Ministry of AYUSH: The Indian Government's Biggest Blunder (Documentary)

This video is brought to you  by my supporters on Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee and YouTube. If you'd like  to support me, you can find the links below. This may, perhaps, be the biggest and  most controversial video on my channel because I’m criticizing the Government of India. There’s a problem in my country that  I feel is barely being addressed. And it's a problem that greatly affects its  people. The Government of India - instead of solving it or even ignoring it is  actually making the problem

worse. I’m talking about Alternative Medicine. And if you’re thinking - Alternative medicine  may be ineffective but it’s harmless - So, why is he making a big deal out of  this? This video is especially for you. Hi my name is Pranav and you’re watching  Science is Dope. In this video, I’m gonna go into why alternative medicine is harmful  and how the Indian Government is contributing to that problem. And just so you don’t have to  take the word of some medically untrained guy, I decided to take

a look at the actual  research being done. Not only that, I talked to multiple doctors to see what  they had to say on the topic. All that is coming up in the video. And needless to say,  I have to give a “Long video” alert here. This video is the longest I've done but I have put  timestamps below to make it easier for you. You might have to watch this video in multiple  sessions. With that being said, let’s begin. To start off with, I decided to go to Rajagiri  Hospital, Kochi where Dr. Abby P

hillips works. Dr Abby is a liver specialist and a clinical  researcher. I met him and his clinical research lead - Arif Hussain to see the work they’ve  been doing analysing alternative medicines. Both of them are active on social media also. Dr  Abby does a chemical and toxicology analysis on these alternative medicines and posts the results  on his Twitter, which I've linked below. Arif is another interesting personality. He’s both an  ex-Muslim and an ex-homeopath. And I’ve featured him on t

he channel before and will do so again.  I’ve linked his channel also below. His content is in Malayalam, so if that’s your cup of tea, be  sure to check it out! Back to what I did there - Not only did I get to see the analysis  they’ve done, they also showed me all the alternative medicines they confiscate  from patients who come complaining of liver issues. I even got to sit down  with Dr Abby and do an entire podcast, which will be released at a later date. But I’ve  used parts of that podcas

t in this video as well. Imagine you’re a doctor. What do you do if  you get a patient complaining of a problem? You try to find out what the problem is and try  to see if you can solve it using treatments or medicines. But what if you can’t figure out what  the problem is? That’s what happened to Dr Abby. DR ABBY: I saw a group of patients with  severe hepatitis, jaundice and everything, but without any identifiable cause. So  there was no alcohol component there; they were all teetotallers. Th

ey had probably some  metabolic disease like diabetes or hypertension or hypothyroidism, but all that won't cause so  much of jaundice so then we looked at viral infection so viral hepatitis A, E, so all  of those infections everything was actually negative. So then we looked at if they are taking  some potentially liver-toxic drugs. These people started thinking back and telling us, "yeah, we  started this particular supplement about a month back," or, "oh I have been on the supplement for  abo

ut three months, but this is not a drug this is a natural supplement that you know our other  doctors have given and we are continuing it with whatever medicines that we are taking." So we  asked them to bring those supplements to us, we retrieved them - and we found out most  of them were Ayurvedic formulations and most of them were traditional formulations and  some of them were proprietary formulations. Could these ayurvedic supplements  be the cause of the liver damage? Or what if this was a

ll just a  coincidence? There's only one way to find out - by actually figuring  out what's in these alternative meds. DR ABBY: And we subjected that to analysis  - toxicology and analysis and found out that a lot of them were contaminated some of them  were adulterated and some of them actually had well-known liver toxic herbs in them. So it's  all of those causing problems of liver damage in these patients, and some of them even take  liquid formulations. So these liquid formulations contain a

lcohol. So we have Asavas and Arishtams  in Ayurveda and that can actually cause alcoholic liver injury because they contain alcohol - up  to 10 to 12 percent alcohol, those medicines. Dr Abby showed me an entire file of analysis  results where they tested these alternative medicines and found toxic heavy metals,  etc., in them. They also found modern medicine components like steroids in them. Dr  Abby posts these results on Twitter regularly. I’ll post his handle on the screen and in the  descr

iption, you should definitely follow him. Now, I’m sure there are people who go to Ayurveda  because they want to avoid steroids from modern medicine. And not only do they get exactly  that, they don’t get them in a safe manner with proper dosages and supplementary  medications to manage any side effects. They also have a shelf full of these mostly  ayurvedic alternative medicines that they got from their patients. Now this would be scary  if this was a widespread problem. Maybe this is an isola

ted incident. Happening only in  one part of the country. I had that question. How much does it affect the public? How far  and wide is this problem? How prevalent is this problem? The use of alternative medicine was at  some point in the last year when we spoke to them, was about 60 percent. Sixty percent of them  used some form of alternative medicine within the last year that they were on other  medications also. When we looked at - in patients with underlying liver disease,  that went up to

almost 70 to 75 percent so a lot of people use complementary  alternative medicine on the side. Now this is the usage of these therapies and what  we found out that in our studies is that, the people who actually use it, more than one  third of them develop some sort of adverse event. This is clearly something that affects people  all over the country because of the immense popularity of Ayurveda. We will address what is  being done about it, and what should optimally be done about it. But why i

