From India's largest. Newsroom, I'm Arun George and
this is the Times of India podcast.
Towards the end of September. Doctor Siriya, Kabi Phillips.
Found that his Twitter or ex account had been suspended.
The thing is, Doctor Abby isn't just, as he describes himself, a
hepatologist, physician, scientist battling AYUSH
misinformation. He's the liver doctor on social
media with nearly 2,00,000 followers on ex alone.
His ex account was suspended because an Ayurveda drug
manufacturer went to a Bengaluru court against him.
The company was also seeking damages from him.
Doctor Abby responded by challenging the order in the
Karnataka High Court and the order was reversed earlier this
month. Even in the time that his ex
account was suspended, he got another legal notice demanding
₹1,00,00,000 in damages from another Ayurveda drugs
manufacturer. Doctor Abby's most visible
response to all of this has been to create an alternate handle on
X in case the original handle goes down again.
However, he hasn't changed a thing about what he shares on
the social media platform. You can still find photos of
infected livers and the medication that is believed to
have caused them, and he still has caustic about alcohol and
Ayurveda. Earlier this year, we spoke with
Doctor Abby to understand what drives him, and we're bringing
back that episode today. Presciently enough, among the
things we also discussed was what would happen if he was the
platform from social media, much like what did happen with him in
September. Towards the end of the film,
Andadun the Doctor in the film turns to the main character and
says what is life? Well.
It depends on the liver. In the time we spoke with Doctor
Syria Kabi Phillips, we didn't ask him how much he believes in
this statement. His name may not ring a bell
immediately because Doctor Abby Phillips is better known by his.
Social media handle the liver doc.
His Twitter handle presently has over 1.3 lakh followers and he
now has a YouTube channel as well.
A specialist of the liver doctor, Phillips has been
documenting the side effects of Ayurvedic and other alternative
medicine for years now. He's endured threats, legal
notices and even an attack on the lab he did tests in.
But that's not stopped the Kerala based doctor from
debunking various claims by alternative medicines and health
products on a daily basis. My colleague Lata Misha and I
spoke with Doctor Phillips about his campaign against Ayurvedic
drugs. We spoke about the myth of
detoxification and how it's fueling the consumption of
health products with no known benefits, and possibly some
harmful ones. Can we also discuss why he's
opposed to Ayurveda and how he responds to the claim that he's
deliberately targeting AYUSH? Doctors?
Doctor Phillips, we know that you've been studying this for a
while, but at what point did you start to sort of publicly debunk
the claims of drugs under Ayurveda and homeopathy?
In medicine, I think the most important aspect is to look at
preventive medicine. You know, you actually don't do
damage control. You prevent the damage from
happening. That is the most important
aspect of clinical medicine. So when I was actually
practicing since 2016 in Kerala, my whole aim was to actually
look at and study alcoholic liver disease.
But then I found this group of patients who had severe jaundice
and hepatitis that was actually not related to any common causes
that we could actually find most of these patients with the
toddlers. They were never taking any liver
toxic medications that we already know of.
Then we figured out through a lot of clinical history and a
lot of investigative medicine that this was actually due to
the multi herbal preparations that these patients were
consuming. You know, they were taking it
for a host of problems, for example, from diabetes to weight
loss to, you know, gas trouble, and they actually developed
severe liver injury and jaundice due to these herbal medicines.
And this was actually very much avoidable, right, because none
of these herbal medicines are actually studied.
Good trials have not been conducted on these herbal
medicines for any of these symptom relief or disease
management. So because they were misinformed
on that particular herbal preparation.
They took that and developed a new disease, something that
should not have happened to them and some of these patients
actually died because of liver failure and some of them
actually had to undergo liver transplant which is actually
very big health and financial burden.
Once we actually started to see more and more of these cases
where patients developing severe liver injury due to herbal
medicines or somebody with a stable pre-existing liver
disease suddenly deteriorating because of herbal medicine.
It was important that we let people know that herbal does not
mean natural and safe. It is actually untested and
quite unsafe. So that is when I started
talking about about it more publicly.
Also based on the fact that we actually had a lot of research
backing us up. So this was not like, you know,
I want to find I started talking about herbal medicines being
bad. We have good published evidence
that they are not useful and they can actually harm you.
