The recipes of Patanjali - the Indian pharmaceutical giant - between Ayurveda and charlatanism/quackery Ayurveda, a traditional medicine, seduces the whole world but in India, where it originated, it is often misguided. A huge firm, Patanjali, dominates the subcontinent market and claims to cure everything, playing with the credulity – and the lives – of mil lions of patients. With their backs on the ground, yogis twirl their legs in the air. In the centre of the video, sporting a long beard and saffron pants, a man speaks and declares: “Doctors tell you that only a transplant can save you from cirrhosis, but in reality, modern medicine can do nothing for you. I have cured tens of millions of patients. Take a Livogrit tablet in the morning with cow urine, and things will be better in a month! The man is called Baba Ramdev and he is in earnest. This guru touts his remedies on his own television channel and is followed by tens of millions of Indians. He is the media face of Patanjali, an Indian pharmaceutical company that claims to heal by relying on the power of Ayurveda, an ancestral (school of) medicine based on elements such as air and fire. Cirrhosis, cancer, epilepsy, Covid - 19: Patanjali offers medicines for all kinds of diseases. The firm's cosmetics or food products are sold everywhere - from small villages to the large metropolises of India. The company’ s value is estimated at 6 billion euros, at the very least. But for many scientists, this empire is actually built on a serious deception of patients and consumers. “When India was under lockdown, a lot of pseudoscientific information related to Ayurveda w as circulated on the Internet” testifies Dr Abby Philips. This liver specialist is known on YouTube as The Liver Doc. From his video studio in Kerala, in the south of the country, he leads a crusade against charlatans. “With Coronil, Patanjali claimed to t reat Covid! It was wrong and dangerous, someone had to explain that big Ayurveda companies were looking to make money, not cure,” he says. Patanjali was founded in 2006 by Baba Ramdev and his associate, Acharya [Sanskrit for “spiritual teacher”] Balkrishn a. Covid - 19 thrust the company into the spotlight. In June 2020, as the pandemic swept across India, Baba Ramdev claimed to have found the miracle solution. A mixture of plants, packaged and sold as Coronil. “In one week, 100% of patients were cured of Cov id. No advanced nation has succeeded in doing so. The Indian people are proud of Ayurveda”, he claimed at the time on a pro - government channel with a large audience. Thanks to the popularity of Baba Ramdev, tens of millions of tablets were quickly sold, an d distributed in Indian states led by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). However, for Dr Abby Philips, who carried out analyses in an independent laboratory, Coronil was ineffective. “There are traces of lead, a poison according to the WHO, and industrial solvents, due to poor manufacturing conditions,” he explains. The study published by Patanjali on this drug involves around 100 asymptomatic patients and has no scientific value.» In 2018, Patanjali opened a laboratory to prove the superiority of its products and to answer the accusations of many Indian medical associations. To find out more, Marianne went to the company's headquarters in the Hindu holy city of Haridwar, at the foot of the Himalayas. With its giant hospitals, meditat ion centres, shopping centre and apartment buildings, the Patanjali campus looks like a city. Acharya Balkrishna, the director, agreed to speak with Marianne. “Everything that we are accused of is false,” assures the smiling man, draped in a white tunic. F or centuries, Ayurveda was the medical science of India and it is not opposed to modern medicine. It simply obeys different underlying mechanisms, like another language. So I started a research centre with all the modern equipment to translate Ayurveda int o terms that Westerners can understand.” Acharya Balkrishna claims to be guided by a spiritual quest. “Since early childhood, I have wanted to preserve the traditions of our ancestors. When I was ten years old, I left my native Nepal to follow the teachin gs of a guru in Haryana. I discovered yoga and Ayurveda,” says the director of Patanjali, who owns the vast majority of shares in the firm and a fortune estimated at 3 billion euros, positioning him among the 100 richest Indians in the world, according to Forbes magazine. Marianne invited us to visit the laboratory. Inside, employees were busy working on microscopes and genetic or chemical analysis machines. “In India, there is a rich tradition of medicinal plants, but we do not know their mode of action,” explains Anurag Varshney, Patanjali's research director. “For this, we have recruited researchers and