The protocol thus is faithful neither to the Ayurvedic classics nor to conventional diagnostic criteria. A document endorsed by the country’s Prime Minister would be expected to be clear, error-free and trustworthy. The document in question sadly has these attributes only faintly.
Whenever the question of juxtaposing Ayurveda with modern medicine arises, it is posited by some influential commentators as a case of placing holism side-by-side reductionism. Such a view is an overstatement of facts and this essay seeks to put things in perspective.
A rough-and-ready model like the dosha theory is basically the result of reasoning intuitively – of using rules of thumb to simplify problems for the sake of efficiency. It relies on commonsensical shortcuts that have arisen as handy ways to solve complex cognitive problems rapidly, but at a cost of inaccuracies and misfires.
Lakhotia, Patwardhan and Rastogi examine a recent advisory by the AYUSH ministry that mandates the inclusion of AYUSH experts in any study on AYUSH drugs.