So that is when I started publicly talking about how multi
herbal preparations or singular herbal preparations within
Ayurveda or homeopathy can actually harm you more than
benefiting. So I just want to clarify that
there is this sort of formalized Ayurveda where you have big drug
companies that manufacture your drugs and you also have,
especially in Kerala, you also have these smaller Ayurveda
practitioners who may concoct their own mixtures based on,
say, their own gardens and things like that.
Which are you Speaking of? Are you Speaking of 1 or the
other or both? I'm actually talking about the
whole spectrum in Ayurveda, right?
So you have these classical or traditional Ayurvedic
formulations which can be made at home.
By a traditional Ayurveda practitioner.
Or it can be actually made by a multinational or a national
level or a local pharmacy that manufacturers Ayurvedic
products. For example, you look at channel
brush. Local pharmacies manufacture it,
even big names manufacture it and actually traditional
Ayurvedic practitioners can make it at home also.
So that is the traditional Ayurveda.
Then you have you have the proprietary Ayurveda.
So proprietary means something that is not traditionally or
classically mentioned or described in the classical
textbooks of Ayurveda, but the pharma companies themselves make
it up. For example, Corona from
Patanjali was a proprietary preparation even though it is
not mentioned anywhere in the classical text.
Lev 52 from Himalaya is a very classical of traditional
programming, proprietary preparation and there are
multiple. Companies and products like
that. So I'm I'm actually talking
about all of these together because it's not a single herb
that is actually causing harm, but sometimes preparations of
herbs that can actually harm you more.
For example, if you look at turmeric preparations along with
green tea preparation, there are capsules where you can actually
have both that causes more liver injury than either turmeric
alone or green tea extract alone.
So I'm not talking specifically Ayurveda per SE, I'm talking
about multi herbal formulations in both Ayurveda and otherwise.
And how big is the scale of the problem by your estimate?
One of the biggest arguments that people actually make, I
mean even Ayurveda practitioners or somebody who has anecdotally
benefited from Ayurveda makes is that, you know, it has been
there for so long. If something is there for so
long, that doesn't mean that it is actually good.
That is known as, you know, appeal to time.
You know, because something is there for so long, it's supposed
to be good. But On the contrary, what we
need is not, you know, appeal to time or tradition.
What we need is actually evidence.
For example, a classical example is chair and brush.
So people have been consuming chair and brush for so long
thinking that it is going to improve their health, prevent
diseases until COVID struck. So when COVID came, a group of
Ayurveda practitioners actually studied.
The effects of childbirash in the human body when it comes to
improving immunity or preventing infections.
And they actually found that it did not and this paper is
actually published. I've actually tweeted about this
also. So something that has been time
tested was actually proven wrong with a simple clinical trial.
So this is what we should do. When it comes to any formulation
that has been traditionally used, we actually have to find
evidence for its benefits and also side by side look at its
side effects. I would not call it as a
problem, I would call it as a challenge, you know because it's
it's ingrained into all of us. You know the use of Ayurvedic
products is safe and beneficial. The challenge is actually big
because my group initially identified that Ayurvedic herbal
products are actually harmful and that is the first
publication that we did in 2017 eighteen and that actually
busted a lot of myths regarding herbal formulations in India.
Now when you look at publications from other groups
in the US and Europe and even in China, we can actually see that
herbal supplements, complementary and alternative
medicines are now the most important upcoming causes for
liver injury and liver failure in the Western world and also in
the Asia Pacific region. In fact, a recent large study
done by the Asia Pacific Association of Study of Liver
Diseases actually showed that the commonest cause for.
Stable liver disease suddenly becoming unstable and leading to
liver failure and death or transplantation was actually
complemented in alternative medicine and that is mostly
because of traditional Chinese medicine and complement
alternative medicine that is the Irish group of drugs that we use
in India. So this is a big problem, but a
lot of people are actually identifying it and I hope a lot
more work from other groups help us identify how big or the big
the actual magnitude of this challenge is in in our country.
Would you be say more accepting of Ayurveda drugs if they did
come with that sort of test based approval or even if they
just had a sort of placebo effect as compared to the
current variant which you're seeing where you have active
problems being caused? By it.
Actually, placebo is not a drug. It's it's not a medicine at all.
So when people talk about giving something for a placebo effect,
that does not actually make sense because one.
