Siddha hope for AIDS victims

Ten years ago Arun Kumar, a traditional Siddha practioner dividing time between Bangalore and Mysore, realised that his body rejuvenation therapy was helping improve the quality of life of AIDS patients.
"My heart went out to them. I began treating people with AIDS and saw dramatic changes in their health. I hadn''t found a miracle cure for AIDS. What I had discovered was a mixture of herbs and minerals that together helped improve the body''s immune system."
It''s been a long arduous road.Now, with the health ministries of various countries focussing on alternative therapies to treat thousands of AIDS patients across the globe, Arun believes his therapy will make a major difference.
Already, a group of Ayurveda, Siddha and allopathic doctors along with a clinician have formed a firm which along with Dr CN Devanayagan''s Health India Foundation, Chennai, have begun a pilot study to check the efficacy of Arun''s therapy. Dr Devanayagan who followed Arun''s treatment for over two years decided to back the study in his capacity as president of the foundation. The study will follow the protocol of the ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research).
"We are trying to raise funds for a systematic study that will convince the medical and scientific fraternity of what I have on offer," says Arun.
It''s not that Arun hasn''t submitted his results to scientific scrutiny. From 1998 through 2000 he got Ranbaxy Laboratories to document the viral load and immunity levels of his patients before and after his treatment. Samples of blood before and after treatment were also sent to Speciality Labs, Santa Monica, USA and the National AIDS Research Institute, Pune, which confirmed improvement in immunity levels.
The duration of Arun''s treatment is just four months. There are no side effects and opportunistic infections are contained.
So why has Arun''s therapy not been welcomed by the medical fraternity?
There are no answers. The cure for AIDS seems more a battle for minds. In the last 100 years, global pharmaceutical majors have marketed allopathic drugs with an evangelical zeal which is only now being countered ever so slowly by our own centuries'' old systems.
Maybe, Arun has the answer. His patients are enjoying a new lease of life. That blessing could be extended to thousands of others.
But will the establishment back him?
Correspond with Arun on srarun56@hotmail.com or sunilrajan@vsnl.com.