It is very unfortunate that an Indian Ministry has to resort to cheap abuse tactics, threats and harassment, instead of proving me wrong. The Government, through the National Commission for Homeopathy HAS THREATENED ME WITH CIVIL AND CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS if I do not apologize for calling out Homeopathy as quackery/ fraud and delete my content on Homeopathy. This is also the SAME Government who taxes me and other citizens like me, to FUND HOMEOPATHY and pay salary of these people in Homeopathy Public Institutes who have written this atrocious letter to me. Dear @ForHomeopathy @moayush @secymoayush Please find your conditions and my responses below, in public: National Council for Homeopathy says: Therefore, for the first and last time, you are hereby called upon to: i. Remove/Delete all the content uploaded by you on every Social Media Platforms which criticizes the Homeopathy Medicine or any other alternative medicine My response: No I will not. My content are factual and science based. It follows Article 51A(h) of the Indian Constitution which outlines one of the Fundamental Duties for every citizen - "to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform." In this regard, my content is based on my Constitutional Rights and against an pseudoscientific and unscientific practice like Homeopathy and is fully backed by evidence and facts. If you can prove all of those evidences wrong, I will remove all of my content on Homeopathy. Homeopathy has been called many things before and I have only borrowed what has been highlighted in public domain and medical literature. Some of the sources for my online content is given below for your reference: Homeopathy is pseudoscience: link.springer.com/article/10… Homeopathy is fraud and quackery: youtube.com/watch?v=c0Z7KeNC… Homeopathy is unscientific: mcgill.ca/oss/article/medica… Homeopathy is witchcraft: cognitionandculture.net/blog… and deccanherald.com/business/ho… If you can remove these sources, I will remove my content. ii. Stop making, circulating or disseminating any further derogatory, defamatory remarks in future against Homeopathy and its practitioners My Response: I cannot guarantee this. As doctors and scientists, it is our right to correct healthcare misinformation. Any further publicizing of unverified claims from the Homeopathy community - whether the Ministry, the practitioners or the industry, will be dealt with strong and aggressive corrective measures from the scientific community including me. For me to stop doing this, Homeopathy practitioners must stop claiming benefits of therapy and stop making misleading content online. Homeopathy community must keep quite and disappear to a corner, and then the scientific community will keep quite and let you be invisible in that corner. Homeopathy graduates on Instagram and Facebook keep creating content that they can cure cancer, treat chronic skin disorders, mental health conditions, diabetes and thyroid diseases and autoimmune conditions. First, ask them to stop that - then come to lecture me. iii. Issue a public apology and clarification, through the same platforms on which the offending posts were uploaded, acknowledging deep regret for the use of defamatory expressions My Response: First, The National Commission for Homeopathy and the Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy, Ministry of AYUSH, New Delhi, India MUST issue a issue a public apology and clarification, through all social media platforms , acknowledging deep regret for wasting public money on a fraudulent Homeopathy study which was RETRACTED for scientific fraud. See here: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/article… and here timesofindia.indiatimes.com/…. Once your apology is in place, then I may consider an apology, after you prove me wrong, like I proved the scientific fraud in your retracted Homeopathy paper. It was a national disgrace. iv. Furnish a written undertaking that you shall refrain from repeating such acts in future. My Response: I am sorry, I wont be able to do that - because as a clinical doctor and medical scientist and medical teacher in India, as long as Article 51A(h) of the Indian Constitution is alive, I will repeat my education on unscientific practices for the benefit of the public. This is my first and last time, calling upon the National Commission for Homeopathy and the Homeopathy community: i. Refrain from sending me these hollow threats, first prove me wrong on all my points raised in my contents online (example: why is cockroach used to treat asthma - what is the pathogenetic basis and pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics of it) ii. Prove to the public that Homeopathy is not a pseudoscience or quackery by removing the original sources I have used to describe Homeopathy (links above) and all such sources which I will use in the future. iii. Apologize to the Indian public PUBLICLY for wasting public funds that are used to publish scientific fraud iv. PROVIDE A RESPONSE TO OUR PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION IN THE SUPREME COURT'S ORDER TO YOU - livelaw.in/top-stories/uprem… - about why Homeopathy was used on population level scale that led to harm to public, wasting public money. v: Send me an apology letter for wasting my time which could have been used to diagnose and treat patients at my place of work. Do not try to gag voices that improve scientific temperament in this country, because you are anyway not doing anything to promote science in India. @CaulfieldTim @EdzardErnst @TheSkepticMag @McGillOSS @RichardDawkins