s Ayurveda and other  alternative medicines so popular? I mean, given all these issues with alternative  medicine, wouldn’t people just stay away from it? Instead it’s really popular… which means…  There has to be something in it that works right? When do you know something works? When it  does what it claims to do. In fact that is the basic criteria anything should  meet. For example if you have a plane, it should be able to fly. If it can’t,  then it’s absolute garbage. In short, you cannot ha

ve alternative flight technology,  or alternative rocket science or alternative nuclear technology. There’s a very clear  line separating what works from what doesn’t. But why do we have “alternative” medicine?  Because with medicine this judgment, of whether the medicine works or not, becomes  difficult. There is no clear line separating the two. Let’s say you had a cold. And you  took a pill and you got better. What made you get better? Was it the pill? Or was your cold  just gonna get better

on its own? It could have been any number of different factors that led to  your recovery. one of these factors is the pill but since people have a tendency to think that  their recovery is entirely because of the pill, people get or ignore that one of these other  factors could have also led to your recovery. Someone in my family has a skin condition called  Psoriasis. They told me they cured it using Ayurveda. Most people will take this  story and conclude positively about Ayurveda. But when y

ou ask this person for more  details on the story, you learn how their Ayurveda practitioner asked them to continue whatever  modern medicine drugs they were taking, that their doctor prescribed them. Also, let’s please  call it modern medicine and not allopathy. Because the two are very different. Allopathy was the  heroic medicine that was there in Europe during the 17th and 18th century. It involved practices  like drilling holes in skulls, induced vomitting, bloodletting, etc that often harm

ed the patient  more than it helped them. And clearly, it wasn’t very scientific either. So please stop calling  modern medicine, allopathy. Now back to our story. Psoriasis is a disease which comes and goes in  phases. It flares up and it dies down. So what they meant when they said that it got cured,  was that the flare ups reduced in severity and occurred less frequently, sometimes with  a gap of like 10 years, when that is the natural progression of the disease. That would  happen whether or

not you took any medicine. So, you might ask yourself, what exactly did  Ayurveda do here? I mean, sure, the person took Ayurvedic prescriptions and the condition got  better but it could have been due to any of these factors, it becomes hard to determine  exactly what the contribution of Ayurveda is. It’s even harder with something like  homeopathy. Ayurveda at least has active molecules in its formulations. Homeopathy  doesn’t even have that. Because - and you can look this up - one of the pr

inciples of  homeopathy is this - “the greater the dilution, the greater the potency of the medicine”.  Homeopathic formulations are hence diluted so much that not a single active molecule  remains in the solution. And what the patient ends up getting turns out to be just  water. So why does homeopathy have such a shitty principle? Because back when they came up  with it, basic chemistry wasn’t well understood. Nobody knew that diluting a solution so much  completely removed everything dissolved

in it. In fact, all these schools of medicine - Ayurveda,  Unani, Siddha - they were all made at a time when we didn’t know science well, we didn’t know how to  evaluate what actually worked, and worst of all, these systems didn't update themselves  as our knowledge advanced. Even today, they’re mostly still the same with their disproven  core principles unchanged. We’ll talk about this failure to update themselves later on in the video  but right now I want to point out this irony. The irony t

hat despite the fact that these  “medicines” aren’t made with basic scientific principles or the fact that these “medicines”  might not actually do anything in the body against the disease, despite all this, all these schools  have survived through the years simply because of the fact that sometimes recovery of a patient is  not always because of the medicine, it maybe due to something else. For centuries, we haven’t  been able to recognize this. It’s time we do. At this point some of you might

ask me, “Hey, this  same thing can be said of modern medicine drugs. Recovery of a patient can be due to other factors.  So how do you know these medicines actually work?" The question we must ask ourselves is, how can  this drug or medicine or substance aid in recovery from disease? By controlling all these other  factors that influence results. And by controlling any other biases or confounding factors that  might lead to a misinterpretation of results. Almost always in medicine, and especiall

y when  testing a new drug, we use a Large Scale Double Blind Randomized Placebo Controlled Trial.  This may look complicated but it’s actually pretty simple. Each of these words mean  something and they’re actually a part of the study design that allows us to eliminate  one or more of these confounding factors, and tells us that the results of the study are solely  because of this medicine and not something else. Whenever you see a study or a paper  that reports on the effectiveness of a medici

ne - make sure the study  is designed keeping these factors in mind. Often studies come out that are just  poorly designed and you’ll be able to spot them yourself if you understand what all  this means. Let’s start with an example. Let’s say the whole world is hit with a new  pandemic that causes everyone to get a fever. And pretty soon someone comes up with a pill that they  claim can reduce your fever. But they’ve never tested it. Instead they’re giving that job to you.  And they’ll give you

as much supply of the pill as you need and as many test subjects as you need.  So how do you figure out if it actually works? What if you give it to someone with  a fever and see if their fever comes down? Wait. One person? That can’t be  enough - even if the fever comes down, what if it was just a fluke? Why don't we try  this with another person - in fact lets try it on many more people. The more people we try  it on, the more we guarantee that the pill works. There is still more to do. But th

