Meat is unarguably bad, but the pharmaceuticals industry is the closest thing we have to a miracle factory. It has spared us from the miseries of polio, tuberculosis, smallpox, AIDS, surgery without anaesthetic and a thousand other horrors. Diseases that were once death sentences are now treatable with medications that cost pennies. Countless millions of lives have been saved by vaccination.
Ayurvedic medicine clearly does more harm than good. It has never been shown to be significantly more effective than placebo. Ayurveda poses a major risk of heavy metal poisoning, due to the pseudoscientific theories of rasa shastra.
Not all ayurvedic medicine require heavy metals. There are herbs like boswellia (now also an allopathic drug) that genuinely do what they are supposed to do. Ayurveda, prevented black death in India. Granted there is a lot of bs out there that gets passed of but there are parts that do work. Distilling these parts is important. I think the lack of quality control in eastern medicine is what has given it a bad name. Granted we don't have antibiotics or anti cancer drugs but there were surgical procedures like rhinoplasty that were successfully carried out. Of course any medicine that is 2000 years old is going to be nowhere near what modern medicine is because we have had 2000 years to evolve it. Reason why easterners set store by it is it provided a bit more protection than what the doctors of medieval Europe could do. 1000years is a long time and lots changes, sadly eastern medicine didn't.
I should explain more clearly that I am all for Western and Eastern medicine finding a middle path. What I am against and referring to is how agribusiness, poor nutrition, clever marketing, and healthcare (mostly disease-care) create a lot of needless suffering. A lot of prescriptions are only there to take care of health problems that could have been prevented with proper nutrition and a more integrated, instead of reductionist, model for medicine.
I think I should explain my thoughts on HN a little clearer going forward.
Ayurvedic medicine clearly does more harm than good. It has never been shown to be significantly more effective than placebo. Ayurveda poses a major risk of heavy metal poisoning, due to the pseudoscientific theories of rasa shastra.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2755247/