FEATURE
Who says it and how?
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
Charles Darwin.
Winston Churchill once said that in any statement there are three aspects which matter. They are * who is making that statement, * how is s/he saying it and * finally,what is said? Of the three, Churchill felt, that the last is the least important. Therefore when a big man makes a statement then the powers that be get energised to act! Reading a news item a few days ago about a statement by a great Sarkari technologist I felt that the future of our ancient medical care delivery system using the nature's bounty of herbal drugs and the folk medicines in India, which has been the backbone of medical care for "times out of mind," has a bright future. This statement came from one of the country's top sarkari technologists, Sam Pitroda, in the presence of a business tycoon of Bangalore who is in western drug business, at the inaugural ceremony of a new private university wishing to research the Indian wisdom to be scientifically validated!Pitroda made the statement with all his governmental authority. Now that Churchill's prediction could come true, I am very happy for the Indian wisdom that has found patronage at the highest level. I only hope that this becomes a reality sooner than later for the common good of mankind. The present system of western reductionist chemical molecules in the treatment of diseases has become a curse with adverse drug reactions being the rule rather than exception. In the USA alone every week four Jumbo Jet load of people die of adverse drug reactions, one of the leading causes of death, deadlier than cancer and heart attack. Sam Pitroda was advising the new University to get science out of our ancient "shastras". It is a bit too late in the day as German scientists, especially quantum physicists like Hans Peter Durr, the emeritus director of the famous Max Planck Institute, a Nobel Laureate, has already shown how important the Indian wisdom is? His invention that matter and energy are but the two faces of the same coin, which he initially called "adualtiy," now he seems to prefer the Indian wisdom of Shankara’s "advaita" as a better name for the new science of quantum physics!
.The World Academy of Authentic Healing Sciences, which is now fifteen years old, (www.waahs.com), has been authenticating ancient methods successfully. It has a body of fifteen world renowned scientists from all over the world. They also publish their own journal (www.thejsho.com). Their good work has neither caught the imagination of the press in India nor the attention of our slumbering government. I was so pleased reading the above news item and seeing the colour photographs of the event proclaiming to do just what is being done in many places, but this time the pronouncements are coming from the horse's mouth. If Churchill was right it will take off for sure. Thank God for that, if pursued diligently and sincerely,this will be the saviour of mankind for sure. I have a couple of suggestions for the new university lest they should fall into the usual traps of aping western scientific methods applied to authenticate Indian wisdom wholesale.
The first and the foremost suggestion is about the difference between the western and eastern sciences. The research methodologies should be totally different. In the past there have been governmental efforts to study herbal drugs using the western method of trying to analyse the chemical contents of the herbal drugs on the same lines as reductionist chemical molecules of the western medicine. They came to grief as herbs should be studied as a whole and not in bits and pieces. Sam Pitroda should make the scientists to understand this one line from the Vedas which tells it all. “This is a whole and that is a whole; if a bit is removed from the whole the bit becomes a whole and the whole remains a whole.” To give an example there are 43 scientific studies on garlic pearls in the world literature and all of them showed that garlic is good for cooking but not as amedicine. The flaw was not in garlic but in the method. Garlic pearls did not contain garlic. They had sulfhydryl group removed garlic to avoid the “bad” smell of garlic! Without the SH group, the drug is not garlic at all. To be useful as drug garlic has to be chewed raw in the mouth and kept there for a few seconds for the salivary trypsin to convert the inactive allanin in the garlic into activeallicin. This can only happen in the human mouth and the garlic hasto be whole. Raw garlic has many, many medicinal qualities in many illnesses especially the viral minor illness syndromes.Kienzel at the Late Rustum Roy’s laboratory in the Penn State University has been able to get atomic hydrogen from salt water; leaving the water and the hydrogen as whole entities. They are using that atomic hydrogen for running motor engines. The usual western hydrogen extraction from water leaves only nascent oxygen behind (not water as whole) that eats into the motor engine. See the “Purnam idam and Poornam adaha” dictum elaborated above.
