Is There Room for Paradox in CAM?

The field of CAM is fluid, ever changing and ever approaching the essence of modern western medicine using the evidence based approach (1). However, since some ancient practices continue without scientific evidence, there are still international perceptions that CAM is mired in folk remedies. This situation is most pertinent to TCM as expressed in an editorial about the debate in China by Mark Magnier, Times Staff Writer of The Los Angeles Times, Monday, January 8, 2007 entitled: Scalpel vs. Herb in China. The debate in China concerns ancient remedies and their value in contrast to the universally prevalent and relatively young model of Western Medicine. Members of international populations without vital traditional medicine have found that these ancient remedies possess a cornucopia of CAM options when treating various afflictions—mostly chronic. In particular, those with prognoses that escape western medicine choose a treatment regimen of CAM alone or a combination of CAM linked to western medical practice. In China, on the other hand, traditional medicine based on thousands of years of history is still practiced far from the frenzy of pharmaceutical geniuses and their seemingly conflicting cures, and has been able to skirt the expense and profit driven motives of western medical doctors and pharmaceutical industries. Yet now, with an increasing presence of western medicine, many Chinese have become aware of the limitations of their ancient practice just as westerners question their own historically younger practice. Here I perceive an apparent paradox, if we view the realities in China, Europe, Australia and North America. According to the commonly perceived definition of a paradox, we know the following: A paradox is a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement, even if actually well founded. Here is an excerpt of what Mark Magnier wrote that set off my examination of this apparent paradox. ‘A relatively obscure professor at a regional university kicked off the controversy in October with an online petition calling for traditional medicine to be stripped from the Chinese Constitution. It has protected status here that, at least in theory, guarantees it equal footing with its Western counterpart. Professor Zhang Gongyao and fellow critics have blasted Chinese medicine as an often ineffective, even dangerous derivative of witchcraft that relies on untested concoctions and obscure ingredients to trick patients, then employs a host of excuses if the treatment doesn’t work. For adherents of the 3,000-year-old system, this borders on heresy. The Health Ministry labeled Zhang’s ideas ‘‘ignorant of history,’’ and traditionalists have called the skeptics traitors bent on ‘‘murdering’’ Chinese culture. Ironically, the firestorm dovetails with a growing embrace of Chinese Medicine abroad as an antidote to the perceived soulless, moneyobsesses nature of Western healthcare. On a trip to China in mid-December, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said that the two countries planned to trade lessons on how to integrate Western and Chinese medicine. ‘‘It’s an area of interest for China and the U.S.,’’ he said. Many Australians, Europeans and Americans see the limitations of advanced science, said Rey Tiquia, an expert in Chinese traditional medicine based in Australia, even as more Chinese view their traditions as old-fashioned.’ My main point here concerns the apparent lack of recognition of scientific approaches to TCM being performed in China and internationally. For example, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) in the United States actually funds For reprints and correspondence: Edwin L. Cooper, Laboratory of Comparative Neuroimmunology, Department of Neurobiology, David Geffen School Of Medicine at UCLA, Box 951763, 63-230 CHS, Los Angeles California 90095-1763, USA. Tel: (310) 825-9567; Fax: (310) 825-2224; E-mail: [email protected]