The country is paying for the government’s unscientific attitudes – By Shobhit Mahajan
The WhatsApp message from an old acquaintance…. urged me to give up all medicines and start using Coronil instead…. Coronil, for the uninitiated, is the “wonder” anti-Covid drug, made by Patanjali, the pharma company of yoga guru Baba Ramdev. The fact that the drug had not gone through the standard procedure for the approval of drugs for human consumption, Phased Control Trials for Safety and Efficacy, does not seem to bother millions of the yoga guru’s devotees who have started imbibing it….
After all, we have been witnessing an astonishing lack of scientific temper among senior functionaries of the present dispensation. Ministers (even the PM) have claimed the use of in-vitro fertilisation techniques and plastic surgery in ancient times…. Such lack of scientific temper – indeed, a definite anti-science attitude – might sound funny, even innocuous….
That this crisis is unprecedented is without doubt. That our historical neglect of health infrastructure has made the crisis worse is also obvious. However, it is the lack of a cogent, scientific and rational response to the crisis that has aggravated the crisis. The combination of an anti-scientific and authoritarian mindset is a lethal one, the cost of which might be bearing for years to come….