In addition, healing powers of herbal medicines, which are in very small doses in their natural habitat inside that herb, depend on the medicine’s environment (inside the herb as a whole) rather than its pure chemical extract form. Good example will be a tomato. Tomato, which has a small dose of Vitamin C in addition to many other important chemicals, is strongly bio-positive while Vitamin C in large doses in isolation is bio-negative. This process is called HORMESIS. Herbal drugs are useful in therapeutics for another vital reason. Herbs as a whole are accepted by the body’s inherent wisdom (healer inside) as food and used for the body’s own good. All reductionist chemicals that we use in modern medicine are treated by the human body’s wisdom as poison and sent to the liver to get destroyed, damaging the liver in the bargain. It is only what remains (after the liver tries to destroy the drug) that might work on the human body, the so called “first pass effect” in medical school pharmacology classes. This was so elegantly demonstrated by a leading western scientist, Douglas C. Wallace, a professor of genetics using his latest MIT chip (mitochondrial chip). Douglas was able to show how almost all western chemical molecules are rejected by the body while herbal drugs-Tibetan and Chinese-are accepted as food by the human body. Although Indian Ayurveda is more authentic in the world people like Wallace outside do not know about it thanks to our governmental apathy towards Ayurveda and its step motherly treatment. Douglas’s monumental study that gives credence to my forty year old hypothesis is published in one of the leading American journals, Genetics (2008; 179: 727).
The next warning I would like to give to the new university is that the time honoured western randomised controlled trials (RCTs) should not be the method for herbal research. RCTs have brought misery for mankind. West also has recognised that fact. Sir Michel Rawlins, the chief of UKs NICE (national institute of clinical excellence) was of the opinion, in one of his Harevian orations at the Royal College of Physicians in 2008, had this to say. “The RCTs have been put on an undeservedly high pedestal”! The future of herbal science depends on observationaloutcomes research, studying patient outcomes rather than body parameter outcome studies (cross sectional) like lowering blood pressure, sugar etc. The latter are only surrogate end points. Patient outcome is the final end point. The (in)famous multiple risk factor interventional trial, MRFIT study, clearly showed that while the so called risk factors can all be controlled successfully by reductionist chemicals the final risk of premature death is not altered; in fact, the drug treated people have higher precocious deaths! The study has been a boondoggle after spending millions of dollars and twenty five years’ follow up! The new university must not try to ape the west and do copy-cat and me-too research, but must learn from the mistakes west committed in scientific research. John Ioannidis, a Stanford professor has shown that almost 95% of western reductionist research is flawed seriously!
Let India show the world the greatness of Indian wisdom of Ayurveda and the time honoured folk medicine in India which has been successfully used for nearly 1500 years in India (Folk Medicine in India by OP Jaggi of AIIMS). Thank you, Sam Pitroda, for waking up to the reality to help the hapless disease sufferers.
“I seem to have been like a child playing on the seashore, finding now and then a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.”
Isaac Newton.
Author is the former Vice Chancellor of Manipal University. He can be contacted on: hegdebm@gmail.com
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
Charles Darwin.
Winston Churchill once said that in any statement there are three aspects which matter. They are * who is making that statement, * how is s/he saying it and * finally,what is said? Of the three, Churchill felt, that the last is the least important. Therefore when a big man makes a statement then the powers that be get energised to act! Reading a news item a few days ago about a statement by a great Sarkari technologist I felt that the future of our ancient medical care delivery system using the nature's bounty of herbal drugs and the folk medicines in India, which has been the backbone of medical care for "times out of mind," has a bright future. This statement came from one of the country's top sarkari technologists, Sam Pitroda, in the presence of a business tycoon of Bangalore who is in western drug business, at the inaugural ceremony of a new private university wishing to research the Indian wisdom to be scientifically validated!Pitroda made the statement with all his governmental authority. Now that Churchill's prediction could come true, I am very happy for the Indian wisdom that has found patronage at the highest level. I only hope that this becomes a reality sooner than later for the common good of mankind. The present system of western reductionist chemical molecules in the treatment of diseases has become a curse with adverse drug reactions being the rule rather than exception. In the USA alone every week four Jumbo Jet load of people die of adverse drug reactions, one of the leading causes of death, deadlier than cancer and heart attack. Sam Pitroda was advising the new University to get science out of our ancient "shastras". It is a bit too late in the day as German scientists, especially quantum physicists like Hans Peter Durr, the emeritus director of the famous Max Planck Institute, a Nobel Laureate, has already shown how important the Indian wisdom is? His invention that matter and energy are but the two faces of the same coin, which he initially called "adualtiy," now he seems to prefer the Indian wisdom of Shankara’s "advaita" as a better name for the new science of quantum physics!
.The World Academy of Authentic Healing Sciences, which is now fifteen years old, (www.waahs.com), has been authenticating ancient methods successfully. It has a body of fifteen world renowned scientists from all over the world. They also publish their own journal (www.thejsho.com). Their good work has neither caught the imagination of the press in India nor the attention of our slumbering government. I was so pleased reading the above news item and seeing the colour photographs of the event proclaiming to do just what is being done in many places, but this time the pronouncements are coming from the horse's mouth. If Churchill was right it will take off for sure. Thank God for that, if pursued diligently and sincerely,this will be the saviour of mankind for sure. I have a couple of suggestions for the new university lest they should fall into the usual traps of aping western scientific methods applied to authenticate Indian wisdom wholesale.