It is unnecessary financial expenditure for something that
actually does not work and is not a medicine.
And 2nd, we cannot call something a placebo unless it is
actually a dummy treatment. So for example, you look at
these herbal preparations, they have active plant components in
it, for example curcumin in turmeric or agilin in Bale fruit
or we can all in ashwagandha. These are all very bio active
components that can actually harm.
And there are a lot of studies published on harms of these
particular bio active components.
When you look at Ayurveda, I I could, I would never say that it
has a placebo effect. It could definitely harm someone
and there are specific groups that can actually be harmed
more, for example, ones with already underlying liver disease
or underlying kidney disease etcetera.
But even if somebody was at to study Ayurvedic formulation as
per your good scientific method. And come to a conclusion, take
the example of an Ayurvedic preparation which has about 10
herbs in it and then you put it in a randomized double-blind
control dryer and for example say for improvement of knee pain
and you compare it with the placebo which is the dummy
treatment and you say that this particular Ayurvedic formulation
reduces knee pain compared to placebo.
But the story does not end there.
What insight that formulation is actually doing that you know you
have 10 herbs in it? What is that actual component
which is helping the patient or helping us reduce the pain?
That is more important to ask because when you actually focus
on that particular component or a group of chemicals that
actually is helping us reduce the pain, you will see that
everything else is just background noise.
So you can actually remove all that other herbs and other
components around it and make that particular formulation
safer. That is where a modern medicine
or a modern drug actually improves.
So when I give paracetamol to a person, I actually know what
paracetamol does to the person inside the body, how it works
and what if I give additional, how it is going to harm that
patient or harm that person? I know it because we have
classical mechanisms of action and safety data, everything
available. So when it comes to Ayurvedic
formulations, I I'm not very sure that we can do that because
the formulations themselves are so complex.
It's going to be chaotic. If you find a beneficial result,
is it the lack of option that drives people towards these
options? Because something like, say,
cirrhosis of liver? You don't know what else to do,
and sometimes you may receive a sort of prognosis that is very
negative and then there is nothing that why not reach out
for this and see what happens? I think this is a very important
point because I think there are many factors that actually
drive. People towards alternative
medicine, away from science based medicine.
Number one is I would always say very poor communication from
modern medicine doctors. If I look at the patients that
I've been treating since last six or seven years, none of them
have actually gone for alternative medical treatments.
It's it's that simple because I tell them exactly what they have
to hear about the disease condition, how the Natural
History of the disease goes, and what are the treatment options
that one must actually expect at every stage.
So if they know this beforehand, I I'm sure they would never opt
for an alternative medicine which is actually going to be
more harmful for them. So I think #1 point is that the
modern medicine doctors are not empathetic enough towards the
patient to actually communicate well.
About the disease condition, Second is definitely the
misinformation from both print and visual media where in a lot
of advertisements come up, a lot of claims of benefits of
alternative medicines come without actual evidence or any
substantial evidence to back them up, but advertisements are
colorful and people fall for it. Third is from the alternative
medicine practitioners themselves.
They have to create. An aura or or a bubble of
disinformation among the patients and the community,
which actually has very important aspects of science
denialism and chemophobia. So they'll say that, you know,
modern medicine is all chemical and it's going to harm you in
the long term. But this is a better option.
It is safer. So that kind of disinformation
actually is promoted by a lot of alternative medicine
practitioners because of which people are misled when it comes
to cirrhosis. It is definitely not reversible
at beyond a particular stage. There are stages where cirrhosis
is reversible and we have had patients who have actually
reversed cirrhosis because of a proper medical management and
other lifestyle changes. We have had that.
I mean, I've had so many patients reverse the cirrhosis,
but there are certain stages of cirrhosis which cannot be
reversed and patients should actually go in for, you know,
like a liver transplantation. So opting for a transplantation
actually does not mean it is a negative decision, It is a
positive decision. It is a positive decision
because the patient is going to get out of the chance at a long
survival. So these things, the way we
communicate these things to the patient matters.