is is a  good place to start. You’ve increased the scale of your trial to make it as large as possible -  you’ve made it a large scale trial. 3 more to go. You notice that even though you’ve made  it large scale, all your test subjects are from the same age group. What if the people you  chose were otherwise young and healthy and maybe that helped their bodies fight the disease more  efficiently? You need to test your meds on some older people. But then again, why just limit your  search based o

n age, let’s get people of all ages, genders, social backgrounds, from different  geographical locations etc. - all sorts of random people. You’ve randomized your  trial. Two terms down, two more to go. But if you just look at what you’ve done so far,  you’ve eliminated a lot of factors that would have otherwise influenced results. If a person in  your trial is eating a diet that helps them, someone else might not be, if someone  exercises a lot, someone else might not, if someone is young and h

ealthy, someone else  might not be, if one person has good genetics that help them fight a disease, someone else  might not. You’ve basically averaged out all these factors across the whole group, in  such a way that their overall effect is zero. So large scale randomization takes  care of all these factors. But you’re still not done. What if the fever is  something that'll resolve on it’s own, and the pill you gave had no effect? Or what if  the pill has some kind of placebo effect? That is, th

e mental relief that the patient  feels that they’re being taken care of and they’re getting medicine is what  heals them, and not the medicine itself. There’s no way to test that using this method.  How about we divide them both into two groups, and give only one group the actual pill, and  give the other group something they think is the pill but actually has no medical effect? We  call this kind of a dummy medicine a placebo. Now, if the pill has no effect and  people are recovering on their

own, then both groups will recover, the  same will happen if there is only some placebo effect. Both groups will recover.  But if the pill is the reason for the recovery, then only the medicine group will  recover and not the placebo group. This kind of a trial where we give the  medicine to two groups and compare the efficacy of the medicine against a placebo,  is called a placebo controlled trial, with the two groups being called the medicine  group and the placebo group or the control group.

We are controlling the factors that  might influence our results. And with that we've explained the third part of our complex  name. And already you can see we’ve taken care of nearly every factor other than the  pill that might influence our results. There’s one term left and one major factor - bias. A bias is a preconceived notion about something.  And that leads you to perceive something that’s happening in a certain way. For example you may  feel you’re getting the medicine and that might le

ad to you attributing your recovery to the  medicine, irrespective of whether you’re in the medicine group or the placebo group. We wanna  know if this bias has any role in recovery, that’s why we don’t inform participants as  to whether they’re getting the medicine or the placebo. In other words, we blind  them. Now by comparing both groups, we can tell how much of a role  this bias played in the recovery. But this is only single blinding. What about  double blinding? It’s not just the particip

ants who may be biased. The medical officers who  administer the pill and examine the patiens also could be biased. For example, if they knew  which was the medicine group, maybe they might be very thorough in their examination of that group  - asking detailed questions, using instruments to measure temperature, BP, pulse rate, etc., but  for the placebo group they might just ask basic questions like, "has the fever gone down?" and  may not do a detailed analysis, because they’re biased in favou

r of the medicine and this might  influence results. So what do we do? We blind them too. Now they also don’t know which group is  the medicine group and which, the placebo group. This kind of a trial we call it double blind. And  with that we’ve covered the last term in our name. If you had a pandemic in your hands and you had a  medicine that passed this kind of testing then you can be very sure that that medicine is going to be  very effective. Because at every step of the way, we stopped to

think, "hey, what could be the  reasons the medicine may not be effective, but still we’re seeing recovery?" And we  eliminate those reasons one by one. In fact, this method thouroughly tries to prove that a  medicine might not work - and if the results are still in favour of the medicine, that’s when we  say - “hey you know what? This actually works!" This kind of testing is not just a good test for  your fever pill, but every conceivable medicine or substance on the planet can be tested this 

way. Every pill, drug, or vaccine, that comes from modern medicine has to be tested this way  before it's approved for sale in the market. If this doesn’t happen, then we don’t know if the  medicine actually does what it claims to do. The amount of effort that the designers of this kind of testing must've gone to  just to come up with all this, is just insane - I can only imagine. The other  advantage of this kind of testing is that safety of a drug automatically gets tested. In the  process of

testing, you gave the pill to so many participants. Any adverse event that might happen  because of the pill would be documented by now. I hope I’ve explained the importance of doing  this kind of testing on any medicine that gets approved for sale. RCT is the gold standard  for testing the efficacy of anything that can be called medicine. Not only that, but this  kind of testing is also important from a safety standpoint. And now you can probably see where  the problem might be with alternative

medicine. On the 9th of November 2014, the Indian Government  under Prime Minister Modi converted a small body called the ISM&H - The Indian Systems of Medicine  & Homeopathy into it’s own ministry called AYUSH. Which stands for Ayurveda, Yoga &  Naturopathy, Unani, Sidha and Homeopathy. If you’re wondering how Naturopathy got to be in  there when it’s not even a part of the acronym, I’m wondering the same thing. Basically,  these are all systems that don’t come under Scientific Medicine. In ot

