IIT Madras director V. Kamakoti’s comments on cow urine | Fact-check Premium

Controversy over medicinal properties of cow urine sparks debate among scientists and researchers in India.

The story so far: On January 15, IIT-Madras director V. Kamakoti said peer-reviewed journals had substantiated the medicinal properties of cow urine. He was speaking at a goshala in West Mambalam in Chennai, on the occasion of ‘Mattu Pongal’, a festive occasion dedicated to cattle. In a media interaction five days later, Dr. Kamakoti listed five scientific papers that he said validated the “anti-infective” properties of cow urine.

His statements have since gone viral on social media even as many questioned his claims and deemed his observations to be unscientific and inappropriate as the head of a scientific institution. They also drew the ire of Tamil Nadu Congress chief K. Selvaperunthagai, who said he is unfit to continue as the director of IIT Madras.

One paper titled ‘Peptide profiling in cow urine reveals molecular signature of physiology-driven pathways and in-silico predicted bioactive properties’ was published on June 14, 2021, in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. Contrary to Dr. Kamakoti, Nature and Nature Scientific Reports are two different journals. “The researchers have experimented and presented their findings. Nature is one of the top journals in the United States of America. The output in the research papers is the evidence,” he had said.

Independent experts said the research article itself “does not seem bad” but that it is just an analysis of bovine urine. “Authors say that there are a lot of studies of peptides in human urine, but not much work has been done in the case of bovine urine,” Aniket Sule, associate professor at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education in Mumbai, told The Hindu.

“There are also similar studies about donkey urine. Essentially, all mammals pass some peptides in their urine and those peptides give a lot of indications about the health of that individual. That is also the reason why we do urine analysis in pathology labs. So, they are just presenting their analysis of bovine urine. There is no claim beyond that.”

Dr. Sule added that there have been papers from China discussing the use of cow dung as fertiliser. “However, developing a fertiliser from mammal urine/excreta is a different thing from human consumption of urine/excreta,” he said. Dr. Sule quoted the example of US President Donald Trump asking scientists in his first term, during the COVID-19 pandemic, to the alleged benefits of drinking bleach.

“Just because bleach is anti-bacterial on the floor doesn’t mean it is medicinal for humans,” Dr. Sule said.