Perils of promoting ancient remedies

SOME curious remarks were made about cow urine (gaumutra) in Parliament last week. The context was the appointment of Veezhinathan Kamakoti, Director of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, as a member of the task force on entrance test reforms. During the debate on the subject, an indirect reference was made to Kamakoti’s support for the use of cow urine. In defence, some ruling party members cited patents granted for certain properties of cow urine to prove that the claims were indeed scientific.

In January last year, Kamakoti, at a public meeting, claimed that cow urine had “anti-fungal, anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory” properties that had been “scientifically demonstrated”.

A group of academics has extended support to Kamakoti, saying that the dismissal of his views on cow urine amounts to undermining scientific temper enshrined in the Constitution, and that he is entitled to “present a hypothesis and discuss traditional knowledge”. The Director of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, too, has defended Kamakoti.

Research into cow urine and cow dung is not new. Some claims were made and papers were published even in the 1970s and 1980s, but they remained on the fringe. What’s new is official support for such research as part of a systematic state-driven effort to prove mythical-religious beliefs as being scientifically validated.

As a result, there is a surge of articles and reviews about cow urine and cow dung in professional journals, and patents are being filed on certain claims. While professional bodies of scientists have kept mum, such claims are getting support from high-profile academics like Directors of IITs and IIMs — who are not necessarily experts in biochemistry, pharmacology or drug discovery.

Seeking scientific validation of ancient ideas and beliefs is not true science for several reasons. This approach to research starts with a preconceived notion and a sort of confirmation bias, while lacking falsifiability. Ancient texts and traditional knowledge mention the human body, diseases and cures in such broad terms that they can be twisted or interpreted to fit any modern discovery or concept.

This path is often adopted to claim that plastic surgery, stem cell treatment, in vitro fertilisation and satellite communication existed in ancient India.

The same validation approach is being applied to cow urine. Finding certain trace minerals and bioactive peptides in cow urine or excreta is not a convincing proof of their medicinal properties because they can be found in excreta or urine of humans as well as other mammals like bulls, yaks or even deer.

At most, such research can fall in the realm of pseudoscience because there is a bit of scientific jargon used to describe urine chemistry, but claims of medicinal benefits are not scientific because all that has been done is in a Petri dish and using some distillates of cow urine and not whole urine.

When research starts with a preconceived notion, it tends to ignore or suppress negative results. The government recently claimed that a new study had validated papaya leaf extract “as a low-cost solution for chemotherapy-related low platelet counts.” The results were published in an oncology journal. However, the journal has been forced to review the results following red flags raised by independent experts, who found that the researchers omitted the cases of patients who did not recover to make the herbal extract appear more effective.

The same has been the case with curcumin, an active ingredient of turmeric, which has been touted as a miracle herb with therapeutic value for several diseases, including cancer. In recent years, it has emerged that claims are based on dubious research, although published in international journals. Over 30 research papers on curcumin, written by an American researcher, Bharat Aggarwal, have been retracted by international journals so far for falsified data, duplicated images and manipulated figures.

In the 1990s, RB Singh, a researcher based in Moradabad, collaborated with those from Israel and Slovakia to test the benefits of the Indo-Mediterranean diet on the progression of heart disease and published the findings in The Lancet and the British Medical Journal. A few years later, independent scientists raised red flags about the authenticity of the clinical trial data. When asked to make available raw data, Singh claimed that termites had devoured the files.

Another problem with the validation approach is that it bypasses safety issues. The argument that toxicity tests for natural remedies, which find mention in ancient texts, are not required is flawed. Plants and herbs may contain heavy metals and other contaminants present in soil, which may cause injury to the liver or kidneys.

Bioavailability of active ingredients in a plant also varies, depending on the conditions under which it is grown. In the case of cow urine, a study by the Indian Veterinary Research Institute has concluded that it is unfit for human consumption as it contains harmful bacteria.

China has taken a science-based approach to traditional medicine, instead of religious or ideology-based validation. The discovery of artemisinin, an anti-malarial drug which won the 2015 Nobel Prize in medicine for Chinese scientist Tu Youyou, is a good example. Instead of accepting ideas mentioned in ancient texts as uncritical truths, the project used them as clues and screened over 400 plants. Rigorous experiments were conducted over almost half a century before the molecule was isolated and developed as a drug. The discovery was not claimed as a validation of ancient texts, but as proof of a time-tested scientific method.

Instead of glorifying half-baked claims on cow urine and dung, Indian academics and scientists should start fighting pseudoscience and debunk falsehoods. Science funding agencies should stop sponsoring studies by dubious institutions and researchers in the name of promoting Indian knowledge systems.

Science academies need to evolve a mechanism to check the growing tendency of research misconduct. If the government does not act, academies should come together to establish an independent office of research integrity, a sort of research ombudsman. The choice is between science and pseudoscience.