If there is some lapse in communication about what the
disease is and how the disease is going to get managed,
especially chronic diseases which we need longer time to
deal with. I don't think the whole aspect
of alternative medicine will like feature anywhere in the in
the disease management. I'm going to refer to a previous
interview of yours and in which you spoke of stool samples being
used to treat people now and how its roots lay in traditional
Chinese medicine and it's something that you've used as
well. Could that argument that you
know there are things within Ayurveda and Indian tradition,
medicine that can be coming into modern medicine and used
effectively if studied. Does that hold ground for you?
I mean as an answer to this, I would say that you see in in
Ayurveda by its principles of, you know the obsolete theories
of, you know, humors, which is actually vada Vida kapha, those
are actually obsolete theories. So based on that principle there
is nothing that is going to happen as a contribution from
Ayurveda to modern medicine. But when you look at the large
treasure trove of. Lot of herbal preparations and
formulation that has been used for management of various
symptoms across centuries. I think there is some evidence
that we can actually identify new molecules that may benefit
various disease conditions in the future.
But this is actually one of the most sophisticated arms of
modern medicine. This is known as drug discovery.
So if you look at metformin anti diabetes drug that is actually
prepared from. The French lilac plant, you know
if you look at an anti malaria like artemisin it is prepared
from another hub. So these are all from the
classical texts that they have understood and they have
identified and that is not done by Ireland's that is not done by
the alternative medicine practitioner, it is done by
modern medical scientists and clinician scientists.
So there is still scope for drug discovery from herbal sources.
But that does not mean that it is because of Ayurvedic wisdom.
That is a totally different scenario altogether.
But in terms of people who do take, say, Ayurvedic
preparations like you said in their daily life, how would
they, say, observe this sort of damage that they're undergoing?
What would it manifest as? This is actually quite difficult
to answer. In our own studies, we have seen
that people consuming Ayurvedic formulations for few days.
Have developed severe liver injury and those who consumed it
over a few months also have developed severe liver injury.
So this is something known as idiosyncratic liver injury where
the dose does not matter or the duration does not matter.
A particular Ayurvedic formulation can cause liver
injury with me in me within two days time and the same
formulation can cause liver injury in another person in two
months time. The liver injury from these
medications can. This herbal formulation can
present in various matter and various manners.
For example, one is acute hepatitis with or without
jaundice. One is it can present as acute
liver failure when the patient develops jaundice and then
complete liver failure of because of which there is brain
failure, so that requires a liver transplant.
Third is they can just have you know, something known as
decompensation. For example, they have an
underlying liver disease which is stable.
And then suddenly it becomes unstable.
And then there is something known as acute and chronic liver
failure, where a cirrhosis patient on these herbal
formulations can suddenly develop severe liver injury and
liver failure necessitating a liver transplant at the
earliest. So these are the various manners
in which these herbal formulations can affect the a
person with a healthy liver and a person with an already
underlying liver disease. It's not something like, you
know, only Ayurvedic, Ayurvedic medicines or Ayurvedic products
are causing liver damage or liver problem.
The Irish doctor saying that you look that doctor Phil Abby
Phillips is deliberately doing it because government is funding
a lot. They call my worker propaganda
and all that. But the the the whole aspect is
that you know, I have evidence to showcase, right.
I'm not just saying it. I'm not saying that modern
medicines don't harm. I'm saying that alternative
medicines can also harm. For example, if if I actually
give a patient 500 milligrams of parastamol for fever, I I know
that in that patient, 99% of the time that is going to work, that
parastorum is going to reduce that fever.
If I give that person about 5 grams of parastamol, I know that
the fever is going to go down, but then his liver also is going
to get harmed. So that I have the data with me,
I have that information. Now take the example of an
Ayurvedic formulation, a Herbert formulation.
It is not being tested. You have multiple ingredients in
it. You don't know what each
ingredient is going to do in your body and you have no idea
what the final effect of that is in the body because you don't
have any studies to back it up. So I give this particular
Ayurvedic formulation to a person for fever.
His fever doesn't go away and he develops liver injury.
So the whole aspect of modern medicine causing damage, the
risk versus benefit, is what we have to look at.
So I know that if I use a particular medicine in the
prescribed format in the recommended dose for the
recommended duration for that particular indication, that
person is not going to suffer from a side effect.
But when you look at the other side, you have a product which
has no dead down effect, no dead down side effect.
