The never ending fight of “we” are the best and others are quacks or agents of Big Pharma.
On my first day at med school my Biochem professor Late. Dr. Anantha pathbhanabhan made an introductory speech about medical profession. He stressed the importance of evidence based medicine and embracing a polypathy approach which focused only on the positive outcome of the patient. What he meant by polypathy was combining good from all systems of medicine and put in use when the situation arises.
There’s been a lot of discussions regarding these systems of medicine as to which one is best etc. in social media. Now lets be honest. I’m a modern medicines practitioner. I have no shame in admitting that i have taken Ayurvedic / Homeo medicines and I’ll take again in the future if it suites my logic. In the same way many of the alternative medicine practitioners very often go to allopathic doctors for treatment.
Even the highly vocal natural therapy experts will go to our “evil” cooperate hospitals when they have a heart attack or stroke. Right after getting out of these hospitals they will talk about how modern medicine is a scam.
Practitioner Biases
This is one of the reasons why practitioners think their system is all good and others are scam. Let’s say you are an allopathic practitioner. I can vouch from my experience i have seen a lot of patients with diseases like diabetes, hypertension, hypothyroidism etc who has taken ayurvedic or homeopathic medicines and got their symptoms worsened to a level that they needed emergency interventions. So my first impression would be alternative medicines are useless and people who are going to these systems of medicines are idiots.
But the thing is there are lot of patients who are treated successfully using alternative medicines. We don’t see them because they are maintained well under these alternative medicines and they have no reasons to visit us. The same way the alternative medicine practitioners don’t see the thousands of patients who successfully cured their diseases using allopathic medications. You only see patients who for some reasons haven’t responded successfully to allopathic medications. We can’t make an assumption that the other systems don’t work just by analyzing the patients we see.
Alternative medicines are devoid of any side effects
Modern medicines have side effects. To get an allopathic medicine into the market, they have to undergo rigorous clinical and safety trials. During these stages we identify the adverse effects and make those information available to the public. Even in the post marketing phase we continually observe for adverse effects. So when you take some drug you know what to expect. But in the case of alternative medicines there are no such strict quality regulations. You can’t say for sure what all are in the medicines you take. Just because it comes from the nature doesn’t mean they are safe. Studies have found presence of many alkaloids, heavy metals etc in many of the medicinal plants some which are harmful to our body. So it’s not that alternative medicines doesn’t have side effects. Its just that we don’t know for sure since there are no adequate trials or studies.
Modern Medicine Practitioners are agents of Big pharma
There are rotten apples in every profession. There may be doctors who promote certain brand or medicines etc. for monetary benefits. From my limited experiences i can’t just label pharma industry as pure evil. They have contributed heavily in development of many noval therapeutic agents which played a major role in the evolution of modern medicine. If it was up to the governments or non profit organizations we would have never seen this much swift developments in medical field. Only when they put their shareholders interest above public(which more often they do), we need to put some kind of regulations, price capping etc.
To speak from my experiences, all i get from pharma reps these days are 2 Rs pens and drug samples. I often prescribe certain brands based on my previous experiences. If some brand medicines show better responses than generic medicines or other brands, I’ll prescribe it. Period. It’s not really up to us to regulate pharmaceutical corporations. And no, majority of us are not getting any incentives from big pharma.
Private hospitals are money making machines.
It’s understandable when someone from a middle class family get frustrated when they receive a hospital bill of 20-30k from a private hospital. But you gotta understand how difficult is to run a private institution. There is no such thing as charity when it comes to private hospitals. They don’t really need to, since they are paying taxes etc just like any other businesses and they have to answer to their share holders about profitability. However if you go to a multi specialty hospital in Kerala you can get a specialist consultation around 300-500 Rs. and super specialty consultations around 500-750 Rs. Now many argue this is high, but i can show you a lot of alternative medicine practitioners charging even more.
Despite popular belief alternative medicine systems like ayurveda, reiki, sidha, etc have commercialized to such an extend that many of the treatment methods has became unaffordable to the middle class. However, for some reason the same middle class person who were crying about the 500rs they paid for consultation will happily give 25k for panchakarma treatment in an ayurvedic center without any hesitance.
We have a cure for everything
From my limited clinical experience, i have came across many situations where i have tasted the limits of modern medicine. I don’t believe we can cure all diseases. I know my limitation as a physician too. So when i feel like it’s beyond my capabilities i usually refer the patient sometimes even to ayurveda homeo etc based on my previous experience with similar patients.
However i have seen many alternative therapy practitioners attract patients by giving them false hope by offering miracle cures for incurable diseases. In their defense, they might have seen a few patients getting better on these medications, but often without an adequate follow up.
Violence against doctors
Violence against doctors has become a routine these days. Not so surprisingly its always against allopathic practitioners. Reason is very simple. We deal with more life or death situations than any others. I have seldom seen a news where an alternative medicine practitioner being manhandled by the crowd because some patient didn’t get better. There are lot of quacks out there who treat patients without any basis and then when they are almost dead will nicely refer to allopathic hospitals. No one blames the quacks, instead they beat up the poor allopathic doctor who tried their best to revive the patients.
What surprised me was the silence of Alternative Medicine practitioners (AYUSH) on recent violence against the doctors. Being educated, and knowing the difficulties and limitations of medical profession, most of them preferred to stay silent.
Since this part is a little bit out of the topic i would recommend you to read this instagram post which cleverly summarizes our view points on the matter.
COVID 19
I’ll be honest with you. I never thought COVID would become a pandemic of this sort. I thought it would be over in a few months or so. In the beginning we were unsure on how to treat COVID cases, but soon evidence based protocols and vaccines came which literally saved thousands of lives.
There was a discussion regarding use of Arsenic Alb 30 , a homeopathic medicine for improving immunity. It got a lot of backlash from modern medicine practitioners claiming it’s only as good as placebo. Now, i was skeptical about this. I remembered my mom who is a veterinary surgeon telling me how she used to give the same medicine to cows as a preventive measure when some cattle is affected by FMD(A viral disease). Vaccines for COVID were out of the horizon at that time, so like many others from health department, i took the medicine. Of the many people i have known to have taken that medicine, few of them developed COVID.
So if you ask me is it an effective method for raising immunity, i can’t say for sure. Just because it’s worked for me it doesn’t mean it will work for all. But, if you ask me can it be given to children (<18years for which no vaccines are available till date) my answer would be a yes. At the same time taking this medicines should not give one a false sense of security which lead to them not following other proven guidelines like masks, social distancing etc.
Recently Baba Ramdev who is basically a mascot of corporate giant Patanjali made ridiculous statements when people were dying on the streets due to lack of adequate oxygen. They rolled out some miracle cure called Coronil which came from so called Patanjali research institute citing a poorly designed study conducted in very few patients. Now many people who follow this godman will surely take his side since doctors are idiots according to him. But in this instance AYUSH ministry got involved and he had to retract his unprofessional remarks.
Since the current government has a pro- AYUSH attitude and have allocated generous funding, researchers of AYUSH should conduct more clinical trials to show the effectiveness of alternative treatment methods.
Since we are moving towards a patient centric treatment model, we can’t just ask patients to stick to a certain system of medicine. It’s upto them to chose between alternative medicines and allopathy. Hence it’s very important that we as healthcare professionals provide clear and adequate details regarding treatment methods, so that one can take an informed decision.
I’m a modern medicine practitioner, certain amount of bias is likely to be present in this article. Opinions and comments are welcome.