Epidemiology of Squamous Cell Carcinoma in Response to Different Hazardous Chewing Causes in Lahore, Pakistan-a Unicenter study epidemiology of oral carcinoma in Lahore, Pakistan

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC)being the world’s most prevailing and frightening cancerous disorder lacks the sufficient data in Pakistan despite of its higher magnitude and prevalence. Objective: This study was specifically designed and conducted with the aim to identify the frequency of this disorder along with causative factors in past three years in a tertiary care hospital of Lahore, Pakistan. Methods: Epidemiological study was conducted using retrospective randomized method and all pre-requisites were filled. The clinical profiles of patients were collected from Maxillofacial and Oral Surgery Departmentof Pathology, Mayo Hospital Lahore. Patients who had undergone treatment for OSCC were contacted and interviewed for information about demographic regions, previous history of malignancy, disease onset, chewing habits, exposure to pesticides, industrial exposure to metals etc. And all particulars were not and compiled on questionnaire. Results: A total of 54 patients from different districts of Punjab participated in the study. Percentages for each possible causative chewing habit were calculated and 87.50 % of population was found addicted to different habits. Genetic factor might have contributed in remaining for development of OSCC. Conclusions: Informative data provided in this study will be helpful to be used by the government and private health agencies while designing and planning management of oral health problems and allocating health budgets in focusing this issue

Speaking Silences - Pakistani Fiction Amidst Terrorism & Chaos

Since the disastrous events of 9/11 and its aftermath, the discourse of terrorism has appeared to become the most dominant preoccupations of American literature. Several novels have been composed following the September 11 attacks that deal directly or indirectly with the effect of the event on individuals, both inside and outside of the United States of America. Although these novels often claim to deal with the post traumatic- after effects of the attacks, the Western writers frequently employ Orientalist stereotyping and it appears that after 9/11 this attitude towards Muslims has even hardened and strengthened the old Orientalist discourse by representing all Muslims as terrorists. In line with Edward Said’s:“the East writes back” this thesis shows the novels, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Home Boy and Burnt Shadows, stand as a reaction to this dominant post 9/11 rhetoric and challenge the discourse of colonization from the Pakistani side(whichstands for the East) and welcome decolonization. Edward Said’s Orientalism serves as the theoretical basis for this research. The thesis explores the response of contemporary Pakistani literature in English .i.e. how writers are responding, reactingand relating with the contemporary reality of terrorism, violence, extremism and suicide bombing and the challenges that the existing political and social scenario creates for Pakistani writers and how despotism, martial rule, violence militant extremism and imperial occupation of Afghanistan have placed the Pakistani writer, like his fellow citizens, in the margins, from where writers are now raising their voices andstruggling to regain theirnational identity and create for themselves an individual literary identity. How have the writers not only disrupted the status quo but also challenged and questioned the post 9/11Western discriminatory attitude towards the Muslims. Moreover it reveals the struggle of the authors to dismantle the terrorist label ascribed to the Muslims and post 9/11 stereotyping of Muslims as extremists and religious fanatics.