The AYUSH ministry has set up a high-level committee at the Central Council for Research in Homeopathy to “deal with issues related to false propaganda against homeopathy” as well as “other related issues.” Credit: Pixabay
New Delhi: The AYUSH ministry is not taking kindly to jibes made about homeopathy, to the extent that it has set up a high-level committee at the Central Council for Research in Homeopathy (CCRH) to “deal with issues related to false propaganda against homeopathy” as well as “other related issues.” This information came from a written reply given by Shripad Yesso Naik, minister of state (independent charge) for the AYUSH ministry.
They have already written to Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who said last year that homeopathy and astrology were “bogus”. “No one in chemistry believes in homeopathy. It works because of placebo effect,” he said. CCRH wrote a rebuttal to him.
Dr R.K. Manchanda, director general of CCRH, says, “The propaganda is coming from the West and it is picked up by newspapers here. They present homeopathy in a disproportionate and negative light, and it creates confusion among Indians.” He says that unlike the Indian government, the West is not investing anything to understand homeopathy and is only criticising it. “Big pharma companies in the West want a monopolistic market, unlike the Indian approach which is pluralistic. So just because our molecules don’t match the West’s parameters for research, they are spreading propaganda,” he says.
With origins in Germany, in the 18th century, homeopathy is an officially-recognised system of medicine under the AYUSH ministry, along with Ayurveda, yoga, Unani and Siddha. It has also clashed with orthodox medicine since then, as being potentially ineffective, with studies as early as in 1835 disputing its claims.
Besides the letter to Ramakrishnan, CCRH has also been writing letters, rejoinders and counter-editorials to others to combat “false propaganda.” The Australian government is also considering curbs on the sale of homeopathic medicine and invited global comments. The CCRH has written to the Australian government on this. In 2014, researchers wrote in the Cell Press Journal that trials for alternative medicine like homeopathy are like testing if magic works. The CCRH responded to this as well, by writing an editorial in the same journal, says an official from CCRH.
The committee to examine “false propaganda” consists of chairpersons from a scientific advisory committee, from a committee on clinical research and a committee on basic and fundamental research. CCRH is an autonomous body under the AYUSH ministry and conducts research on homeopathy along with the National Institute of Homeopathy.
Homeopathy second only to Ayurveda
The UK’s National Health Service last month decided to stop prescribing homeopathy entirely. They called it a “misuse of scarce funds.”
“We need to end unnecessary expense to give us a bigger therapeutic bang for the NHS buck, so we cut the fat and build the therapeutic muscle,” said the medical director of NHS England, Sir Bruce Keogh, on their decision to stop prescribing homeopathy.
In India, homeopathy is the second-highest funded as well as used category under AYUSH, by the Indian government and public respectively.
According to government data on AYUSH since 2014, actual expenditure on homeopathy has consistently been second only to Ayurveda. The expenditure on Ayurveda in 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 was Rs 206 crore and Rs 254 crore respectively. The expenditure on homeopathy was Rs 82 crore, rising heavily to Rs 167 crore, in the same periods. The trend follows for research as well. For 2016-2017, the budgeted expenditure for Ayurveda was Rs 170 crore and homeopathy was a close second at Rs 120 crore.
