The person I am talking about is Dr. Palaniappan Manickam aka Dr. Pal, a board-certified gastroenterologist from Sacramento, California, who is also a YouTuber. He’s created various videos targeting Indian netizens, most of which are decent, but not without adding his own twist of misinformation, that are considered unscientific - some of them have been debunked here and here (auto-captions available).
I can’t help but think why YouTube would immediately remove videos that spread misinformation, but only when it affects the western world, but not the other part? Clearly, this guy’s video is in English, he participates in collaborations with other misinformation-peddling YouTubers - the consequences of which a few percent of the billion people in India have to face - which is still, a lot of people? Sure, you can complain that it is the responsibility of the Indian government - but they are themselves in this business of pseudo-science. When there’s no one taking responsibility, I can’t help but feel helpless about the lies people will hear.
Edit: And to why this matters, there’s an on-going case in the Supreme Court of India. Said “guru” sold Coronil kit, and mocked dying doctors. What did the kit do? It had high concentration of lead. Dr. Cyriac Abby Philips fought against it - and the system tried to punish him.
I created this post to discuss about the ill-effects of traditional medicine, which is clearly known to not follow systemic scientific methodology. Traditional medicines are based on the concepts of balance of dosha (vata-pita-kapha), primal elements (fire, water, earth, air, space) and humor (blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile). Now that’s ayurveda, siddha and unani for your respectively. Likewise, homeopathy is based on the concept of “likes get cured by likes” - therefore, the harm-causing agent is diluted to many parts. There’s also other traditional medicines, witch doctors and faith-based healing, from Asia, Africa and even Europe. None of these align with the modern scientific theory - knowledge of which is accessible to the general public. Now, if you don’t understand basic science, I am not going to bother, you have all the free time in the world to cross-examine it yourself, starting with fifth grade concepts of chemistry - that’s all you’ll need, not even physics or biology.
You chose to be a bad actor starting from the initial comment, deliberately choosing to misdirect a flaw that is not a part of science, but corporate greed and capitalism. It is because profit over safety overshadows the concern for the well-being of another human, and has nothing to do with modern science itself. In the example you’ve mentioned about Johnson&Johnson, instead of safer substitutes, they chose to use talcum power, which is always contaminated with asbestos. Be it Ponds, Nivea or Cinthol, all of these are contaminated with asbestos, and they’re still being sold.
Now, what you’ve done is:
You’ve engaged in red herring fallacies multiple times. And therefore, there is no need for me to engage in any further conversation with you.
Except that they don’t. Pharmas are held accountable for medical mishaps, so are doctors and nurses. Not these quacks pretending to be guru or godmen.
As far as it comes to my “appeal to authority”, the FDA, FSSAI, CDSCO or NHS have a team of highly skilled scientists, who have spent years on their specialization. They are questioned by other governing bodies of health, they are answerable to the public, make decisions based on rigorous scientific evidence from lab data and clinical trials. They also have to go through peer reviews, most of which is done in well-respected journals. There are smart people out there who question them regularly. My trust is not blindly on that institute, but rather their entire eco-system, that allows me to see for myself how they have reached to a solution that benefits human society.
You wanted to trash talk about traditional medicine without acknowledging that modern medicine isn’t following science either.
Modern medicine has the parallel concept of homeostasis, which is even more generalized.
Homeopathy is not traditional medicine. In fact, it is younger than allopathy - the mainstream modern medicine.
Most of modern medicine is inaccessible without paying a doctor, and the research behind it is behind paywalls and not accessible to general public either.
Question. Are you an Indian, or have recieved education in India?
So you understand that modern medicine is not a scientific enterprise, but one of crony capitalism that has overtaken academic institutions. Good to know.
And, this is worse than coronil.
How is it my problem that what you are shilling for doesn’t stand my scrutiny?
s/ Your scientific majesty, I have sinned against the church of modern medicine. Please condone my blaspheme against the divine doctrine of science. I’ll atone by trash-talking against the evil pseudo-science of traditional medicine. /s
Feeling better?
Lol. Remind me. Who has been held responsible for covid-19?
Not too long ago, it took these specialists 27 years to decide that a widely diatributed vaccine had a fatal side-effect and should be discontinued immediately. Also, have you read the time frame of justice in Johnson & Johnson case?
And the flip-flops by qualified doctors and their institutions on whether alcohol is bad for health or good… before that smoking, X-rays.
There was this video (now removed and heavily censored even in FOSS circles) which showed one-by-one some newspaper clippings about percentage efficacy of covid vaccines declared in published research. It started with a headline declaring 100% efficacy of vaccines, followed by another with 99%, than 98,… 97… and so on, ending literally at 1%.
What do you think? Were these figures were sent to newspapers before peer-review, or after?
Personally, I don’t care.