her words, AYUSH  is India’s ministry for alternative medicine. Now all of these - let’s remove yoga because  it isn't really a system of medicine and it probably deserves it's own video - these  were all developed in a prescientific era, back when we had theories like the five  elements, or the Panchabhootas which, supposedly, everything was made up of. And  Ayurveda, Siddha, and Unani, believe that these five elements combine to form the humours  that the human body was made up of. Ayurveda, f

or example, calls these humors the three doshas  - Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Not only do these five elements or humours or doshas have no evidence  for them, but today we know exactly what the human body is made up of. And it has nothing  to do with these five elements. In other words, the theory that forms the basis of these systems  of medicine is completely disproven. But do they update themselves based on these new  learnings and understandings? Nope. Now, most of these are points I’ve spoken 

about in previous videos. So the ones among you who have watched them might feel like I’m  being repetitive. But I feel this video will go out to a lot more people and I have to  make sure I cover every point thoroughly. Most of my criticisms in  this video will be against Ayurveda. Because AYUSH is basically 70-80% Ayurveda, and it is the system that’s generally  recognized as the Indian system of medicine. But most of the criticisms I direct at Ayurveda  can be said of these other systems as w

ell. Now we've discussed that the theories that  all these forms of alternative medicine are based on are extremely flawed, but then why  do they survive? One reason is because the patient’s recovery is due to multiple other  factors - and need not be due to the medicine, but people who use the alternative  medicine may attribute the recovery entirely to the alternative medicine.  I’ve explained all this in detail in the previous section for anyone who might have  skipped all that and jumped str

aight here. The other reason is AYUSH. The way  it promotes alternative medicine, you’d think it was a lobbying firm. Remember that extremely flawed study  citing which Patanjali released their Ayurveda remedy for COVID, called Coronil? Guess  who was with them every step of the way? The Ayush ministry - from the banners to the release press  conference. Remember the promotional statement they had made about how it was homeopathy  and ayurveda that cured Prince Charles of Covid-19? Against which

Prince Charles’s office  had come out and call bull****? Or how about it promoting the idea of immune boosting during the  pandemic? When that whole thing is just a scam? One of Ayush’s aims is to promote the  systems of medicine that come under it. But since when did misinformation become  synonymous with promotion? Obviously this is not all they do. They do a lot more but  these are some clear red flags that I see. I recently happened to go to NIMHANS,  Bangalore. A National Centre for Neurol

ogy and Mental Health run by the Government. One  of the most reputed institutes of neurology that I know of. That’s when I found out  that they have an AYUSH department. When a patient finishes their consultation here,  after their regular neurology consultation, they are asked to go to an Ayurveda specialist.  These kinds of Ayurveda departments are there in all reputed Government Medical Institutions  now. So why are they there? Do they do any consultation or prescriptions themselves? Not  re

ally. They are just there at the end of all consultations just to give lifestyle advice. I’m  not sure how helpful this is, or if it’s any help at all. Or if there’s any evidence showing  benefit from this kind of consultation. I mean people go to regular doctors without any  of this in private hospitals and they’re fine. You know what this looks like  to me? An effort to legitimize AYUSH medicines in the eyes of patients who might  not know any better. I couldn’t help but feel that this is like

a dilution of modern medical  care. I mean if the alternative medicines under AYUSH are genuinely beneficial, wouldn’t those  results be apparent when we do research on them? The answer is a resounding yes. Take aspirin. It  comes from the bark of a willow tree. The only reason we have this medicine today is because we  studied and researched the herbal remedy, isolated the exact compound that's behind the beneficial  effects and processed it to get aspirin. Take artemisinin. It’s an extract fr

om a  traditional chinese medicine herb that's used in the treatment of malaria. The  researcher who’s scientific research led to it’s discovery, Tu Youyou won  the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015. So what exactly is modern medicine? It’s a  repository of drugs and procedures that have a desired effect on the body. Something that  has been established through proper research like what I’ve described earlier in this  video. The drug may originally come from traditional medicine, or a herb, or an

animal,  or a bacteria or a fungus. It doesn’t matter. So yes, I definitely see potential in  ayurveda. Even though its theory is flawed, it’s been around for more than  2000 years. This is enough time to accumulate a vast repository of  herbs for various conditions. Herbs that might have active components that can  be isolated and extracted through research. That's the key - research. Positive effects,  if there are any, have to be established through research. People all over the world  are s

uffering from debilitating diseases some of which are incurable. So, shouldn’t  they have access to an effective treatment no matter where it’s from? Why classify  medicine on the basis of its origin like as Ayurveda or Homeopathy? We should classify  medicine on the basis of its effectiveness on whether it works or not. Even if it comes  from alternative medicine. And by the way, you know what they call alternative  medicine that works? Medicine. What’s more, this same testing and  research can

lead to better safety. So, is this kind of research being done by AYUSH? DR ABBY: If you go look at the AYUSH Ministry's  portal on the CCRAS web portal, you can actually see a lot of these studies have been registered  there. But none of them are actually published. And even if they are published, they are going  to get published in some dubious, low level, third rate journal like Journal of Integrated  Medicine, or Journal of Yogic Knowledge or something like that, or the Tree of Knowledge an

