Only the human mind matters; the body does not matter at all
A Massachusetts General Hospital study revealed that death and disability rates in seriously ill patients in intensive care units came down when nearly 90% of the specialist cardiologists were in college meetings or away from their great responsibility. This fits in with the views of one of their leaders, Dr Harlan Krumholz, lamenting that most cardiac interventions in the United States (emulated zealously in India) are done for money and not for patients’ benefit. A study that showed that between Philadelphia (US) and Ontario (Canada)—with similar demographics—the cardiac intervention rates were 1:10 in favour of the US. Yet, at the end of five years, there were more people alive in Ontario in that cohort than in Philadelphia! Other studies showed that when doctors went on strike, the society’s health improved and mortality and morbidity fell significantly.
I have planned a study of per capita mortality in two time slots, 1930-1970 and 1970-2010 in the same hospitals in US, England and India. I am making all-out efforts for this at the moment. My hunch is that there will be a significant worsening of mortality and morbidity rates in the second slot compared to the first, as happened at the Christy’s Hospital in Manchester in one particular disease—chronic myeloid leukaemia—in the previous century.
Human body is a closed system with a powerful healer inside that looks after most—if not all—ills. This healer is called the immune system. The immune system becomes the inner healer where outside interference is limited to “cure rarely, comfort mostly but to console always.” That is precisely why interventions, often, lead to disaster. Even the germ theory and the advent of antibiotics has not been as much of a blessing as it is made out. We have landed ourselves in a catch-22 situation with super bugs ruling the roost in present hospital set-ups forcing us, in desperate situations, to go back to nature, like in the case of faecal transplants, etc. Even in other areas, antibiotics have been a bane. Western science thinks that it is the responsibility of science to meddle even with nature. Primarily, science is meant to try and understand how nature works. If science tries to teach nature a lesson or two, like in genetic engineering, nature will teach us a very nasty lesson sooner than later—if it has not done so already.
The king of scientific ideas, quantum physics, has come so close to sanatana dharma that many leading physicists like Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Durr, Erwin Schrodinger and Niels Bohr have almost become philosophers. Only the human mind matters; the body does not matter at all. Consciousness is fundamental; all else is derived from it. This is elegantly shown by David Wiebers, a noted neuroscientist and teacher in his classic Theory of Reality. If one knows how to keep his/her mind under control, health gets corrected. Yoga, meditation, and pranayama hold the prime place in human healing. Ayurveda is staging a come back. Sadly, real good Ayurveda is no longer extant in India; most colleges teach modern medicine on the sly.
Unfortunately, Western materialistic science is so powerful monetarily that it is able to sell itself in society. The reformers have a twin task on hand—of teaching the new science to future students (it is not too late already) as well as the more arduous task of de-schooling society—that there is no single pill for every ill. The right science of healing has to be encouraged by the powers that be for it to blossom. Even the Western reductionist science has some place in the management of emergencies and corrective surgery. Let us club that with the best in Ayurveda and other complementary systems for the good of mankind.
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Professor Dr BM Hegde, a Padma Bhushan awardee in 2010, is an MD, PhD, FRCP (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow & Dublin), FACC and FAMS.)
I hope Dr Hegde will resist the pressure of publishing for the sake of posting / meeting deadlines and enlighten us with his medical wisdom in newer areas!
And as a insturctor in professional training, I am promoting ML as much as I can, as it is singularly the only money/life magazine one can place once trust on, and so, invest one's greatest resource, one's time.