AYURVEDA MISSED THE BUS ON COVID 19
Ayurveda had one of the best opportunities to establish itself as a global science which otherwise is best and most politely brushed aside saying is a philosophy in the absence of a quantum of modern scientific evidence.
The word evidence is often wrongly understood to be laboratory reports which are meaningless on the scale where the evidence needs to show itself.
So did Ayurveda miss the bus once again? Could it have done better?
If you ask me, I will say YES, we did miss the opportunity.
What was the opportunity we need to first understand and what did we do?
COVID came as and remains an enigma in many ways. While a few things were revealed regarding its behavior, lot remained conspicuous and even now lot many questions are unanswered to the modern scientific community.
We saw opportunities in words not causes and that has been the case with Ayurveda most often.
The first word we read was immunity and everyone started running after immunity strengthening. COMPLETELY A MESS!
It is a a mess because the concept of immunity is very delicate. It is thinner and weaker than the thread of a saliva that a silk moth weaves. A slight imbalance and you have a different set of disorders appearing. Why?
Then we had sanitization. A non-medical subject but everything was posted as Ayurvedic diluting the essence of it and no one bothered to question it. You have Ayurvedic incense to Ayurvedic food to Ayurvedic yarn and perhaps somewhere Ayurvedic AC and TV also may prop up!
This is utter ridicule.
The fantasy that this promotes Ayurveda is disdainful, because you have reduced it to street side tea shop level discourse from being a science of life which it is in all facts.
There will be a counter argument and people will jump on to say that modern medicine was also talking all this.
This is where acumen gets tested. They were not talking this, they were presenting and marketing this. What they were talking was how COVID acts and what needs to be done.
They were talking mapping of processes - Physiological, Pathological and they still are.
The worst assumption that Ayurveda fraternity makes is all is written in CharakSamhita and we are not superior to it.
Yes all is written and we are not superior; but, the treatise itself says it is directional, which leaves it open to discourse, and critical appreciation and interpretation.
This is where the BHAKTI culture that is taught right from the first day in college stems the rot in to the system. There is lack of debate and a strong prevention of reinterpretation. If an interpretation comes from an independent practitioner who does not have funding, he is trashed.
If he finds a collaboration there is hijacking of his work and credentials. And then the idea that has been mooted that it is harmless and supplementary allows indulgence from anyone which dilutes it in every course,
Where did Ayurveda go wrong?
Ayurveda had the best opportunity to map COVID fever and complexities and present its pathological and physiological and biochemical maps to the world. This needed to be corelationary with modern medicine to make it comprehensive and coherent. Change the language of discourse to what every one in the scientific community wants to hear and thus present yourself with reasons why you are a science.
Once you have done it, you get the status of an independent industry in true sense.
Process mapping and its translation to be comprehensive for all is what works. That will automatically remove the trash from the system and also bring to forth real contributors and not exhibitionist, extortionist, promoters.
Though this sounds like a sales pitch but, Health Beyond Healing aspires to be a leader in this direction establishing institutions which talk of these process mappings, so that, future generations of Ayurveda find a purpose and pride in calling themselves doctors, not dispensers.
The dignity of the system and its people is extremely important and that comes with privacy and at the same time a transparency.
Privacy of the individual, but the transparency of the process.
It is still not late when the world is still at loggerheads and really not sure of why lot of complexities are arising in cases of COVID, but, the question is who is ready to work for mapping the AnatomoPhysioBiochemaicalPathophysiolgy of COVID 19. I am ready to do it; will you work with me on it??