published more than one hundred scientific articles in international journals.” The company hopes to bring together traditional and modern medicines and spirituality. This, in short, is the respectable image that Patanjali wants to convey. But this mixture of genres convinces only a few scientists. “The effectiveness and toxicity of a new drug must be evaluated in clinical trials worthy of the name,” judge s Dr Shinmon Jose, a member of the Mission for Ethics and Health Science in India. Patanjali may be content with computer simulations, and tests on rats, while the human body is much more complex. “The irony is that they are testing products that they are already selling. Therefore, it is research conducted ‘a posteriori’ (relating to or denoting reasoning or knowledge which proceeds from observations or experiences to the deduction of probable causes),” continues Dr Jose, a graduate in biochemistry and imm unology. “This scientific quackery makes Patanjali even more dangerous. Because for the consumer, it is very hard to evaluate these publications. Conversely, it is easy to be seduced by promises of healing. A patient can lose precious time before starting treatment, which increases mortality.” Even among Ayurveda scholars, Patanjali's misleading claims are now of concern. "Making delusional promises, saying that we are going to cure cancers, incurable diseases...all this harms Ayurveda, it makes it lose it s credibility,” regrets the director of the Ayurveda department of one of the largest universities in India. “This practice originated millennia ago, by observing the human body without a microscope. We must distinguish what is useful from what is outdated .” The professor prefers to remain anonymous because of the threats he would face. Since the rise to power of Hindu nationalists, Ayurveda has been glorified. Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed that India discovered surgery before the rest of the world b ecause...the god Shiva had grafted an elephant's head onto his son, Ganesh. Anyone who questions this fantasised past is accused of being anti - Indian. In this story, which mixes ancestral medicines and national identity, Baba Ramdev is a hero, thanks to Pata njali. Indian journalist Priyanka Pathak - Narain is the author of a biography titled Godman to Tycoon: The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev. She tells of an impatient man, whose rise coincided with that of Hindu nationalism. “From the start, Baba Ramdev was devo ured by ambition. He tried to launch his political party, but it didn't work, she writes. So he supported the BJP and gained immense popularity by positioning himself as a master of Ayurveda. In that sense, he is a kingmaker, whether he has a party or not. » Since the publication of her book in 2017, Priyanka Pathak - Narain had to leave India for her own safety. Baba Ramdev filed a complaint against the journalist, and her family has also received numerous threats. Many doctors, lawyers and patients have tr ied to attack Patanjali in court. Few, however, have agreed to speak up. In New Delhi, Dr Prem Aggarwal refuses to give in to fear. Former director of the Indian Medical Association and the Delhi Medical Association, he does not mince his words against B aba Ramdev. “Patanjali earned tens of millions of dollars, by criminally tricking patients into believing it could save their lives. As Baba Ramdev owns media, is on TV, and shakes hands with the Prime Minister, Indians say to themselves: how could this ma n be wrong?” adds Dr Aggarwal, the cardiologist. Within the important medical associations that he chaired, Prem Aggarwal tried to incriminate Patanjali on the judicial level before the justice of New Delhi and even the Supreme Court of India. He hasn’t be en successful so far. "Baba Ramdev, with his money and his power, feels invincible but the wheel will eventually turn," he wants to believe. While the Hindu nationalist party BJP has long been close to Patanjali, it seems to have distanced itself from the firm of late, after numerous complaints. The Ministry of Ayurveda, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, recently asked Patanjali to remove 53 false advertisements for diabetes or hypertension. But Patanjali is only the tip of the iceberg. Since 2018, almost 20,000 misleading advertisements have been reported in Indian pharmacovigilance centres, often in the name of Ayurveda. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Original article in French via Marian ne - paywalled: https://www.marianne.net/monde/asie/les - recettes - de - patanjali - le - geant - pharmaceutique - indien - entre - ayurveda - et - charlatanisme Archived article in French: https://archive.is/dzrZL -------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------