d  all that. And recently they even published a paper in the Journal of Magical Thinking - there  is journal like that. And the publisher is- I mean the publisher's name is also like that.  That was actually reported by newspapers also. So that is the stuff that they do. I mean you  take money and you do some vague work and you publish in some dubious journal and make it  a news item. The newspaper will lap it up, all the social media, online media everybody  lap it up and people think something

great has happened. Absolutely nothing has happened! I mean  there is not a single drug - So there are some yeah I think this is very important because you  mentioned that has something been done - so there are some proprietary drugs that has been designed  by AYUSH Ministry along with CCRAS with the help of other institutions, right? So they have these  drugs for diabetes like BGR 64 and you know stuff like that. But if you actually look at that, there  is no validated or replicated proper pee

r-reviewed published data on these drugs. They have been  directly marketed as something that the AYUSH Ministry or the CCRAS has identified as being  something of value for the people and a lot of people and I think The Hindu has written about  how dubious those studies were and how much of a fraudulent product this particular drug was. So  you have a lot of drugs like that, where there is no actual research done but it is marketed on the  basis of fake claims that research has been done. PRANA

V: Are they doing some research which  might have some positive outcome in the future? DR ABBY: I am yet to see a proper research that  has - I mean a good quality research with good methodology, yet to come out from the stables of  AYUSH. I'm sure they are doing a lot of research because a lot of money is being used - or a lot  of funds have been given to AYUSH to carry out research and the website talks about a lot of  research that is ongoing, some of which are completed also. But I don't see

any of them being  published in any reputed journals, or any of those with a proper methodology, or some solid quality  kind of trial. Because if that had happened, we would definitely know about it. So what we get  instead, are small pilot trials, or some basic science trials, some computational studies, some  observational studies from not only the public Ayurveda institutes but from private  Ayurveda companies. But this does not translate to anything clinically. So I have not  yet seen a goo

d uh publication or a research study that has been fully funded by the ministry  and that has come out from the stables of AYUSH. At this point I should address something.  This video seems awfully one-sided, doesn’t it? I’m sure my haters would  have noticed it. I’m sure I’ll get a comment like “oh why didn’t you include an  interview an ayurveda practitioner?” And here’s my answer - you think an ayurveda  practitioner would want to give me that interview and have their name attached to it  aft

er they know what the topic of this video is? They risk having their license revoked by  any ayurveda body that doesn’t like what I say. You’re welcome to prove me wrong though. If  you're an ayurveda practitioner and you're watching this and you’d like to have a discussion  with me publicly, feel free. I’ll even tell you what you can do to convince me I’m wrong.  Just show me evidence. And not some vague conclusion from a random paper. But a proper well  designed study with a peer-reviewed conc

lusion. And to anyone who’s asking me where’s  my journalistic integrity? Why am I not showing both sides of the argument? This is  like asking a journalist showing the shape of the earth is round and asking them why they’re  not showing what flat earthers say. Because the truth doesn’t lie in the middle. It clearly  lies to one side. It’s not your job to show what these guys are saying and what these  guys are saying. It’s your job to put the truth out there and back up your arguments  with evi

dence for why it is the truth. OK so, we’ve established that  AYUSH Drugs are both ineffective, and unsafe. If that were the case, then why  are they available in the market at all? DR ABBY: Because these are not marketed  as medicines, these are marketed as health supplements or nutritious supplements. They  don't they don't enter the domain of medicine, right? They are not drugs. For somebody  to call something a drug, it should be an isolated compound which has specific effects  at a molecula

r, cellular, tissue, organ level in the body, and you should know how that drug  gets metabolized, how it gets out of the body, at what dose it is effective, at what dose it  is unsafe. Dietary supplements and nutrition supplements or food supplements do not require the  rigor that we need for drugs in clinical trials. So they escape it. They just need a certificate of  good manufacturing practices from the alternative medicine authorities or industrial authorities,  whoever that is, and they ca

n directly market it. They may legally be recognized as supplements,  but people treat them as medicines. They are gonna take these “medicines” when they're  ill, because they think it’ll help them, because that’s what they’ve been told.  They need to be legally protected. I decided to look at what sort of regulations  exists for these medicines. On the AYUSH website it talks about a law - the  Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940, and Rules 1945 which provide the rules & guidelines for  standards and q

uality of alternative medicines. For this section I decided to take the  opinion of someone who is an expert in these laws. Advocate Akash Sathyanandan deals  with these laws and discussed the same with me. ADV. AKASH: When we say about the requirements,  let's say for an ayurvedic medicine, if it is described in texts, the ingredients,  the indication and all those details would be as per what is already written down in the texts.  And there is no safety study that is required, because because

it has passed that test  of time it is assumed that these are safe. If you wanna see the legal regulation yourself, this is the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules 1945 and  you can see it here - Ayurveda, Siddha & Unani drugs - safety study - not required. Proof  of effectiveness - not required. If it’s a proprietary drug like Patanjali’s Coronil, safety  study - not required. Proof of effectiveness, just a pilot study is enough. And remember  that horrible Coronil study was a pilot study. A pilot study

is basically a smal  scale study just to see if there is any warrant for a bigger large scale study. And by the way I'll leave that link to Drugs and Cosmetics Rules 1945 below,  you can go check it out yourself. I’m just reading this and I’m literally shocked. What responsible laws regarding  medicines would say something like this? PRANAV: So when I visited Abby in his lab and  he showed me reports of what he analyzed in these "medicines" and what he found. There were  a lot of things like ste

