 Earlier, during the swine flu and dengue fever spreading time, the Ayush ministry formed under the BJP-led central government and the AI-ADM-KILLED Tamil Nadu government promoted Nellavampu Kashayam and other traditional recipes to the people as a preventive measures and immunity booster. In this COVID-19 period, the same governments promoted KABASURA concoction to boost immunity power. This is happening at an official level throughout the state. TN minister supported Siddha medicines for mild and asymptomatic COVID patients. To understand more about the effectiveness of traditional medicines, especially the Siddha, which is a Tamil Nadu origin, Newsclick spoke to Dr. S. Krishnaswamy. He is a retired professor of bioinformatics from Madurai Kamaraj University. He is also the treasurer of all India People's Science Network and former president of Tamil Nadu Science Forum. What has happened was Siddha being a traditional form of medicine using natural herbs and so on. There is a separate ministry that has been created. Earlier, it was a department of traditional medicine, Indian traditional medicine and in 2003, they renamed this into Ayush, Ayurveda, Yoga, Yunani, Siddha, Omnipreti, but it was still a department. Then in 2014, after this current BJP government came into the center, they formed a separate ministry called Ayush to promote Ayurveda, Yoga, Yunani, Siddha and Omnipreti. That was in 2014 and there was a huge amount of money that has been put. But till now, in 2026 years, that ministry has not made any clinical trials to validate any of the formulations and any publication that has come has always been in very not-pure-reviewed journals, journals of not-good-reviewed, only there such publications have been coming saying this treatment is working, that treatment is working. So what the central government and Tamil Nadu government also should have done is to make sure whatever medication they are going to tell. That has been tested with people clinically. Even for Dengu fever, some few years back, Tamil Nadu government did the same thing. They said, Nilevembu kashayam and they promoted this, they started giving it everywhere. But once the Dengu, you know, that passed away, then all activity was stopped. So now there is no evidence whether Nilevembu kashayam is clinically proven or not. The problem is that the ministers or the government does not have any scientific temper. They don't go by the constitutional requirement of having scientific temper. They go by making claims which suit their particular way of thinking or ideological way of thinking. The whole problem is that it is not only the political leader promoting, it is also the public not questioning. See, if there is a scientific temper in the people, this is what Javelal Nehru wrote and also brought it in the constitution. The constitution says that scientific temper is part of the, it has to be there for everybody. But all these years, our education system, our way of society has not inculcated it into the general public. So that is the reason why we have so much of acceptance. When a minister or somebody says, the people, media, everybody should say you are talking nonsense, you are talking bullshit. But they don't say that because the minister gets away with whatever he wants to tell. And the minister has a particular vested interest to promote such things. And he doesn't have the people in mind of what is good for the people. That is the problem. Kapasura Kudineer is being promoted by the Tamil Nadu government from the beginning of the pandemic. How do you see this? Kapasura Kudineer is one preparation which is belonging to traditional medicine. The Kapasura Kudineer, if it is promoted, provided there is enough evidence for it. That is what is important. As such, Kapasura Kudineer, as of date, officially people do not know what is the role of Kapasura Kudineer in clearing the COVID-19 infection. People have suggested that it is based on traditional knowledge that it can also cure viral fever and viral infection. What the government should do is to check, do clinical trials and check that it is happening, that Kapasura Kudineer is able to clear such COVID-19 disease. And they had enough time to do that. So they could have set up a clinical trial, done that and then if there is enough evidence, there is no harm in promoting. Right now, it is another way of superstition. Just as saying, if I come and go to the witchcraft, some medicine person and then he puts a neem leaf on you, it will become alright. So there is no difference between that and Kapasura Kudineer now. So there are reports, unofficial reports that Kapasura Kudineer in an institute in Delhi, they are trying to check and there is some limited information from the laboratory level that it may be helpful. But there is no confirmed clinical trials. Even for medicines like allopathic medicines, hydroxychloroquine or remits with, it is accepted that promoting such medication without clinical trials is not correct. That is why WHO has also said, first they said hydroxychloroquine may be useful, then they said it may not be useful because there are clinical trials, which show that it is not very successful. So like that, it is not whether Kapasura