The first and the foremost suggestion is about the difference between the western and eastern sciences. The research methodologies should be totally different. In the past there have been governmental efforts to study herbal drugs using the western method of trying to analyse the chemical contents of the herbal drugs on the same lines as reductionist chemical molecules of the western medicine. They came to grief as herbs should be studied as a whole and not in bits and pieces. Sam Pitroda should make the scientists to understand this one line from the Vedas which tells it all. “This is a whole and that is a whole; if a bit is removed from the whole the bit becomes a whole and the whole remains a whole.” To give an example there are 43 scientific studies on garlic pearls in the world literature and all of them showed that garlic is good for cooking but not as amedicine. The flaw was not in garlic but in the method. Garlic pearls did not contain garlic. They had sulfhydryl group removed garlic to avoid the “bad” smell of garlic! Without the SH group, the drug is not garlic at all. To be useful as drug garlic has to be chewed raw in the mouth and kept there for a few seconds for the salivary trypsin to convert the inactive allanin in the garlic into activeallicin. This can only happen in the human mouth and the garlic hasto be whole. Raw garlic has many, many medicinal qualities in many illnesses especially the viral minor illness syndromes.Kienzel at the Late Rustum Roy’s laboratory in the Penn State University has been able to get atomic hydrogen from salt water; leaving the water and the hydrogen as whole entities. They are using that atomic hydrogen for running motor engines. The usual western hydrogen extraction from water leaves only nascent oxygen behind (not water as whole) that eats into the motor engine. See the “Purnam idam and Poornam adaha” dictum elaborated above.
In addition, healing powers of herbal medicines, which are in very small doses in their natural habitat inside that herb, depend on the medicine’s environment (inside the herb as a whole) rather than its pure chemical extract form. Good example will be a tomato. Tomato, which has a small dose of Vitamin C in addition to many other important chemicals, is strongly bio-positive while Vitamin C in large doses in isolation is bio-negative. This process is called HORMESIS. Herbal drugs are useful in therapeutics for another vital reason. Herbs as a whole are accepted by the body’s inherent wisdom (healer inside) as food and used for the body’s own good. All reductionist chemicals that we use in modern medicine are treated by the human body’s wisdom as poison and sent to the liver to get destroyed, damaging the liver in the bargain. It is only what remains (after the liver tries to destroy the drug) that might work on the human body, the so called “first pass effect” in medical school pharmacology classes. This was so elegantly demonstrated by a leading western scientist, Douglas C. Wallace, a professor of genetics using his latest MIT chip (mitochondrial chip). Douglas was able to show how almost all western chemical molecules are rejected by the body while herbal drugs-Tibetan and Chinese-are accepted as food by the human body. Although Indian Ayurveda is more authentic in the world people like Wallace outside do not know about it thanks to our governmental apathy towards Ayurveda and its step motherly treatment. Douglas’s monumental study that gives credence to my forty year old hypothesis is published in one of the leading American journals, Genetics (2008; 179: 727).
The next warning I would like to give to the new university is that the time honoured western randomised controlled trials (RCTs) should not be the method for herbal research. RCTs have brought misery for mankind. West also has recognised that fact. Sir Michel Rawlins, the chief of UKs NICE (national institute of clinical excellence) was of the opinion, in one of his Harevian orations at the Royal College of Physicians in 2008, had this to say. “The RCTs have been put on an undeservedly high pedestal”! The future of herbal science depends on observationaloutcomes research, studying patient outcomes rather than body parameter outcome studies (cross sectional) like lowering blood pressure, sugar etc. The latter are only surrogate end points. Patient outcome is the final end point. The (in)famous multiple risk factor interventional trial, MRFIT study, clearly showed that while the so called risk factors can all be controlled successfully by reductionist chemicals the final risk of premature death is not altered; in fact, the drug treated people have higher precocious deaths! The study has been a boondoggle after spending millions of dollars and twenty five years’ follow up! The new university must not try to ape the west and do copy-cat and me-too research, but must learn from the mistakes west committed in scientific research. John Ioannidis, a Stanford professor has shown that almost 95% of western reductionist research is flawed seriously!
Let India show the world the greatness of Indian wisdom of Ayurveda and the time honoured folk medicine in India which has been successfully used for nearly 1500 years in India (Folk Medicine in India by OP Jaggi of AIIMS). Thank you, Sam Pitroda, for waking up to the reality to help the hapless disease sufferers.
“I seem to have been like a child playing on the seashore, finding now and then a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.”
Isaac Newton.
Author is the former Vice Chancellor of Manipal University. He can be contacted on: hegdebm@gmail.com
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