roids and modern medicine drugs for certain conditions, that were found  in the alternative medicine formulations - like Ayurveda formulations had steroids in them. So  those are clearly adulterants. So this seems like it should be illegal. What does the law actually  say about adulterants in these formulations? ADV. AKASH: If they are complying to the good  manufacturing practices as they are required by law, these kind of adulterants wouldn't be  there but what I understand from you, is that t

hese adulterants were not by accident but more  with a purpose and that is something that can't be stopped by law. Unless the law enforcement  agencies also step up and stop this practice. PRANAV: Yeah that's also something I want to ask  you - like is the enforcement regarding this law, what is the enforcement like? Is it rigid?  Is it actually happening or not happening? ADV. AKASH: It is unfortunately not happening.  Or if it all it is happening, it is not happening to the extent that is desi

rable. If they dont care about safety testing then  who even cares about adulterants? Nobody is gonna check for them. It’s truly laughable how  much regard for safety these legislations have. If AYUSH were a company, their motto  should be “promoting alternative medicines at any cost.” Sometimes that  cost is public health. What can we do? We’ve seen how damaging AYUSH has been to the country. But is  the situation similar anywhere else? Alternative medicine is not just a problem  isolated to In

dia. It’s a problem the world over. But what’s it like? Does it have  government support anywhere else like it does in India? Are there Government bodies  like AYUSH that act like a lobbying firm? DR ABBY: Alternative medicine is global.  So every country has its own specialized alternative medicine. In Japan, they have  something known as Kampo medicine, that is their traditional medicine. China has  TCM - Traditional Chinese Medicine. Even if you go to Europe and U.S they have  their own - in

South America and all, they have their own kind of traditional  practices those are traditional healers. But I think India is the only country where this  is being taught as a profession over five years giving a bachelor's degree, a master's degree and  sometimes you can even go for a PhD in Ayurveda. That’s right. There are bachelors and  masters courses in all these medicines. In fact the entrance exam, NEET through  which students take up both these types of courses is a single entrance exam.

The top  ranking students of this exam get a seat in a prestigious modern medical institution like  AIIMS and get to do their MBBS while the bottom ranking students have two choices ahead  of them - either repeat a year of learning and preparing for the entrance exam and take it  again and hopefully get a seat in an MBBS course or go for one of these alternative  medicine courses like the BAMS or the BHMS. A lot of students just opt for the latter because  they don’t want to be stagnant in life

. They wanna get ahead. And in their eyes alternative medicine  is not really a bad option. They’ve probably seen ayurveda and homeopathy doctors all their lives  and now there’s this government body promoting it, so it’s clearly not a bad career option, at least  in India. They’ll end up choosing an alternative medicine course, BAMS or whatever, not knowing  the pseudo-scientific nature of these medicines. I wanted to get a perspective of how alternative  medicine is handled in the UK. I got a

chance to sit down with Dr. Rohin Francis, who is  a cardiologist in the UK and also runs a popular Medical YouTube Channel called Medlife  Crisis, which I’ll link below. He’s also been pretty vocal against alternative medicine  on his channel. Here’s what he had to say - DR ROHIN: Well, I don't think the UK deals with  alternative medicine particularly well. I don't think it's any worse than comparable countries and  maybe there are some things that we do a little bit better. I think there are

lots of countries  that do do things worse - I think India is far less well regulated in terms of unproven medical  therapies I think the US is far worse. But, the UK has at least one thing going for it which is that  we've got a Nationalized Health System - the NHS. So it is really a single system that looks after  the whole country, and the advantage to that is it's centrally controlled, so this is taxpayer  money. So there's a lot of scrutiny on what can and can't be provided. And until a few

years ago,  you know within my time practicing as a doctor, things like Acupuncture and Homeopathy were quite  widely available on the NHS, and there was a lot of criticism from doctors saying look you can't  be spending taxpayer money on things that don't have good evidence. And they were withdrawn. And  a lot of countries take a lead from the NHS - and this is a body called NICE the National Institute  of Health and Care Excellence - it's an acronym - but what it does is, it sets guidelines a

nd a  lot of other countries base their practice on these guidelines so that I think is is a positive.  But the big problem with every country in terms of regulating alternative medicine, the UK has the  same, is that the NHS can regulate doctors who have a license or nurses but people who just set  themselves up as a medical healer or therapist or you know even there are some terms which are  not medically protected. So online, you'll see people calling themselves, say, a  dermatologist which i

s not actually a legally protected term. We've seen people  like chiropractors start calling themselves doctor in recent years, and these things have  just gradually crept in to erode the public understanding of who are you actually seeing,  what are their qualifications, and if you are not a member of a professional body like the  General Medical Council that oversees doctors, then you know who are you actually answerable  to? So there's no group that is going to be regulating these people who

are outside of  Professional Standards, except the government, and you know, frankly the government doesn't  do a very good job looking after these things. After talking to Dr. Rohin, I realized how  similar yet so different things are in the UK and in India. We may not have socialized  healthcare but it’s still the citizen’s money, the taxpayers' money that’s being used to fund a  body that is making an existing problem worse. The AYUSH ministry's budget this year 2023  stands at 3647 crore rup

