New Delhi: After Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Rigpa and Naturopathy) practitioners to pitch in to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ministry of AYUSH has received over 2,000 proposals in less than 15 days — all giving suggestions on how India could fight the highly infectious disease.
On 28 March, PM Modi had praised the efforts of the ministry, while interacting with AYUSH practitioners through a video conference, and suggested that AYUSH medicine producers could utilise their resources to manufacture essential items such as sanitisers.
Following this, the ministry had issued a notification on 31 March, asking AYUSH practitioners and institutions to submit their inputs, which will be reviewed by a task force consisting of representatives from the department of biotechnology (DBT), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and AYUSH practitioners.
“So far, the ministry has received around 1,300 proposals under Ayurveda, followed by 700 under homoeopathy, and 100 each for Unani and Siddha,” a senior official at the ministry told ThePrint.
“Under the task force, the working group will be screening the proposals and then recommend the chosen one to the central government,” added the official, who did not wish to be identified.
Also read: Homoeopathy for coronavirus: Is AYUSH commitment to alt meds healthy or promoting quackery?
Inputs received over phone, emails
According to the ministry’s notification they have been “receiving numerous suggestions from practitioners and institutions in the AYUSH sector regarding possible solutions from AYUSH disciplines to restrain the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic”.
“Such inputs have been received over phone, emails and social media in large numbers in the last two weeks,” the notification added.
The ministry has divided the categories of proposals into Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Rigpa and homoeopathy — everything that the AYUSH stands for.
PM’s praise for AYUSH practitioners
In January, the ministry had issued an advisory for the “prevention” of infection from the novel coronavirus using homoeopathy and “symptomatic management” using Unani medicines.
The advisory had drawn sharp criticism. The AYUSH ministry has come under repeated criticism for propounding pseudoscientific medicines as alternative medicines.
However, PM Modi last month encouraged the ministry and AYUSH practitioners and said “it is important to create awareness on India’s traditional medicines and medical practices all over the world”.
He also urged the AYUSH practitioners to utilise the platform of telemedicine to reach out to the people and generate constant awareness to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.
Modi also thanked those involved in the practice of alternative medicines “for constantly striving to serve the people and highlighted the important role they have to play in India’s fight against Covid-19”.
Also read: Alternate medicine manufacturers claiming Covid-19 cure could face year in jail
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Pls start Homoeopathic treatment to tackle Covod -19 because this system is very much efficacious in tackling such pandemic
The myth promoted in homeopathy is that Homeopathy helped during the Spanish Flu.
It didn’t. It was just that there was no scientific medicine at the time and unscientific western medicine was worse than doing nothing.
It was just that Homeopathy = Doing Nothing.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/fun-with-spanish-flu-myths/
Homeopaths always say they cured everything.
But all major studies show that it cures nothing, literally nothing.
Homeopaths seems to actively forget that people get better in many diseases on their own. So comparing treatment vs. no treatment or another treatment statistically is important. Whenever that is done, Homeopathy is exposed as never doing better than no treatment and always doing worse than scientific medicine.
That is how it is proved as nothing but a placebo.
It also contains nothing but sugar and has no medical substances. Most Homeopathy users in India don’t know that, so it is followed more. Homeopaths should be honest about this with their clients.
When the article describes alternative medicines as pseudoscientific, it must give proof to back the statement.
Else the alternative medicine fraternity and Ayush ministry should file a case against this.
When there are no real evidences or real study conducted to prove that alternative medicines are PSEUDO science, The Print and all media should certainly mind before their irresponsible statements.
Whoever wrote this, i throw a challenge to prove himself right.
Dr Kruti Bhuskute ( md- homeo).
The very fact that it is called “alternative” means that it has not been scientifically proven.
Question: Do you know what they call alternative medicine which has scientific proof?
Answer: Medicine.
When there is proof, there is no need to call it “alternative”.
AYUSH ministry exclusively promotes pseudoscience. Just google AYUSH pseudoscience. You will run out of paper before you list everyone who correctly points out that it promotes pseudoscience. AYUSH can definitely try filing cases against everyone. It will be fun to watch.
You are a Homeopath. It was already scientifically proven that no scientific proof exists that Homeopathy works in ANY condition. That is no doubt hard to digest for you.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/11/homeopathy-not-effective-for-treating-any-condition-australian-report-finds
You just don’t understand science or how to read science. You think anecdotes are proof, they are not.
Drkruti Bhuskute, Here, I am answering your CHALLENGE.
1. ‘The principles of homeopathy contradict known chemical, physical and biological laws and persuasive scientific trials proving its effectiveness are not available.’
Russian Academy of Sciences
2. ‘Homeopathy should not be used to treat health conditions that are chronic, serious, or could become serious. People who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk if they reject or delay treatments for which there is good evidence for safety and effectiveness.’
National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia
3. ‘These products are not supported by scientific evidence.’
Health Canada
4 “Homeopathic remedies don’t meet the criteria of evidence based medicine.”
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
5. ‘The incorporation of anthroposophical and homeopathic products in the Swedish directive on medicinal products would run counter to several of the fundamental principles regarding medicinal products and evidence-based medicine.’
Swedish Academy of Sciences
6. ‘We recommend parents and caregivers not give homeopathic teething tablets and gels to children and seek advice from their healthcare professional for safe alternatives.’
US Food and Drug Administration
7. ‘There is little evidence to support homeopathy as an effective treatment for any specific condition.’
National Centre for Complementary and Integrative Health, US
8. ‘There is no good-quality evidence that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for any health condition.’
National Health Service, UK
9. ‘Homeopathic remedies perform no better than placebos, and the principles on which homeopathy is based are scientifically implausible.’
House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, UK
10. ‘Homeopathy has not definitively proven its efficacy in any specific indication or clinical situation.’
Ministry of Health, Spain
11. ‘There is a constant increase in the quantity of evidence and the conviction of the scientific community in medicine, that homeopathy should be treated as one of the unscientific methods of so-called “alternative medicine”, which proposes worthless products without scientifically proven efficacy.’
National Medical Council, Poland
12. ‘From a purely clinical perspective, the fact remains that there is no valid empirical proof of the efficacy of homeopathy (evidence-based medicine) beyond the placebo effect.’
Federaal Kenniscentrum voor de Gezondheidszorg, Belgium
As a Ayurveda student i want to tell you that its not pseudo medicine ,that you describe in your page what you think about ayurvedic medicine its already proved in ancient times and we have numerous examples of that which proves that ayurvedic medicine are not pseudo medicine it doesn’t require your criticism theory .your blaming of Ayurveda is not good behaviour shame on you thinker if you don’t appreciate Ayurveda please don’t sound it pseudo,its really discusting if you want any proof first read the ancient medicine literature than think.
Ayurveda is entirely pseudoscience. When Ayurveda was written, none of the science we know today existed. So they wrote whatever they believed was true. They never tried to prove it scientifically because they did not know how to do studies. They believed that anecdotes were proof, they are not. What is sad is, you living in modern times also seem to think so.
Here is an example of pseudoscience in Ayurveda.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhopal/ayurveda-expert-bats-for-gender-medicine/articleshow/61682766.cms
Do you think you can change the gender of the child by pouring anything into the nose of a pregnant woman?
Think, don’t just believe old literature.