Evidence based traditional medicine
Context:
- In medical circles, the lawsuit that an indigenous drug manufacturer initiated against a physician because of his social media post’s impact on the manufacturer’s business has gained significant attention.
Contemporary medicine:
- It is a truth that despite the advancements in contemporary medicine, there are a number of healing-oriented systems that can all be classified as alternative medicine. In India, certain systems like Siddha, Unani, and Ayurveda have their own pharmacopoeia.
- Subsequently, this approach produced amazing inventions like the heartlung machine, which made heart surgery routine, and dialysis, which treated kidney failure. Medical therapy evaluation has advanced as a result of the 20th century’s scientific thought developments, which included the Popperian concept of falsifiability.
- Many therapies were abandoned after being subjected to the constantly improving methods of contemporary science and proven to be unsuccessful. The modern method’s strength lies in its understanding of science’s constant advancement and self-correction.
- The synthesis of the Nobel Prize-winning antimalarial drug artemisinin was made possible by researchers who were willing to learn from a 1,600-year-old book on traditional Chinese medicine.
The Ayurvedic case:
- Although Ayurveda’s physiological foundation is flawed, this does not automatically imply that its therapeutic practises are flawed as well. The absence of available technology limited Ayurveda’s ability to grasp the functioning of the human body, as it did for many other traditional medical systems worldwide.
- What distinguishes Ayurveda epistemologically from the earlier faith-based Atharva Veda forms is a reason-based worldview. Ayurvedic proponents who assert that ancient peoples already knew everything do the science a grave harm and stifle its advancement.
- The ability of contemporary epistemology to synthesise concepts from several fields and construct a cohesive theory of how the world works is one of its greatest achievements. This is a continuous process that builds on prior knowledge and is open to revisions and enhancements as thinking and technology advance.
- Isolating the active principle is a regularly utilised approach in current medication development. Therefore, very few current medications are mixtures and the majority are single ingredients. Additionally, a precise calculation is made to determine the active principle’s quantity.
- Combinations of drugs are prevalent in Ayurvedic medicine, however it’s unclear how these combinations work together. If Ayurvedic medications were assessed using contemporary scientific methodologies without compromising the integrity of Ayurvedic formulations, this would enhance their acceptance among scientists.
Path ahead:
- It is necessary to develop new research techniques and trial designs that may assess Ayurvedic treatments without eroding the traditional foundations for their application. This has to be made easier by the Ministry of AYUSH.
- Improving people’s lives is the goal of government policy. People’s health shouldn’t be sacrificed in the name of bogus nationalism. The goal should be to evaluate all conventional medical systems using evidence-based methods, keep and improve what works, and combine them into a cohesive, universally accessible medical system.
Way Forward:
- A minority of people undermine the concept of evidence-based medicine by completely criticising established medical systems. Science demands scepticism as a discipline and open-mindedness. Dismissing old methods entirely would be a premature rejection of important medical experience that has been verified repeatedly by generations of practitioners—albeit informally.