ees. And it’s been constantly increasing every year. And most  of that money being used to conduct research that has no proper clinical outcome. You could ask  yourself why is no genuine research being done? I mean it’s no secret how RCTs are conducted. If a  mere YouTuber like me could learn about it and put it in a video, I’m sure the research departments  at AYUSH will be able to conduct genuine research with RCTs and show the results. Why haven’t they  done so yet? I think it’s because the r

esults will be negative. And AYUSH doesn’t want that. Badly  designed research with positive results can at least be shown on their AYUSH portal. Negative  results can’t. If they keep doing the former, they keep getting money from the government  at no cost right? Wrong. They are doing this at the cost of public health. Their  clear negligence on safety has a cost. Outside India also, Ayurveda does not have a  good reputation. The US FDA for example, warned against the use of Ayurveda for the pr

esence  of toxic metals like lead, mercury and arsenic, etc. If you’re familiar with the verses of  classical Ayurveda, then you’ll know that these verses describe lead, mercury, etc., toxic metals,  as ingredients. This wasn’t an accident that these toxic components were found in these medicines.  The primitive “science” of Ayurveda considers lead, mercury etc. as genuine ingredients. Now I’m saying all this and I’m sure this video would have gotten a ton of hate comments by now.  There is a se

ction of the people whose livelihoods directly depend upon alternative medicine.  Like its practitioners. They are not gonna like this video. There are the ones who think I’m  attacking their religion with this video. I don’t give a rat’s a** about them. It’s the former group  that I care about and we need to talk about them. Put yourselves in the shoes of an  alternative medicine practitioner, and think about why you went into that  career, you’ll probably point to all the ayurveda and homeopat

hy practitioners you’ve  seen as a kid, how the government did many things to portray it as a good career  option like forming a ministry around it, or merging all the medical entrance  exams - for both alternative medicine and regular medicine into one. The same one that you  wrote that led you to the career you are in now. Can you be blamed for the career you’re in  today? And now, here’s this guy on YouTube painting all alternative medicine in a  bad light? That’s your profession. Of course y

ou’re gonna have an angry reaction.  What about all the careers being affected? What about all the families that depend on  the money they earn from this profession? To all such people I wanna say, the purpose of  medicine is not to give aomeone a profession. The purpose of medicine is to treat the sick. I’m  not making this video with the intent to attack someone's profession. As a science communicator,  it’s my job to help people differentiate between what’s scientific and what’s not. Especial

ly if  it concerns public health. But at the same time, people whose profession is alternative  medicine - they can't be doctors, but they still need a profession  that they can earn money from. I had a chat with Dr. Abby about this. Like,  someone who’s just finished a bachelor's degree in alternative medicine, who’s just  learning about how pseudoscientific it is, and doesn't want to practice it,  what career options does he/she have? DR ABBY: I've had a lot of such young graduates  messaging

me on Twitter and on my email. They want to know what can they do next, to improve  their chances at a profession/career. So initially a lot of these courses were completely shunned  away from other courses that they could branch out into. For example, if I do my MBBS, if I  want to go into Hospital Administration I can do an MHA - Masters in Hospital Administration.  Or if I wanted to do a public health course I can do a Masters in Public Health - MPH. Or I can  even do a diploma or a fellowshi

p. That option is open for me because I have done my MBBS. But  if I have done my BAMS or BHMS, earlier on, these options were not available, because that's  not a real medical degree that you're holding. But now a lot of institutes including government  institutes have opened up the option of BAMS or BHMS graduates to opt for other branches  - to, you know, to take complete U-turns. So somebody who's done a BHMS can go do a Masters  in Public Health and then start doing work in public health. A

nd that has nothing to do with  the stuff that they have learned. Public health has its own set of principles and protocols  and practices which are modern medicine based and they can directly go into that. I know a lot  of BAMS graduates who have - initially they used to do something known as medical transcription,  and went on to being medical transcriptionists. Some of them do a master's degree in,  like I said, public health, or nutrition, or something like that, and they can just branch  ou

t so there are a lot of options there. I mean, going back and doing another bachelor's degree  is not that feasible for everyone, but then there are BHMS and BAMS graduates who have actually  gone back and done MBBS and then gone and taken the right path. But that is expensive; you  have to again spend a lot of time studying, and I mean again studying the degree, for the  degree also - so that's not feasible for everyone. Nutrition, Public Health, Hospital  Administration, Medical Transcription,

