![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Cyriac-Abby-Philips_Youtube-300x225.jpg\")
Dr Cyriac Abby Philips.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDr Cyriac Abby Philips.<\/p>\n
There have been court injunctions, police summons, a social media ban (later lifted) and the spectacle of watching his research being retracted by journals fearful of the litigation it might attract.<\/p>\n
Over the last 10 years, Dr Cyriac Abby Philips has become the most visible \u2014 and most legally vulnerable \u2014 critic of alternative medicine in a country where pseudoscience is not merely tolerated but institutionalised.<\/p>\n
The hepatologist\u2019s crimes are insisting that science matters, because in India, that insistence has placed him on a collision course with an alternative medicine industry armed with dollars and the necessary political connections.<\/p>\n
As you will discover, there are over 300,000 formally registered homeopathic practitioners. They hold government appointments and positions in tertiary hospitals. There\u2019s even homeopathic hospital beds, where patients with metabolic disorders and early and late-stage cancer are managed with homeopathic remedies.<\/p>\n
Legally entitled to call themselves doctors, homeopaths also get special protections from anyone willing to say the obvious.<\/p>\n
\u201cCalling them \u2018quack\u2019 or \u2018bogus doctor\u2019 is a legal violation of their constitutional rights and can be considered defamatory,\u201d Dr Philips explains, \u201ceven though the practice of homeopathy is pseudoscientific, based on zero evidence for benefits or safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says he has faced relentless campaigns of harassment and abuse for his crusade.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy activism has triggered high-stakes legal battles,\u201d he adds, referring to a criminal defamation case and the unjustified attentions of the medical board.<\/p>\n
As reported in AusDoc, it is against this backdrop that Dr Philips recently found himself at the centre of the entanglements of the European Journal of Pediatrics with homeopathy research.<\/p>\n
The journal had published a study<\/a> in late 2024 so methodologically incoherent that its conclusions bordered on parody.<\/p>\n It purported to show that homeopathic treatment in the first two years of life was associated with better health outcomes than conventional care.<\/p>\n In the text, it notes that antibiotics were required for 14 sickness episodes in the children in the homeopathic group compared with 141 in the conventional group.<\/p>\n \u201cIntegrating homoeopathic treatment with routine conventional infant and child healthcare may offer a safe, effective and inexpensive alternative to antibiotics,\u201d this peer-reviewed study suggested.<\/p>\n According to the authors, the homeopathic group also experienced fewer sick days, cost less to treat, and even demonstrated superior growth outcomes.<\/p>\n The implication was clear, at least in their conclusion: homoeopathy, using conventional medicine as a safety backdrop, is a \u201csafe and cost-effective primary care modality\u201d.<\/p>\n In India at least it made national headlines<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cMy initial reaction when I first read this paper was a mix of disbelief and professional outrage,\u201d Dr Philips says. \u201cIt was bonkers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey split the children into two groups. One group gets conventional medicine alone and the other group gets homeopathy \u2014 but also conventional medicine as \u2018rescue\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n The study was designed, if it was designed for anything, to track the placebo effect given what homeopathy at the level of biology.<\/p>\n But then there was no actual blinding taking place, another flaw.<\/p>\n There was also the problem you encounter when using \u2018needed no treatment\u2019 as an outcome measure to document your treatment\u2019s efficacy.<\/p>\n In the homeopathic group for instance, you discover some 25% of the cohort did not get sick at all, although when the numbers were crunched this was attributed to the wonders of homeopathy.<\/p>\n Dr Philips wrote letters to the journal editor, and after more than a year while the investigations took place, the paper was retracted last month.<\/p>\n The authors, co-led by Dr Menachem Oberbaum<\/a>, a trained doctor and homeopath from the Shaare Zedek Medical Center<\/a> in Jerusalem, Israel, vigorously defends their study saying the criticism is misinformed.<\/p>\n Yes, children in the homeopathic arm received conventional medical care but only for serious conditions. <\/p>\n \u201cThe study was not a conventional drug-versus-drug trial, but a pragmatic attempt to document widely observed real-world homoeopathic practice in India,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n You can read their explanations at the end of this article.