Assumption - eg: - Medicine X has 5 contents as raw herbs. Each herb has a-z benefits and A-Z hazards.
Assumption Mismatch -
1) C1, C2, C3, C4, C5 be the 5 herbs - each has C1.1----C1.x and similarly others various contents as - alkaloids, oils, and various categories of constituents.
2) Each of these is together treated in a medium say for eg: water therefore let us assume it forms a physical constitution of solution or emulsion at the start
3) When it is further tempered by heating, or adding other things like salt, sugar, molasses or any metallic compounds - now there is a limited host of compounds added which often reacts with the water or substance in which C1-C5 is treated.
4) The Chemical by product of water + the above coadjuvant added either electrically dissociates into eloctovalent ionic solutions or covalent solutions depending on their bond energy properties.
5) Next these temper, or disintegrate the physical properties and extract the innate chemical constituents of C1 - C5 which are in the form of alkaloids, oils etc.
6) Once these have been extracted this emulsion in the further process of treatments goes through innumerable chemical reactions to form a solution or emulsion or any other form may be a dust of a complex of chemical compounds independent of its original properties.
7) Unlike modern medicine this is physically treated for a any external impurity getting added to this complex derived after processing; instead of isolation of bioactive constituent.
8) Ayurveda suggests that this mixture of bioactive constituents and non-active constituents tends to neutralize the adverse effects of bio-constituents and that is why it states indefinite use of most drugs is not correct even if they are Ayurvedic and derived from plant sources.
9) Each drug has a prescribed regimen for it and beyond, it also mentions signs which will reflect as over use, or as adverse hazards in texts itself.
Argument - This is potentially a strong point and warrants the following -
1) radioactive tracer studies to evaluate potentially strong active constituents
2) further evaluation of these complexes in artificial environment, animal models and human studies to trace the route and combinations these bioconstituents form within the body and also how do they interact with various metabolic processes.
3) Isolation of a single complex and studying it is only partial account of its effects and adverse impacts, because inside the body at different pH and exposed to different pH and enzyme and hormone assays within the body, each of these contents in the resultant pharmaceutical complex can form different metabolopharmaceutically acitve complexes and that is the potential reason for action of these drugs. This is again to be done using tracing mapping mechanisms.
4) Most of my fellow Ayurveda fraternity and most in Modern medicine fraternity will say this is not Ayurveda.
5) (A) - If you identify Ayurveda with pharmaceutical products and argue on the basis of these then, until here, we have not disturbed, removed or included any new substances than mentioned in the formulary of the product which is mentioned in the treatise of formulations of Ayurveda. Even the administered drug has not be altered but is in the same form as derived through the processes it went through and resulted in at the end of those processes. What we have changed is the language of discourse, therefore this is essentially, integrally Ayurveda.
5) (B) If you identify Ayurveda more than pharmaceutical products then the whole argument where pharmaceutical drugs are questioned for their a.1-z.n toxicity content evaluations fails, because you are questioning pharmaceutical formulary which you do not identify with your perception of Ayurveda. Thus the toxicology studies are in contravention of the hypothesis and cannot prove the very own hypothesis that Ayurveda is not to be identified with pharmaceutical alone.
5) (C) To those in Ayurvedic community who will say this is not Ayurveda for the first argument, I only can say, if interpretation of the Samhita from Sanskrit to Hindi, English or other languages did not change the Samhita, so the interpretation of interplay of the properties of kshiti-jal-pavak-sameer-gagan in a language of modern chemistry does not change the product.
5) (D) And, to those in Ayurveda fraternity who look beyond pharmaceutical drugs and still question the whole, I feel sorry to say, but probably either they need to unlearn and relearn what they did in the years of Ayurvedic education, or revisit school to recount on basics of science education, which capacitated them to reason and comprehend the complexities of vedic literature.
The debate on Ayurveda vs Modern Science will go on; but the fact that one stands a test of time (a few 1000 years) with its own proven identical of evolution with time, place, geography, population, etc. (Prakruti) vs a few 100 years of exploitation of same processes of formulation and using techniques to hyper refine content marginalizing the prudent principle of coexisting constituents into having highly purified only bioactive constituents for administration is reflected in number of known adverse events of Ayurvedic medicines vs number of known adverse events of modern medicines.
Let us first reflect on what laboratory studies are done and to what extent do they explore the action of drugs, than just reading incomplete research articles which probe attributes of one content or the other, instead of a whole complex.