Paraclinical & Paramedical options,  Physiotherapy, Pharmacology & Research These are some of the fields that an  alternative medicine graduate can go into. The choice will be up to them. Will  they decide to side with public health, or look their patients in the eye  and give them potentially harmful substances in the name of medicine? Or  at the very least give them false hope. During my interview with Dr Abby,  something he said stood out to me - DR ABBY: So at that point even I was unaware 

that herbal medicines can cause so much of liver injury. I did not know. Every doctor and  even most doctors now, at that time I was also of the opinion that you know herbal medicines are  fine as they're safe, they don't do anything. This has been true with nearly every doctor I’ve  come across. They treat alternative medicine as something ineffective but harmless. They might  even advice their patients that they may take alternative medicines if their condition  is benign. Their thinking is u

sually along the lines of “Hey, if there’s some  benefit that the patient might get from taking these alternative medicines,  like from the Placebo effect, let them." I think Doctors need to learn about  alternative medicine in their syllabus, in medical school. I think their curriculum must  include alternative medicines, how they work, their safety, and effectiveness. This is  the only way to keep them better informed. Why? Because avoidable public health burdens like  untested drugs and suppl

ements in the market that cause liver damage is something they themselves  are going to have to deal with. It’s better they know about this than be forced to learn about  it when a patient complaining of such issues turns up at their door. If they’re informed, they  can keep their patients better informed as well. Let me ask you something. Why should  medicine even be scientific? Assuming alternative medicine is somehow made  harmless - ineffective but harmless, what’s wrong with it just existin

g there  alongside regular medicine? I mean science won’t accept it, sure. But so what?  Is there any problem because of it? In 2003, Steve Jobs got diagnosed with  a rare kind of tumour in his pancreas. Instead of immediately opting for surgery  to remove it, he chose to treat it using alternative medicine. When he saw that wasn’t  working he finally opted for surgery in 2004. But it was too late. He had cancer and it had  begun to spread. He had to take chemotherapy and radiation treatment whi

ch kept him alive  for a few more years, but he eventually died. This is one thing alternative medicine  can do. It can cause a delay in patients getting the right kind of treatment. Just  because that option of an alternative treatment exists and is available to  people, they might wrongly choose it. The other thing is that since modern  medicine is subjected to large scale RCTs before any drug is marketed, we know  exactly what's the rate of effectiveness that a drug has for a particular condi

tion.  That reliability is completely missing in the case of alternative medicine. It’s like taking  a shot in the dark and hoping to hit the mark. There’s one more reason, let’s assume your child  has some serious medical condition. And you’re desperately looking for a treatment. Someone  comes along, and he says he knows exactly what your child has and he has the treatment to cure  it. In your desperation, you believe him. Because you’re not looking for any science or logic - you  just want yo

ur child to get better. There are many fraudsters who look for desperate people just so  they can scam them. Because when you're desperate, you don't think logically, you think emotionally.  And that's like the perfect time to take advantage of someone. This can only happen when there are  no laws in place keeping a check on what kind of medicines gets approved onto the market.  And this kind of a market where there are no laws in place for protecting people - that's  the perfect playground for

these fraudsters. So in summary, why do we need  medicine to be scientific? 1. To prevent delay in the right kind of treatment 2. Make medicine reliable 3. To prevent fraud Now I’m not trying to avoid talking about the  flaws of modern medicine. There are several like unavailability to some sections of society,  the expensive medicines, corrupt doctors, etc. But I’m gonna talk about  all that in another video. Right now I wanna shed a light  on what kind of medicines and what kind of regulations

for these  medicines are there in the market. I shouldn’t even have to make this video.  And you shouldn’t have to watch this to understand how RCT’s are done  and how medicines are tested. Your country's government should do that  for you. What do we pay them taxes for? It’s the government's job to sort  out fact from misinformation, and set regulations accordingly.  To enforce safety laws and maybe even educate the public. It’s not  the people’s job to learn all this. And when public money co

mes in, instead of  putting thousands of crores in alternative medicine, maybe use some of that money to  subsidize existing modern medicine care, train more actual medical doctors, build modern  healthcare in rural areas, educate the public on how traditional medicine can be flawed,  and most importantly, again - subsidize. Also, separate the entrance exams. There should  be two different exams for students who wanna go into regular medicine and into something  alternative. A student shouldn’t

have to choose a career in alternative medicine  just because of one bad exam result. And if the laws around safety and regulation  in medicines aren’t being enforced or followed properly, at least make it legally mandatory  for manufacturers to put warning labels saying that this supplement has been known  to cause liver damage in some people. And if the government doesn’t  follow through on this, maybe they shouldn’t be in power.  Good thing we’re a democracy. Or are we? I’ve worked really har

d on this video. It took  longer than I expected to finally release it. And so financially also this video is  a big investment for me. Unfortunately, these kinds of videos are not what brands want to  sponsor. I’m literally criticizing the government of India. No brand would want to be associated  with such a video. I don’t know if this video is gonna get demonetized, shadowbanned or even  taken down. But it's a risk I’m willing to take. Because I think this is content that people need.  And yo

u guys really like it. So it's your support that keeps me going. If you’d like to support  me, you can find the links below. Patreon, buymeacoffee, UPI, YouTube memberships,  Thanks button, website and merch, many options at your disposal. That full podcast  with Dr. Abby is coming out soon, so stay tuned. My gratitude goes out to Dr. Abby Philips, Dr.  Rohin Francis and Advocate Akash Sathyanandhan for helping me make this video. I wanna ask you what did you think of a video like this? An inten

se deep dive. Should  I do more of them? Less of them? Let me know. If you liked this video, check out this  one where I analyzed an actual study for its design. I’ll see you in the next  one. Till then remember, Science is Dope.