Modern medicine and hope
A year ago covid 19 took the world into its rampage. The scourge of this disease hit us so hard that no aspect of life has remained untouched by it. The world went into a frenzy and authorities went looking for a cure or a vaccine to prevent it. With this frenzy started a debate. A debate that has been long raging in India but found a new voice under the influence of this pandemic. Ayurveda vs allopath.
As authorities were looking for a treatment to cure the infection, average Indians powered with the new toy in the market, Whatsapp, were sharing all the homemade remedial options. Mentions of Giloy, Ajvain, onion, Kapoor, different Kadhas took prominence. Some people to the extreme suggested the use of cow dung and urine to ward off infection. Corporates like Patanjali came up with their own product, Coronil, with claims boasting of its ability to prevent and cure the infection. All of this is understood given the dire circumstances that masses were subjected to face. If something gives solace to the troubled mass then it is a risk worth taking.
But recently Baba Ramdev, the owner of the Patanjali corporation took to the stage to claim that the modern allopathic medicines were not useful and were proving to be harmful instead. Even more recently he took the stage again to claim that allopathic medicine took lacs of lives instead of saving any. And the masses of my fellow countrymen found it appropriate to support. It was as if the dumb-struck audience found their voice in his claims.
The fact that such wild claims can resonate with so many people tells us that there is still so much about allopathy that people do not understand. For them, it is just another obscure medicine practice that is foreign and hence must be seen with suspicion. Their suspicion is understood. But before developing any such opinions it is important to understand what is what.
Shoulders of the Giants!
To oversimplify things, Ayurveda describes any disease/disorder as an imbalance between the three dosh of the body — Vatta, Pitta, Kapha. All the diseases that Ayurveda recognizes are due to imbalances between these three bodily dosh. And treatment involves, most of the time, correction of these imbalances with the help of remedies derived from natural sources.
There are various problems, right from the beginning, with such an approach. There are more than a thousand maladies that inflict humans. How can it be possible to explain these thousand maladies with a system involving just an imbalance of these three Dosh? Shouldn’t it require more than just three dosh to account for all those thousand diseases? And what about the quantification of these parameters? How do I measure how much what kind of pitta do I have elevated in me?
The treatment for malaria as per the herbal method is to give the powdered form of the bark of Cinchona tree. The active ingredient present in Cinchona that acts against malarial parasite is quinine. For a Cinchona tree to produce quinine it has to have all the right conditions around it. It requires an optimum temperature, the soil should not be too tight or too loose, the humidity has to be at a certain level. Anything more or less and the plant fails to produce a good amount of quinine in its bark. So it is expected that every tree will be different with every bark having a different concentration of quinine in it.
How much bark powder should I give as an Ayurvedic practitioner? There is no standard for that because there is no standard authority in Ayurveda. And if an amount is, anyway, decided how do I know if the bark I am dispatching as a practitioner has the right amount of quinine in it. Any amount less will not be effective. Any amount more will be deleterious to the health instead. And the bark is too bitter to be palatable for humans.
With the help of modern medicine, we do not have to worry about such things. The technology at our disposal is capable of extracting that quinine and making standard tablets constituting the right amount of drug in it. As a modern medicine practitioner, I know how much quinine I am giving to my patient. Plus I do not have to worry about the bitter taste.
A common side effect of giving cinchona/quinine is cinchonism described as a ringing sensation in the ears along with fever. There is also a problem of the malarial parasite developing resistance to the drug and hence not responding even to increased doses. The scientific method brings us a solution. With the help of modern technology, we are able to create molecules similar to quinine structurally but with slightly altered functionality. In this manner, modern science helps us to pick up drugs from their natural source and to alter them as per the desired effect and side effect profile. An entire range of molecules, quinacrine, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, etc. have been discovered and each molecule with an attenuated side effect profile but able to counter resistance.