<\/p>\n State-sponsored pseudoscience?<\/p>\n What made the study particularly potent to Dr Philips however was not merely its findings, but its provenance.<\/p>\n The paper involved researchers from India\u2019s Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy<\/a>, which falls under the Ministry of AYUSH<\/a>.<\/p>\n This powerful government ministry \u2014 it\u2019s full title is the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy \u2014 promotes traditional and alternative systems of medicine in India.<\/p>\n Dr Philips says it operates teaching hospitals, runs universities, and actively advocates for the integration of alternative practitioners into mainstream healthcare.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is why fighting them is so difficult,\u201d Dr Philips says. \u201cI am not just fighting bad science. I am fighting state-sanctioned propaganda.<\/p>\n \u201c[The government] does not debate the science because they know they will lose.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead, they promote it as a cultural heritage and a cheaper alternative to Western big pharma.\u201d<\/p>\n The hospital beds that should not exist<\/p>\n One of the most striking claims in the retracted journal paper is that India has approximately 7000 homeopathic hospital beds.<\/p>\n Is that true? It sounds alarming. But if so, what exactly happens in a homeopathic hospital bed?<\/p>\n \u201cThe bed figure is likely accurate,\u201d Dr Philips says. \u201cThe Indian Government funds dedicated homeopathic hospitals and colleges.<\/p>\n \u201cIn these beds, patients with serious conditions \u2014 from infectious diseases to non-communicable metabolic disorders, early- as well as late-stage cancer, and even severe autism \u2014 are often \u2018managed\u2019 with homeopathic remedies.\u201d<\/p>\n He claims \u2018treatment\u2019 often consists of taking a detailed and often irrelevant history of the patient\u2019s personality and dreams and then prescribing pills, powders or liquids, including highly concentrated alcohol-based mother tinctures.<\/p>\n \u201cI have an ex-homeopathy practitioner who now works in my research department after he quit homeopathy practice a while back.<\/p>\n \u201cHe has claimed that homeopathy medical college hospitals would have a higher number of ambulances than actual hospitals because they were mostly there to shuttle patients to real hospitals when they got sicker under homeopathic care.<\/p>\n \u201cThe real tragedy is that while the patient occupies \u2018homeopathy\u2019 beds, their disease progresses unchecked until it is often too late.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a deep cultural irony in all of this because this modern-day nonsense is a Western import, brought to India during the alleged \u2018civilising mission\u2019 of the colonial enterprise.<\/p>\n Homoeopathy itself was first arrived on the Indian subcontinent 200 years ago<\/a>, a result of German missionaries who began distributing their remedies in Bengal. <\/p>\n But it was not until 1839 when John Honigberger, a Romanian homoeopath and disciple of the father of homoeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, successfully treated the then ruler of Punjab, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, that it gained the royal patronage that enabled it to take root.<\/p>\n Dr Philips says while the West eventually moved on to evidence-based medicine and discarded homeopathy as quackery, India held it tight.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was adopted and nationalised alongside Ayurveda<\/a> [India\u2019s traditional holistic medicine tradition termed the \u2018knowledge of life\u2019], but it means that homeopathy is now falsely protected under the guise of \u2018Indian tradition\u2019, despite being a European import.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has been turned into a legitimate profession \u2014 a career for students to indulge in.\u201d<\/p>\n To be clear about definitions, the Indian version of homeopathy is little different from the European one.<\/p>\n Both are based on scientific voodoo: The alleged law that \u2018like cures like\u2019 and the law of infinitesimals, or to put it another way, the law of dilution.<\/p>\n Practitioners believe their remedies balance a rogue vital force in disease conditions and heal the patient from the inside out.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a slightly higher chance of us finding Harry Potter\u2019s Elder Wand than finding homeopathy effective for anything under the sun,\u201d Dr Philips says.<\/p>\n \u201cIn India, the practitioners dispense small white sugar globules \u2014 or powders or liquid formulations \u2014 that have been sprayed or mixed with solutions diluted so many times that not a single molecule of the original substance remains.