Kudineer or any other medicine has to be given. Any medicine which is evidence based showing that clinical trials show that people with COVID infection can be cured or at least prevented some further infection or becoming worse, then it is good. So the importance is evidence based medication. Why are political leaders promoting such medicines which are scientifically not proven? The problem is that Tamil Nadu has a tradition, has a history of being a rationalist from the time of Periyar, all the movement that went in, the Ravidean movement and the parties that have come. So now this party in ADM Gaye though has a named Ravidean, it has no rationalist thinking and it has completely cut away from its roots of rationalist thinking. That's why you find no minister, no person in the cabinet has a rationalist attitude. They are all completely superstitious and giving such wrong ideas. You can have a personal faith in any system but you cannot when you are in a state which is supposed to be secular, where the constitution is saying that it is secular, the chief minister of a state which follows this constitution has no business telling God will know or you pray and it will become alright. So actually this is enough grounds, people were very using enough grounds to say this chief minister should quit. Before this, the whole turnaround happened, let us say if Jaylata was in power, it's very unlikely, she would have told the line of BJP and it is also, I mean whatever the reason behind. And now this current government, this Elabadi, Pani Swami and Pani Selma government has become like a puppet of the BJP. There are widespread messages circulating in social media suggesting that some items, mixtures or dishes to increase the immunity against Covid. Will they really work? This is a completely wrong idea of all propagation of information. Our immunity level is important, our immune response to the virus is there. But just eating something just now, one day, it's not going to improve your immune response. Overall nutrition status, that is what is important. If you are a very healthy individual and well nourished individual, then your immune response is good. But these additional factors for enhancing immunity and all is not proven at all. There is no evidence to say that if you eat this or that, then the amount of antibodies, the production capacity will increase or the T cell response capacity, there is two types of immunity. One is the humeral immunity and the cell mediated immunity. There is no evidence that eating any of these things increases either the T cell immunity capability or the humeral immunity capability. Apart from this, there is something called innate immunity, that is the immunity that is coming because of broad spectrum. There are so many germs, so many viruses that affect us, but we still don't, there is no need for separate vaccines on them, but we still are able to avoid them. That is because of something called innate immunity. This innate immunity also, the factors involved in the innate immunity are known. There is no evidence that any of these things which are eaten, taken as supplement, increase the innate immune response. And in addition, in this COVID situation, there is a possibility that when people are very sick, 80-85% of the people who are affected by this COVID-19, they become normal on their own because of the normal immune system without enhancing, without doing anything to that. The remaining go into a slightly more, they go into serious complications and when they go into serious complications, one of the things that happens where lot of organs are affected is something called the cytokine storm, where cytokines is the immune response molecule, which is the molecule which are released in large numbers and that goes and affects, it sort of starts fighting against the whole system. So, this cytokine storm is actually a result of the innate immunity turning upon itself for some reason we don't know really why. So, even if some molecules which is some food which is given increases the innate immunity, there is still a problem that whether it will affect whether people taking such supplements, when they go into COVID-19 and go to a more serious stage, whether because of these supplements, their cytokine storm that responds becomes more or has a problem that we do not know. We will know only with that I will know, people just stress and so on. So, I thought I will say something today, not eat all these other things, but just a healthy eat good food, drink some water eat good food and the regular precautions of keeping distance and wearing mask and so on. So, the problem also is that such wrong messages and wrong give all sense of security to the people. Because I am taking this particular supplement, I am going to be better and so I don't have to wear a mask or I don't have to worry about washing my hands. Because I am taking Kabasura Kudineer, I can go and be in a group together with large number of people. So, like that giving these wrong, these medications which are not proven, giving such supplements which are not proven, they can give a false sense of security to the people and prevent them from taking the right course of action that is needed.