Prof. B M Hegde
Vice Chancellor
MAHE, Manipal

The medical fraternity, aided and abetted by the giant pharmaceutical industry believes and propagates the idea that mankind cannot remain healthy and win over illnesses without regularly getting medical help and consuming medicines. They, together, have come to the conclusion that there is nothing beyond medicine and doctors. I am reminded of Sir Francis Bacon’s projected “System of Philosophy”, The Great Instauration. (Novum Organum – 1620 AD), which also believed in similar logic about this world.

“Before Columbus set sail across the Atlantic, the coat of arms of the Royal Family of Spain had been an impressa, depicting the Pillars of Hercules (these pillars of Hercules were so huge that when compared to the world’s tallest twin towers of Kuala Lumpur, they would make the latter look like small toilets!) and the Straits of Gibraltar, with the motto, NE PLUS ULTRA. There was “No More Beyond”. It was the pride and glory of Spain that their country was the outpost of the world. When Columbus made his discovery (of the New World), Spanish Royalty thriftily did the only thing necessary: erased the negative, leaving the giant Pillars of Hercules now bearing the motto, PLUS ULTRA. There was More Beyond.

Many of the “new philosophers”, now called “scientists”, led by Sir Francis Bacon, regarded these inscriptions to be very prophetic and significant. The Pillars were supposed to signify the passage of knowledge just like the sailors, who pass to and fro between these Pillars. Medical scientists of today seem to believe in that motto. They seem to believe that there is NO MORE BEYOND modern medicine, to keep man alive on this planet. The enormous funds that flow from the powerful pharmaceutical industry helps to keep this myth alive, despite many evidences to the contrary. It also reminds me of the farming industry where the petrochemical giants perpetuate the myth that mankind could never be fed adequately unless the farming industry depended on chemical fertilizers. In fact, the first anti-microbial, sulphamide, came from the petro-chemical industry.

Both these premises are flawed. Modern science of particle physics shows that the human being is only a tiny part of this macrocosm. It is our consciousness, which makes us tick in tune with the universal consciousness. Human body is a dynamic organism constantly run by food and oxygen but, totally dependent on the outside world, its environment. Human being is not a machine like a timepiece run by a spring. He/she does not work in bits and pieces, as was thought by Rene Descartes, and follow the conventional science of deterministic predictability of Newton and Albert Einstein. On the contrary, it works as a whole (holistic view) following the new science of particle physics of Max Planck, Max Bohm, Werner Heisenbeg and Erwin Schrodinger.

In their effort to combine the sciences of conventional physics and modern quantum mechanics, present day physicists are trying to get the two together in their “Unified Field” theory. Curiously, this is exactly what the Indian wisdom proclaimed to the world “time out of mind,” in their own inimitable style thus: “the whole universe is the container (space) and the content is universal consciousness”. If that were so, every human being becomes a tiny bit of that universe; totally interdependent and interconnected. Same is the story of agriculture. It is also dynamic and depends, to a large extent, on the soil and the multitude of organisms that go to make the soil fertile. Chemical fertilizers, in the end, would only promote the growth of weeds and sap the soil of its inherent fertility, acquired through the host of microorganisms that inhabit the soil.

There is an awareness of this even in the developed west where some farmers are following the natural organic farming methods. Chemical drugs from the pharmaceutical industry have been responsible for the mushrooming of the “super bugs,” the multi-drug resistant microorganisms, in almost all hospitals, threatening patient safety. I only hope that we will not come one full circle to the time of “hospitalism” of the nineteenth century Britain, where seriously ill patients went to the hospital only to go to meet their maker sooner than later and never to return home.

In this scenario, human body would eventually suffer illnesses because of drugs and interventions, and agriculture would grow lots of weeds in place of useful food. Good wholesome food is a vital prerequisite for good health, anyway. The clear writing is already on the walls. Earlier mankind takes note of the warning, the better for the future generations. Many farming lobbies in the west and a few thinking farmers in India have taken note of this to reverse the trend. Still the pressure of the multi-billion dollar giant of the petro-chemical industry, helped by our Cartesian reductionist scientists and the all too obliging media, is trying to keep the dangerous myth alive that chemical fertilizers and genetically modified seeds are our saviours! Genetically modified seeds could be a more dangerous unforeseen threat to mankind. Space does not permit me to go into the details in this article.

