Relevance
of Ayurvedic Holism- by Dr. B.M.Hegde
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Absence
of evidence Vs Evidence of absence
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By Dr. B. M. Hegde, India [
Published Date: November 2, 2009 ]“I am easily satisfied with the very best.”
– Winston Churchill
It took nearly fifteen hundred
years for the medical community to realize that Galen’s hypothesis of the
blood circulating from the liver, propounded in 127AD, was wrong. It was in
the 17th Century, William Harvey wrote his de Motu Cordis. (1628 AD) In the
field of astronomy it took five Centuries for scientists to realize the folly
of Ptolemy’s hypothesis that the sun goes round the earth. Copernicus, in the
7th Century, came on the scene to show that the earth, in fact, goes round
the sun! Reductionist science that we follow in medical research does not
work in the dynamic human system. Still we hang on to it despite evidence to
the contrary as it has become a lucrative trillion dollar business. We
presume, wrongly though, that the absence of evidence is the same as evidence
of absence. Therefore, we refuse to accept anything that defies the
reductionist statistical deductions. Evidence based medicine today has become
evidence burdened instead.
The leader of the movement in the
US, Professor Rustum Roy, the father of nano-science (not nanotechnology), a
scientist of great repute, who had been nominated for the Nobel several times
in the past. He, in his early 80s, is still the Evan Pugh professor of Solid
State Emeritus at the Penn State University! Nano-science was born when, in
the early 50s, Prof. Roy invented the sol-gel technique to extract nano-particles.
Even now scientists in the field of nano-science use the same method. His
paper on Sol-Gel technique is cited 65,000 times to date, a record of sorts!
Interestingly, Prof. Roy is more interested in the Giga problems of mankind
all over the world like poverty, hunger, ignorance and illnesses. He is using
his scientific clout to help the poorest of the poor using his research
acumen to solve those Giga problems.
Manufacturing molecules by
altering the atoms is the basis of nano-science. One could make diamonds from
coal and semi-conductor chips from sand. Having realized the futility of
reductionist science in medicine Prof. Roy took upon himself the arduous task
of scientifically validating the multitude of complementary systems of
medicine personally using his rigorous scientific methods of scrutiny. Only
those that passed his tests were included in the WPH movement.
His great faith in Ayurveda as the
mother of all medical wisdoms made him to coax the Indian Council of
Scientific and Industrial Research to organize a preliminary workshop on
WHP in New Delhi some time ago. More meetings in the US followed the
Delhi meet. One such was the first ever International conference on
WPH for four full days at Tai Sophia Institute in Laurel, Maryland. Let
us see how WPH works. In contrast to reductionism of organ based specialties,
the science of Ayurveda, for example, takes into consideration the mind,
body, spirit and the genome into consideration while treating patients.
Ayurveda believes that all illnesses are born in the mind and grow in the
body with the influence of the genes in a conducive atmosphere. For the
healer it is not as important to know what disease one gets, as it is to know
who gets a disease. The latter would answer the vital question that had been
dogging positive sciences for ages, the answer to the question “why?”.
Positive sciences could, at best, answer “how” or “how much” but not “why?” A
conventional physiologist could answer how does the heart contract but not
the question as to why does the heart contract? Space constraints do not
permit me to go deep into the great science of Ayurveda.
Rustum Roy’s work on the
structure of water (not chemistry: he is basically a chemist, though) opened
the flood gates for homeopathy research. When a homeopathic drug is diluted
in water thousands of times the final water might not contain any chemical
entities of the drug but the drug would leave its foot prints in water by
changing the structure of water. Reductionist science of water would have to
be a combination of H2 and O. Both these atoms are volatile but water, a
combination of the two, is far from volatile. This is the bane of
reductionist science of medicine where we study a cell or an organ and
project it on to the man and predict the unpredictable. This has led us to
this sorry state of affairs where medicine has become a bane to society
instead of the boon that it ought to be. Many scientific studies have shown
the good effects of homeopathic medicines.