Know that on the complete formulations or their
interactions. And I give it blindly thinking
that it may help and ultimately if it harms you look at the risk
and benefit. The risk is much more than the
benefit. But when it comes to modern
medicines, benefits are much more than risk because we
exactly know what we're doing. So that aspect is lacking in
Irish practice because everything is based on blind
faith and, you know, appeal to time use.
For decades I have not seen any problem.
So it's it's these are all anecdotal personal experiences
that people and practitioners talk about.
When I was actually discussing about alternative medicine
practices and their harms, a lot of Ayurveda practitioners were
actually responding with Gambian cancer of tragedy.
Gambian cancer of tragedy. The the cuff syrup problem was
not because of the science. The ingredients in that cuff
syrup still works. It works.
We have evidence that it works. The problem was that it was
manufactured poorly. So just because it was
manufactured poorly, that doesn't mean that modern
medicine is bad. It just means that the
manufacturer is at work, right? So these kind of silly arguments
are very common for my practitioners and I don't think
we need to explain extensively according to them because
neither will they actually accept it.
Because for them I understand why they want to do it, because
it's their bread and butter. So I just let it go now.
I don't. I don't interact much on that
front. This term, detoxification, I'm
going into it because you mentioned that curcumin, which
is now suddenly is a craze of sorts, especially in the sort of
Wellness space where you have multiple.
Tablets marketed as immunity boosters, as strength boosters
and all kinds of things. And yet there is that demand for
sort of detoxification by no one really quite knows what that
means, whether it's alcohol or whether it's our other habits
that we want to detoxify from. Is there a detoxification cure
of sorts that exist? I think this whole terminology
called detox is actually a Wellness fraud term, which is
just use of marketing. So detoxification happens
naturally in us through our liver and kidneys and that is a
natural physiological process. I mean there is nothing from
outside that can detoxify that except if you have a liver
failure then you have something known as a liver dialysis where
people are hooked on, hooked on to a machine that cleans all the
toxins out of your body, the liver failure patient and
similar with a kidney failure patient where they have
dialysis. So that is only detox that we
can actually do for people. You know not popping some pills
or drinking juice doesn't doesn't detox anybody.
And what people also should realize is that most of these
detoxes are multiple herbal formulations without any actual
known benefits. They just claim the benefits.
And for example, the Kurkumin 1 turmeric is now blacklisted by
the Italian government because in their pharmacovigilance data
program they found out that a large number of people suffered
from hepatitis and jaundice and liver failure due to turmeric
based formulations. So there is no blacklisted in
Italy and if Day has issued warnings regarding turmeric
formulations based on the study by the drug induced Liver Injury
Network of United States. So these things are all coming
up because people are actually using it for all of these you
know marketed Wellness based quackeries.
If I may add that the more people realize that the detox is
actually a Wellness marketing fraudulent term, I think we'll
see lesser number of people developing unnecessary organ
injuries in the future. I remember this because you
tweeted, and it struck A chord with me, that even boiled
vegetable juicing doesn't help in any way.
No, I don't think so. I mean people do a lot of crazy
things. For example, I mean I've had
patients purely on a a fruit based diet, purely fruit based.
And this is from advice from naturopaths, where they say that
if you go on a fruitarian diet, you can actually detox your body
more because all the chemicals and insecticides and the
vegetables do not detain. And I've had a lot of patients
coming in after weeks of fruitarian diet, all
malnourished, and they have actually gained so much of
weight because of all the fruit sugars they've been having in
the name of detox. And it's so difficult for us to
actually get them back on their feet, rehab them from all that
actual toxification that has been done to the brain.
And I mean the whole aspect of food as medicine is one of the
biggest problems that people are completely into and a lot of
natural paths and functional medicine doctors, I may please
add here that functional medicine is a complete crackery.
Please don't follow it. Functional medicine
practitioners actually promote a lot of naturopathy and they do a
lot of these detoxes and it does not help anyone.
Many celebrities are promoting these plant based protein
powders. Is there any checks on on, you
know, such such such such ads promote the promotions, whether
they can go ahead with such ads. A lot of these products, they
don't come under the category of drugs and medicine, drugs or
medicine, right. So they are basically
nutraceuticals. They're like Wellness products.
They're like food supplements. All of these brand promotions
are not based on any evidence for benefits.
