remains widespread and is associated with peptic ulcer disease and gastric cancer. Intestinal worm infections continue to affect children and can contribute to anaemia and undernutrition.

Chronic gastrointestinal conditions such as celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are also increasingly being recognized in India. Community-based research led by AIIMS found celiac disease in approximately one in 96 people in northern India.

Dr. Vineet Ahuja, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition, AIIMS, New Delhi, said conditions such as IBD and celiac disease, once considered rare in India, are now regularly encountered in clinical practice.

“Advances in endoscopy, artificial intelligence and microbiome research are improving diagnosis and treatment. The challenge now is to make these advances more widely accessible,” he said.

“With the advent of AI, we potentially stand at a new era of medicine—we must not dismiss it, but learn to adapt to it and improve the quality of care we provide to our patients,” he added.

The experts stressed the importance of early detection and urged people not to ignore persistent gastrointestinal symptoms, blood in the stool, unexplained weight loss or sustained changes in bowel habits. Earlier testing and preventive interventions can help identify and manage several GI conditions before they progress

Researchers in the Netherlands are exploring a possibility to reach into remote, difficult areas in the brain without an open surgery. They have developed a tiny, screw-shaped robot that can move through brain tissue under the control of a magnet placed outside the body.

The method is yet to be tested on humans. They used sheep brain tissue, including a model in which blood was pumped through the brain's vessels to more closely mimic a living brain.

In laboratory experiments, the robot successfully travelled through real sheep brain tissue, offering an early glimpse of a less invasive way to reach areas that are difficult to access with conventional surgery.

The technology could eventually be useful to treat deep brain tumours, blood clots following stroke and vascular abnormalities.

How Does The Tiny Robot Work?

Scientists have made the robot in a spiral, screw-like shape. It does not have a conventional motor inside it. Instead, researchers control it using a rotating magnetic field generated outside the body. As the magnet rotates, the robot moves with it. Its screw-shaped body converts that rotation into forward movement, allowing it to drill its way through soft brain tissue.

The researchers also created a mathematical model to predict when the robot could lose synchronisation with the magnetic field. Simply making the magnet spin faster does not mean the robot will keep moving faster.

“Push a magnetic robot too fast and it simply stops listening to the magnet,” said Ewout Ligtenberg, first author of the study. He added, “We can now predict exactly when that happens, for any tissue, from a single test. That takes out a lot of guesswork when designing robots for the brain.”

Also read: Fifth Universal Definition of Myocardial Infarction: What the 3 New Heart Attack Categories Mean

Navigating Inside A Brain Is Not Easy

One of the biggest challenges of brain surgery is that is that brain tissue is soft, delicate and mechanically complex. The researchers initially tested their robot in gelatin before moving to actual sheep brain tissue.

In the sheep tissue, the robot remained synchronised with the magnetic field up to about 1.8 rotations per second when there was no blood flow. But once blood was pumped through the vessels, it fell to below 0.45 rotations per second. In other words, making the conditions that resemble a living brain made the robot harder to control.

The robot moved through the brain tissue at around 0.2 millimetres per second. When researchers reversed it, it was able to travel back through the pathway it had already created much faster, at about 2.9 millimetres per second.

Also read: New AI Tool Reads ECG In 2 Seconds, Detects Up To 90% Of Heart Valve Disease Cases

This May Help With Brain Lesions

The technology may have applications in treating brain lesions as some lesions sit deep inside the brain, where reaching them can mean passing through healthy tissue or opening the skull.

The researchers are look for a futuristic approach in which the tiny robot could potentially be guided through blood vessels to a location near the target, pass through the artery wall and then travel through brain tissue towards the lesion.

The robot has not been used to treat a brain tumour, remove a clot or operate on a person. Despite promising outcome, there are still major questions around safety, navigation, bleeding, tissue damage.

India has the medical expertise and infrastructure to perform significantly more corneal transplants, but a shortage of suitable donor corneas continues to leave thousands of patients waiting for treatment.

While an estimated 1 lakh corneal transplants are needed annually, only 25,000–30,000 are performed, meeting just 25–30% of the estimated need, said health experts as part of the 41st National Eye Donation Fortnight.

The shortage is also reflected in the availability of suitable donor tissue. In 2023–24, more than 49,000 corneas were retrieved in India, but only around 27,394 were considered suitable for transplantation.

Why Corneal Transplants Matter

Corneal blindness is a significant cause of treatable vision loss in India. “There is too much burden of corneal blindness in India, which is a leading cause of treatable blindness. Almost 1.1 to 1.3 million people are affected because of this corneal blindness,” said Dr Anita Gangar, Consultant Corneal Transplant Surgeon, Eye Department, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, in a video posted on X.

The cornea is the transparent front surface of the eye that allows light to enter. When it becomes damaged, scarred or opaque, vision can be severely affected.

A corneal transplant replaces the damaged cornea with clear donor tissue, helping restore the eye’s optical pathway and vision.

Also read: World’s First Live AI-Assisted Brain Surgery Saves Patient’s Sight: How Does The Technology Work?

Common Causes of Corneal Blindness

• Corneal infections
• Eye trauma
• Surgery-related complications
• Hereditary conditions

Why Timely Eye Donation Matters

The availability of donor tissue remains a major constraint despite advances in corneal surgery.

“Corneal blindness is among the significant causes of vision loss that can potentially be treated through transplantation, yet thousands of patients continue to face a long and uncertain wait for suitable donor tissue,” said Padma Shri Prof. Dr Jeevan Titiyal, Regional Head – Clinical Services, Dr Agarwals Eye Hospital, at a press conference held in New Delhi.

The experts added that increasing eye donation requires not only greater public awareness but also stronger retrieval systems, efficient eye-bank networks and better coordination between hospitals and eye banks.

Timely retrieval is particularly important for preserving donor corneal tissue. Families are encouraged to contact an eye bank as soon as possible after the death of a loved one, with retrieval generally targeted within approximately six hours under appropriate conditions.

Read More: Diabetics Must Undergo Retinal Screening To Protect Eye Health: AIIMS Doctors

Eye Donation: Myths vs Facts

Myth: Diabetes or high blood pressure prevents eye donation.

Fact: These conditions do not automatically rule out donation. The medical team assesses tissue suitability after death.

Myth: Eye donation will disfigure the face.

Fact: Corneal retrieval is performed respectfully by trained professionals and does not cause visible facial disfigurement.

Myth: People who wear spectacles cannot donate their eyes.

Fact: Wearing spectacles or contact lenses does not automatically prevent donation. Eligibility is determined after death.

Myth: Only young people can donate.

Fact: People of different ages may be eligible, depending on the suitability of the donated tissue.

Advances in Corneal Transplantation

Corneal transplantation has evolved from conventional full-thickness procedures to more selective, layer-specific techniques. In suitable cases, surgeons can replace only the affected portion of the cornea, allowing for more targeted treatment and faster visual rehabilitation.

“Advances in corneal surgery now allow us to treat specific layers of the cornea, offering more targeted treatment and faster visual rehabilitation for appropriately selected patients. However, these advances can translate into better outcomes only when suitable donor tissue is available,” said Dr Prabjot Kaur, Senior Consultant Ophthalmologist, Dr Agarwals Eye Hospital.

41st National Eye Donation Fortnight

The 41st National Eye Donation Fortnight is being observed from 25 August to 8 September 2026. The 15-day nationwide awareness campaign, observed in India since 1985, aims to encourage eye donation and help bridge the gap between the demand for and availability of donor corneas.