Hormesis, another new concept
developed by Edward Calabrese, has shown how most drugs have a beneficial
bio-positive effect on the body in very small doses while the same drug in
larger doses (that we give in therapeutics based on the pharmacodynamic
studies of reductionism) would be bio-negative. He showed it elegantly in
vitamin C. Whereas the small dose of vitamin C in a tomato is bio-positive,
the larger therapeutic dose, in the long run, would damage the system. It is
also possible that there are hitherto unknown entities in the tomato that
prevent the vitamin C to manifest its bio-negativity. This gives credence to
the holistic science of Ayurveda also.
Qi gong, reiki, and even faith
healing depend on the movement of bio-energy, the leptons of quantum physics,
from the healer to the patient. The consciousness of the healer is as
important as the vehicle that the healer uses (say a drug). Similarly, the
consciousness of the patient should be more important in the final healing
process. This was demonstrated by a psychiatrist from Stanford offering
himself as the patient to study the quick wound healing methods of the Sufi
saints in Iraq. He demonstrated that during the conference. Our own paper on
Heart Rate Variability, using the latest computer two
dimensional imagery and the wavelet quotient analysis, showed the
principle of “mode-locking” (Edward Laurenz’s hypothesis) where organs work
in tandem and not in isolation. Even the age old Placebo effect has now
been scientifically shown to exist with chemical changes in the brain that
could be proved by blocking the chemicals using naloxone to nullify the
placebo effect.
The studies published in the
leading medical journals on the power of intercessory prayer in the
management of myocardial infarction does work on the principles of bio-energy
transfer. In depth study of the brain by David Shannonoff Khalsa,
professor of Neurobiology in San Diego, revealed extensive changes that took
place in the brain during meditation. His published works on Kundalini Yoga
in the management of intractable diseases like obsessive compulsive
disorders, anxiety states, and epilepsy are an eye opener. There is now
ample evidence that the whole person healing is the future of modern
medicine.
Scientific enquiry into the claims
of any system of healing should be the way forward. There should be no
compromise about validating the claims of all the complementary systems. The
scientist’s job is to take the wheat from the chaff and put together a new
system of medical care delivery, the future modern medicine, called meta-medicine,
wherein the best in all those systems are incorporated without bias. David
Eddy, a cardiovascular surgeon at the Stanford in the past, had already shown
the role of non-linear mathematics of chaos and fractals and holism in human
physiology. (www.archimedesmodel.com) Modern medicine’s quick fixes are useful in emergency
care although some of those methods have not been fully authenticated. For
the majority of patients in the non-emergency set up the integrated system
that is conceived above would bring down the cost of medical care
significantly. This would make medical care reach the unreached. This would
also bring down the incidence of ADR, the fourth cause of death these days in
our hospitals. Let this new system do most good to most people most of the
time.
We have started the World Academy
of Authentic Healing Sciences in Mangalore, with the blessings of our parent
body, the Friends of Health, headed by Rustum Roy at Penn. State University,
continuing the good work that the latter does in the US. We have made
considerable progress in the last couple of years wherein we have
authenticated many new methods of easy cure for so many hitherto
difficult-to-treat ailments. We have also started a new journal, Journal of
the Science of Healing Outcomes, in its second year, publishing scientific
studies after due super peer review by eminent scientists, including Nobel
Laureates, who are on our editorial board.
Rustum Roy is the co
editor in chief of JSHO (www.thejsho.com) with me as the editor in chief. We also have another
centre for research in Chennai under the able leadership of Professor CV
Krishna swami, where our friends have donated money to build our own research
building. All our efforts have to be funded by well
meaning philanthropes since we do not accept funds from the
pharmaceutical and/or medical devices industries! Hope we will be able to put
together a new system of inexpensive medical care that would be a boon to the
common man. Absence of evidence is not, therefore, synonymous with evidence
of absence.
“The means by which we live have
outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our
spiritual powers. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” — Martin Luther
King Jr.
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