For me, this is a pivotal moment in my science communication career, from India perspective. Probably the first time, a major national media invited me to write an fact-based piece on a completely rubbish alternative medicine system that enjoys government protection - Homeopathy. Please make this your must read of the day. I dissect every common nonsensical claim from the homeopathy community and bury age-old myths associated with this 200-plus year old obsolete pre-science artefact that still enjoys an undeserving place in Indian healthcare and which also destroys many young careers. Well done and thank you Indian Express and Ms. Rinku Ghosh, the lead on health, for this! I really welcome this change! No one should be afraid of reporting facts about health misinformation even if it is government supported or promoted. This is the people's right. Full read: Homeopathy survives for reasons that have little to do with effective healthcare. indianexpress.com/article/he…

Recently a young woman from Kochi, Kerala lost her life due to work exhaustion. Ms. Anna was 26 years old. She had recently joined Ernst and Young India, Pune office. hindustantimes.com/trending/… Ernst and Young (EY) is what people call, one of the Big4 - The Big Four are the four largest professional services networks in the world: Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC. Ultimately it does not matter if you are working for the big four or not. What matters is that you are dispensable. Anna's family lost their daughter. EY India lost an employee. They will find another one. Anna's family won't ever, and cant, find another daughter. Do not get married to your work. Life is precious. Moments with family are precious. If you are inside a toxic work culture, within an environment that nurtures toxic positivity, then fight hard to make it better for you. It is not easy for everyone to just quit and move to a better workplace. Only certain privileged can afford to jump jobs. It is not easy to make a jump and find a job easy in India. If the work is going to ruin your mental health and exhaust you physically, so much that it will drive you to your ruin, talk to people, find help, get help and systematically plan a change. Overworking does not guarantee success. In 2021, on Diwali night, work culture toxic positivity resulted in my near death experience when my car crashed into a trailer truck parked on around the road shoulder. IUp until that moment, I believed that a good doctor was one who saw many patients and who always took the calls no matter what. I was wrong. I was taking call from the ICU and giving instructions to get a patient better instead of focusing on the road. My family would have lost me that night. But I survived, thanks to the seat belt. I stopped working weekends. I made it a 5 day week for myself. My Department did not suffer because of this. I still see patients the same, but the quality of my work improved. Sleep got better. Family involvement got better. Sleep is the most underrated part of life. It is also the most hit inside a toxic work culture. You wont realize this, because encouraging people to sacrifice sleep and nurture the work environment is normalized in many organizations including the medical profession. For Mathrubhumi news media, me and other experts speak about toxic work culture, toxic positivity and adverse health events. Just take care of yourself. You were born alone, you are going to leave alone. You are your best friend when it comes to health. [It is in local language, Malayalam, so apologies for the absence of well translated version, Google Translate for webpage will have to be used for those interested] mathrubhumi.com/health/featu…

"Celebrities can’t shed responsibility by saying they’re only recommending what worked for them when they’re fully aware of the dangers of celebrity culture and fanbases." "In the past, Dr Philips has called out other stars too like Virat Kohli for saying that non-vegetarian food was causing acidity and leading to “calcium leaking from his bones”. Not only did Dr Philips debunk Kohli’s assertion, but he also called him and Prabhu “science and health illiterate”. Rightfully so, in my opinion." A timely write up for @ThePrintIndia by Akanksha Mishra. Please read here: theprint.in/opinion/pov/dear…