It's it's all the money. I myself actually had messages
from some Ayurveda company. I mean, I I think they actually
don't know my work, but they actually messaged me on Twitter
saying that would you like to endorse this brand of ours on
Instagram? We'll pay you.
And they they they they said they'll pay me handsomely.
So there are people who actually do that not because of the
actual benefit of the product, but because of brand value
addition and also they get paid to do it.
And I don't think there is a good regulation at the moment in
our country for herbal and dietary supplements.
Take the best regulatory agencies in the world.
I mean for example, say USFDA, the FDA does not regulate herbal
and dietary supplements. They just look at toxicities,
manufacturing practices and things like that and then just
warn people. But if they somebody makes a
very false claim, for example, this herbal product will cure
your cancer, the FDA will pounce on it, right.
But even that line of management and regulation is not there in
India. For example, Baba Ramdev can
actually say that you know, doing this yoga and having the
supplement can cure your diabetes.
You don't have to take any modern medicine.
He can actually say that and get away with it.
So I think our country is way, way behind when it comes to
actually regulating real medical practice versus alternative
medical practice. I think both suffers here.
The real medical practice also is very poorly regulated and
alternative medical practice is also completely unregulated.
And as long as it stays like that, we can actually see a lot
of these celebrities endorsing a lot of products because it's
money for them and nothing more than that.
We're in conversation with Doctor Abby Phillips, who's
better known as the Liver Doc. Over the years he's been on
social media, Doctor Phillips says he faced plenty of abuse
initially, but is now seeing much more support for his work.
He talks about the challenges of taking a stand.
We also discussed the case of an influencer who faced legal
proceedings for his claim about sugar in a health drink.
And Doctor Phillips explains what those targeting medical
misinformation should do when they're targeted.
You kind of started to speak out around the time the biggest push
we've seen, perhaps for AYUSH has began, you know, and you've
become a prominent voice on it on multiple social media
platforms. Do you see them being more such
voices since you started? How effective do you see your
work as being in the time since you started speaking out?
Oh yes, I mean definitely there is a difference.
So initially when I started to talk about how alternative
medicine or alternative practice is actually, you know, harmful,
I had a lot of backlash from the community, I mean especially
from the practitioners themselves and also people who
have had anecdotal benefits by using this Ayurveda homeopathy
formulations. That was a difficult time
because I was only person doing that.
And as years went by and as the COVID pandemic also started
unraveling itself, people started actually understanding
what the scientific method is. You actually have something that
works. You actually have something that
claims to be working but then later on proven that it does not
work and some things that actually doesn't work at all.
So this kind of a scientific temperament actually has built
within the community over the last few years.
And because of which when I talk about an alternative medicine or
a formulation that can harm somebody, I am actually getting
a lot of positive vibes from both patients and the general
community with regards to knowing about it more.
You know, they will not just directly start, you know, have
you seen me or crawling me on social media.
What they would do is they would actually look at the evidence
that I'm posting. Earlier you had this sort of
thing where a live 52 would be prescribed by a doctor, not by
an Ayurvedic doctor, because it was deemed as something that
would do no harm. Do you see that as having
changed in any way because you've taken this specific
example? I mean, if you look at the
particular product, it is actually been there in the
market for decades. I still remember my father is a
very, very senior gastrologist. I mean he's been working for
almost for more than 4 decades in gastrology practice and I
still have a prescription from him that he wrote to a patient
in late 1970s where that patient actually had Hepatitis B and he
actually wrote a particular herbal medicine which is
philanders Neruri, which very commonly people use here in in
Kerala. So few years later, we actually
discovered the antiviral for Hepatitis B which is lamodine
and then came undercover and so many other antivirals came and
then he stopped prescribing that and then we had the proper
medicines for it. So in that sense a lot of
physicians who are not updated regarding actual medical
treatment for their patients still have an old kind of
thinking where you know you prescribe this also along with
that. So that is how products like
Live 52 actually survive plus there is a lot of marketing
happening. So that is how modern medicine
doctors are fooled into writing all these herbal products only
because of ignorance and the absence of curiosity in getting
themselves updated about the latest information which is
going to benefit their patients. Once that comes into place.
I I don't think such products will survive for long.
And I'm I'm actually seeing a lot of people are actually
reducing their prescriptions of such medications from their
routine practice. You know, you're on Twitter,
you're on YouTube as well. Are there any perils of being
this outspoken? I mean, of course, I mean lots.