Just similar to quinine and its derivatives, the scientific method gave us artemisinin and its derivatives. Derived from the Chinese herbal medicine system artemisinin comes from the qinghao (Artemisia annua) plant extracts. With modern science, we are able to carry out similar processes as with quinine to make standard preparations to be administered for malaria. Further, we are able to explore other structurally similar molecules made synthetically in labs to get drugs with even better action and a more favorable side effect profile.
Penicillin, the miracle drug, to treat bacterial infections was first derived from a fungus growing on a petri dish. Following which modern science helped us find and develop hundreds of iterations of similar antibiotics to counter various classes of bacterias. Isn’t the beginning of antibiotics rooted in nature itself? Isn’t it compatible with the principles of Ayurveda having a natural origin?
There are countless other medications that come from their original plant/animal sources and are further mastered with help of the scientific method. Now is not modern medicine just a continuation of the old systems done with the help of new understanding and technology?
The age of xenophobia
Ramdev baba has been a vocal critic of modern medicine for a very long time. Apart from his vested interests (owner of a multimillion ayurvedic corporation) in the promotion of Ayurveda, people like him are powered by ignorance.
In his latest diatribe against modern medicine, he was seen handing out scathing remarks against modern medicine going as far as claiming it to be the cause of death of lacs of people suffering from covid. He picked up the argument that authorities of modern medicine have dropped down remdesivir, favipiravir, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, plasma therapy as treatment options for covid. He further claimed that modern medicine does not target the root cause, virus, bacteria, inflammation but manages only symptoms. He was too keen to use the terms introduced by modern medicine but without being bound by its methods and rules.
For thousands of years, communicable diseases like TB, malaria, Cholera, Smallpox, Polio ravaged humanity while the alternate medicine practices were clueless about their cause. It was only by the late 19th century when germ theory of disease was consolidated following which various microbes were identified to be the cause of these diseases. Subsequently, hand hygiene practices, sanitation measures, septic precautions developed, curbing down the incidence of these diseases.
You could apply cow dung on the naval of your newborn and expose it to hundreds of pathogens decreasing its chances for survival or you could follow septic precautions to increase the likelihood of its survival. You could take penicillin and a tetanus shot after getting wounded or you could apply soil paste to further the chances of infection. Believe it or not but modern medicine has increased the chances of human survival. But it has not come de novo out of anywhere. Modern medicine has picked up the baton left by the traditional healthcare practices and has mastered it.
So when people like Ramdev baba use such vitriol against modern medicine practices they either do not know what is what or they do it intentionally. They want to feed this xenophobic concept that modern medicine is out of this country and must be resisted. It obviously has some political underpinnings for them apart from direct financial gains. The xenophobia they endorse helps them sell their own products cheating and robbing the unsuspecting common man. They breed prejudices by using such arguments that modern medicines have failed in covid and that Ayurveda is the only option
Today’s world is a world of science. The world, these days, moves fast. Two hundred years back traveling was through carts driven by horses, ox, donkeys, and unfortunately many times fellow humans. Science gave us automobiles, aviation, space travel. A hundred years ago communication happened through letters that used to take days to reach. Now science has given us the power to see the person we long to see with just a few finger touches.
But I do not see people reminiscing good old days when the traveling took weeks and communication was severely limited. I do not see them clamoring to revert back to an automobile-less, internet-less world. Why do we clamor to return to an outdated thousand years of old medicine practice system when we clearly have science at our disposal? Ignorance? Abandoning science means abandoning the future of the human race. Abandoning science means abandoning hope.
Yes, modern medicine moves fast. It does not take us decades anymore to realize the true potential of drugs. It does not take us decades to realize the side effects of drugs. And academia is not haughty to not accept if it has been wrong. A lesson in science is a lesson in humility. Modern Science takes evidence at its face value and does not hesitate to correct the errors. Modern science comes equipped with self-correcting machinery.
Treatment methods stay controversial because chances for error allowed are set to be too low. Treatment methods stay controversial because the evidence is too stringently monitored and that conflicting opinions are welcomed and treated with equal respect. A man of science knows that all truth is relative, that what stands as true today may turn to be false tomorrow. And so he is skeptical before coming to any conclusion.
