The dearly departed, page-8

I spent a long time working in Vietnam. Wonderful country and beautiful people. One, I guess strange to us, tradition they have is a couple of years after a loved one dies, the family go to the burial site in the dark of night to exhume the loved ones body and clean their bones.

An anecdote I heard from a colleague was of her deceased father who battled cancer for some time going through chemo treatment which she said was so horrible on her father.

When the time came a couple of years after his death, the family exhumed his body only to find that due to the massive loads of poisonous chemo he had been subjected to, his body had not decayed at all. She said the family were shocked.

To me, it really illuminated how toxic the chemo treatments are and how sometimes, the cure can be almost as bad as the disease.

IMU is working hard to lessen the reliance on this toxic treatment and eventually replace it. It’s definitely a cause worth investing in.