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A day after the Indian Medical Association urged the Union Health Ministry to take action against Yoga guru Ramdev over his comments that “lakhs had died after taking allopathy medicines”, Patanjali Yogpeeth Trust said that Ramdev had the utmost regard for doctors and carried no ill will against modern science and medicine.
In a signed statement dated 24 May, the trust’s General Secretary Acharya Balakrishna said that Ramdev was merely reading out a WhatsApp forward received by him while adding that a “truncated version of the video” that has gone viral is totally out of context.
Reading from his mobile in a video that has now gone viral, Ramdev could be heard saying, “Allopathy is such a stupid science that first chloroquine failed; then Remdesivir failed; then anti-biotics failed; then steroids failed; then plasma therapy was banned.”
The Yoga guru then went on to claim that no medicine was working against fever as the drugs were only reducing the temperature, but were not treating the virus or bacteria causing it.
Following the video, the IMA, without naming the yoga guru had said that some were attacking healthcare workers with the intent of boosting their “unprincipled, deceitful, and unpatriotic business fortunes”.
The IMA said that both Ramdev and his associate Balakrishna had received treatment at modern healthcare facilities whenever they fell sick, even though they had routinely spoken ill of modern medicine and its practitioners.
The IMA asked in its statement that by challenging time-tested institutions, like ICMR and DCGG, and health issued by the Ministry of Health, did such revered individuals an anti-national act?
Further, the IMA asked the Health Minister to either “accept the challenge and accusations of this gentleman and dissolve modern medical facilities or boldly face and prosecute the person for his words of arson on the sovereignty of the country”.
The Delhi Medical Association (DMA) on Saturday, 22 May, registered a police complaint against Ramdev for describing modern medicine as "stupid science".
The DMA submitted a statement along with the complaint.
The complaint was filed at the Daryaganj Police Station in the national capital.
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