The analogy fits the medical world very correctly. Doctors, from the day one at the medical school, are being brainwashed to believe that the bio-medical model of man as a machine, made up of independent parts, the organs, needs periodic servicing by doctors, even when the machine seems to be working well, lest it should break down without prior warning in the future. In addition, they are made to believe that drugs and interventions are the be-all and the end-all of disease management. Most of the reductionist scientists in this field help perpetuate this myth. This mechanistic paradigm of man as a bio-medical model has been the milch cow of the drug industry and the technology giants. Interventions, more so, in apparently healthy population and their sheer numbers, has been financially very rewarding to the medical fraternity and the hospital giants. Medical education seems to be totally under the grip of these manipulators.

The reality, however, is different. The human body is built with enough safety measures to keep it going as long as possible with the help of its environment. The key player in this self preserving and self sustaining game seems to be the human mind, while the external environment is an important allay. All functions of the human body follow three rhythms – the ultradian, the circadian and, the infradian. Of these the last happens beyond the twenty-four hours’ cycle. Whereas the former two follow the day (24 hrs cycle), the infradian rhythm is the one that is controlled by the external forces; the environment, to a greater extent compared to the former two. In this context, I would like to mention the recent finding that the woman’s menstrual cycle, a twenty eight days cycle, depends basically on the effect of the moons’ gravitational force on the cortical cells of the brain to initiate and maintain the rhythm. This was proclaimed by Ayurveda thousands of years ago thus:

“Kujendu hetu Prathimaasaarthavam”
(Moon is the cause of monthly bleeding)

Ancient Indian science also proclaims that if one could keep one’s mind (consciousness) tranquil, one could remain healthy until death. The modern science of particle physics agrees with this concept.

The ground reality also supports this premise. Recent studies, many of them very large and prospective to have very high confidence levels, have shown that the human mind is one of the root causes of illnesses. Destructive hostility (hatred) has been shown to be the most important risk factor for heart attacks, while frustration and depression seem to be the real culprits in cancer and anger in haemorrhagic stroke. These cannot be the sole causes; while they are the prime-movers. Positive attitude has been shown to increase one’s life span by five to seven years! In short, it is not what one eats that eventually kills one, but what eats one seems to be the main culprit.

One could also draw parallels from auditing many of our drug and technology interventions. When doctors went on strike in Israel recently and in Saskatchewan and Los Angels country in the past, mortality and morbidity fell down significantly. Routine screening and intervening in healthy men, in a milestone, long-term, prospective study, compared to non-intervention but with simple change of life style, did show significantly higher death and disability rates in the former. Interventions like coronary bypass surgery and angioplasty in symptomatic individuals, repeated breast scans using mammography, long term hormone replacement therapy in post-menopausal women and, even routine long term ingestion of vitamins and calcium supplements have only resulted in more morbidity and in some cases higher mortality. Even much hyped (and also lucrative) business of long term blood pressure and sugar controlling drugs, as also the cholesterol lowering drugs, did not have the desired and predicted benefits!

“Time has come”, the Walrus said, taking the oysters for a walk on the beach eventually to make a meal of them, to distract their attention “ to talk of many things; cabbages and kings; of shoes and the polishing wax”. Time has come for the medical fraternity to realize that, like the Walrus, the pharmaceutical and technology lobbies, assisted by the Cartesian reductionist scientists, might only be taking us for a walk up the garden path to make their tills moving. It is time we woke up before it is too late. Let us allow the new generation of medical students to think freely without the shackles of the wrong knowledge their baggage of textbooks contain. The existing knowledge would only make them status-quoists, following the footsteps of their forefathers. “Knowledge advances”, said Karl Popper, “not by repeating known facts, but by refuting false dogmas.” We have to refute the myth that the human body is a machine working in bits and pieces like a time clock. I was shocked recently to know that even medical textbooks, at least the majority of them, are written with the help of drug company finances. Less said about the research being financed by these companies the better. Even the best of journals had to retract papers. Drug lobby could easily doctor the research data to “see in research what they want to see”.

In conclusion, let me remind the reader that there is a whole new world of medical science waiting to be rediscovered like the “gems of purest ray serene the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.” Ayurveda, the mother of all medical wisdoms, has vital treasures, both for promoting health and correcting illness. Mind, shown earlier to be the kingpin in the game of human wellness or otherwise, occupies the pride of place in that holistic system. There are other medical care delivery systems as well. A judicious mix of the best in all these systems, along with the hi-tech modern technological medicine for emergency care, would not only benefit mankind, but also make medical facility available for the poorest of the poor. There is more beyond modern medicine – PLUS ULTRA.