Rabid troll and liver specialist Dr Cyriac Abby Philips famously known as Liver Doc on X, who was in the news for bullying two-time Chess Olympiad champion Vidit Gujrathi over his post wishing his parents and family members for Doctors Day, continues to get the limelight on himself.
Following the disclosure that the hospital he works at offers Ayurveda and chaplain services, Liver Doc has gone into a defensive mode.
While Dr. Philips has publicly called Ayurveda “pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo” and dismissed yoga’s therapeutic value in modern medicine, his affiliation with a hospital that hosts such services has raised eyebrows among critics. He has been seen replying to criticism about his association with Rajagiri Hospital, a Christian missionary-run multi-speciality hospital that offers both yoga and pastoral care services.
In a detailed clarification posted on social media, Dr. Philips stated that he is not a salaried employee of Rajagiri Hospital but is affiliated with a consultancy group that provides hepatology services under contract.
He emphasized that the advanced hepatology services offered at the hospital are under his supervision, but insisted he has no say in how the rest of the hospital is run, including its wellness or faith-based programs.
Rajagiri Hospital, run by the Christian missionary organization CMI (Carmelites of Mary Immaculate), offers pastoral care services for terminal patients and includes Ayurvedic and yoga-based wellness programmes, particularly marketed toward foreign patients!! While Philips claimed that these services are not integrated into core clinical care, he also confessed that the Ayurveda department exists as a “profit-driven wellness initiative” typical of many private hospitals.
He wrote on his X handle, “Hello Mukesh, let me clear this up for you. I am not part of Rajagiri Hospital. They don’t pay my salary. I am part of a consultancy group that provides tertiary care services in Hepatology to Rajagiri under contract. The advanced hepatology services is under my supervision there, nothing else. Rajagiri is a corporate hospital run by the CMI group. They have all departments, Ayurvedic services included. But this Ayurvedic service is mostly for foreign patients, to provide them wellness therapies like oil massages. You will never see this department treat patients of other clinical departments. The Ayurveda practitioner there has not even looked me in the eye in the last 4 years I am at Rajagiri. They don’t meddle in clinical medicine and does not make any claims of treatment benefits unlike Patanjali quacks. Like every corporate hospital looking for profits through pseudoscientific wellness therapies, this hospital too has such a program. This is not under my control because it is not my hospital and I have not invested any money in this hospital. Rajagiri does not have a “faith healing” department. They have pastoral care services which means prayer services for the dying when families ask for it. This is irrespective of religion. My department also does not have “faith healing” practices. In fact I treat many patients with liver cancer worsened because of faith healing, Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Siddha and Naturopathy. If Rajagiri was my own hospital or if I was a senior board member of Rajagiri, this Ayurveda department would not even exist in the hospital. I hope this is clear. Now please don’t bring this stupid argument again. It does not make Ayurveda scientific. Ayurveda is still pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo. And their practitioners are not doctors. They call themselves doctors only because this scientifically illiterate government and governments before them, has allowed them.”
Hello Mukesh, let me clear this up for you. I am not part of Rajagiri Hospital. They don't pay my salary. I am part of a consultancy group that provides tertiary care services in Hepatology to Rajagiri under contract. The advanced hepatology services is under my supervision… https://t.co/4rnytYZu0y
— TheLiverDoc (@theliverdr) July 6, 2025
Although he claims all this, it has come to be noticed that several of Dr. Philips’s research papers listed on PubMed and other academic platforms clearly mention his institutional affiliation as “Rajagiri Hospital.” This, they argue, undermines his claim that his connection is minimal or merely contractual. They also question why he would continue associating himself with an institution that promotes the very practices he so vehemently discredits, especially when he regularly derides other hospitals or practitioners who do the same.
Amazingly this is his affiliation on his published papers in PubMed pic.twitter.com/E3LgmA2KX9
— Dr Sankha Shubhra Chakrabarti (@sankha_shubhra) July 5, 2025
Further scrutiny has also come from those highlighting Rajagiri’s “Pastoral Care” department, which provides prayer-based support for patients upon request, something Philips has never spoken about, leave alone the “miracle-healing” mumbo jumbo that his faith is seen professing.
The hospital’s website also lists a yoga department under its “wellness” initiatives, sparking additional questions about whether such offerings are fundamentally different from the Ayurvedic and yoga practices Philips labels as quackery when practiced elsewhere.
The doctors at the Rajagiri Hospital in the Ayurveda department are addressed as “Dr” which Philips detests!
If he was so righteous to keep calling out Ayurveda, homeopathy, naturopathy as “pseudo science”, why does he not wind up the practice here and move to his father’s “Philip Augustine Associates” – his family-run healthcare “consultancy” where he is the MD?
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