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are literally selling dummy treatments \u2014 sometimes pure alcohol.\u201d<\/p>\n To give a sense of the scale of this industry, some 345,000 registered homeopaths are formally licensed to dispense placebos as medical cures.<\/p>\n The harms are real, Dr Philips adds \u2014 and not simply because of diagnostic delays.<\/p>\n \u201cOur research has found that many \u2018homeopathic\u2019 remedies are adulterated with heavy metals, steroids or industrial solvents to make them \u2018work\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cWe frequently see severe drug-induced liver injury in patients taking these \u2018safe\u2019 natural medicines.\u201d<\/p>\n He refers to his paper<\/a> published in Hepatology Communications, which examined patients who developed severe drug-induced liver injury after taking homeopathic remedies.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the patients developed jaundice. Over half had underlying chronic liver disease, and 44% died during follow-up.<\/p>\n \u201cChemical analysis of 15 retrieved formulations revealed concerning findings: even supposedly \u2018ultra-diluted\u2019 homeopathic products contained industrial solvents, corticosteroids, antibiotics, sedatives, synthetic opioids, heavy metals \u2014 including arsenic \u2014 and toxic plant compounds.\u201d<\/p>\n It is worth noting that Dr Philips\u2019 campaign, which began more than a decade ago, was not born of abstract intellectual concern.<\/p>\n It began at the bedside.<\/p>\n \u201cIt started in 2016, when I initially joined the liver unit at PVS Memorial Hospital in Kochi as a junior consultant in hepatology,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cInside my liver ICU, I kept seeing young people \u2014 and sometimes even children \u2014 developing liver failure, undergoing transplantation, or dying of acute liver failure.\u201d<\/p>\n The common thread was not alcohol consumption, viral hepatitis or autoimmune disease.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir only history was taking \u2018natural\u2019 supplements or homeopathic cures for minor issues.\u201d<\/p>\n What disturbed him most was the invisibility of the harm.<\/p>\n \u201cI realised these supposedly safe alternative medicine pills were killing people \u2014 and nobody was documenting it.\u201d<\/p>\n He says the Indian Medical Association has voiced opposition to homeopathy, while also reminding doctors of the legal risks of calling out quackery<\/a>.<\/p>\n But in his view, it is not vocal enough. Dr Philips says he has no option but to speak out.<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately, in my practice, I couldn\u2019t just treat the liver injury \u2014 I had to treat the cause. And the cause was misinformation.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is why I took to social media \u2014 to educate, to prevent avoidable health harms, to disrupt the lies that were killing my patients.\u201d<\/p>\n He has some 450,000 social media followers, but the cost has been substantial, the pressure relentless, the risks ongoing.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was an ex parte court injunction<\/a> from a major [Ayurvedic] herbal company in late 2023 that led to the temporary suspension of my Twitter (X) account,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n That injunction was later overturned following the involvement of lawyers and a public outcry.<\/p>\n In 2019, he published a paper documenting the death of a patient<\/a> from acute liver failure due to heavy metals and toxic compounds in a dietary supplement.<\/p>\n That attracted legal threats from the maker Herbalife and the paper was pulled by the journal, only to be reinstated<\/a> after public criticism by Retraction Watch and the Dutch microbiologist\u00a0Dr Elisabeth Bik (PhD)<\/a>.<\/p>\n But beyond corporate lawsuits, he says, he has been targeted by state machinery.<\/p>\n Three years ago, he was\u00a0accused of professional misconduct<\/a>\u00a0by the Kerala State Medical Council over an interview in which he described Ayurvedic medicine as \u2018pseudoscience\u2019.<\/p>\n The watchdog served Dr Philips notice after the Ministry of AYUSH claimed his comments were defamatory and dividing public opinion.<\/p>\n It took eight months before\u00a0the charges were dropped<\/a>.<\/p>\n He says the harassment campaigns he faces from social media cells are mostly the work of Indian right-wing groups that sympathise with Ayurveda and traditional herbalism. It\u2019s part of the new Indian nationalism.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/M_Oberbaum.jpg\")
Dr Menachem Oberbaum.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/One-time-Cyriac-Abby-Philips-GettyImages-2147046128.jpg\")
Dr Cyriac Abby Philips. Photo: Getty Images.<\/p>\n