I mean perils have never left me.
The whole issue is that alternative medicine industry is
actually a very big industry, right.
I mean they talk about the big pharma, I mean that there is
also big pharma in alternative medicine industry.
So it's it's actually business, right.
So when businesses get hurt, they would want to hurt back.
So I've had a lot of backlash and challenges and problems and
issues from the alternative medicine industry from every
level. Look at private Ayurveda
companies. They have sued me 500 fires.
The government themselves are actually have actually send me
legal letters. I have faced a lot of different
types of challenges which I'm least bothered is the one that I
face on social media. You know that's just behind the
keyboard, some guy doing something talking something
that's that's OK we don't have to worry about it.
But there was an incident when a group of homeopaths actually
came physically to the lab where I'm I was analyzing my products
and they actually verbally abused the lab members and got
physical with the man. Actually put that on Facebook as
a video and because of which I had to shut that lap down and
stop getting services from the men, move my lap to another
place. So that physical harassment also
has happened to me and it could still happen, but I hope it does
not happen to that extent where I have to stop doing it.
And I hope people understand that everything good comes to
the price. But I'm, I'm ready to pay the
price. Do you also worry now especially
of being taken off air for inconvenient views?
You would also point out that there is an influencer who had a
video about health drink and suddenly found himself D
platform because the company was able to proclaim that it wasn't
as bad as he claimed. Yeah, I mean this has happened
to me before because I I know exactly the position that that
person was in. You know, he's an he's an
influencer on Instagram by the name Food Farmer.
So I I know exactly what he went through.
That is why I came in support of him.
Because when initially I reported on a liver failure in a
young woman who later died because of a herbal and nitric
supplement manufactured by Herbalife, the company came
firing on all cylinders at me. And they sell me legal letters
and the best lawyers in the country against me.
And ultimately they threatened legally the publisher and the
journal and they actually removed my publication.
It's very well known. And at the time I was so scared
in the sense that will I go to jail?
Did I do something wrong? But I knew, I now know that, you
know, I had the backing of science, but I did not have
backing of scientific people with me.
So if the journal or the publisher had actually supported
me and did not remove that particular article, I would say
that nothing would have happened.
You know, they they could not. They cannot come near me with a
legal threat like that because everything was done As for
evidence and I had the evidence backing it up.
Similarly, in this case also there is good evidence that or
the lack of it, that every every claim can easily be debunked.
And even when I wrote about some products from Himalaya, I
published this is published work.
It's it's there in the public. They actually send me legal
letters and asked me to cease and desist from using the name
on social media and things like that.
So all of this has happened to me and it it will keep
happening. But the whole last point is that
if you have evidence to back your claims, I don't think
people should be afraid of it. But doesn't it also?
Put you in a precarious position where the social media is how
you get your message out, and at the same time that is the very
thing that is threatened when it's deemed inconvenient by
somebody. And more so when we are also
talking when social media platforms themselves are going
to try and play safer than ever before.
I think putting everything out for the public to understand is
very important. For example, if the food farmer
actually kept quiet, he removed his video and he didn't say
anything about it, you know, nobody will actually know about
it and nobody would know actually know that.
You know, everything that was claimed was actually true and
whatever the big company did was actually wrong.
So similarly, if something is happening to you wrongly or it
is not justified, if we keep quiet about it, then that means
others won't know about it. So I would, I would say that if
I say something in social media with proper evidence and I get
into trouble because of that, I keep talking about the trouble
that I'm getting into, that actually works because at some
point we can actually have proper evidence laid out on the
table for everyone to see. See, none of these companies
will actually take us to court. I don't think so.
I mean, for example, if I say that a particular product from a
particular big company does not work and the company sends me
legal letter and we go to court and I can easily prove that it
does not work, they've had it and most of these companies will
only go a distance with you and they will never go the whole
distance. So that is something very
important, that people who communicate science and
communicates medical science and healthcare or misinformation in
healthcare must understand that you have to communicate with the
right evidence in place. No opinions, no exaggerations,
and absolutely no hearsay stuff about medical science.
Today's episode was produced by Jayaraj Singh, Sunay Marathi and
Anuja Singh. For a daily spotlight on people,
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