By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times | January 21, 2007

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2007/01/21/chinas_tradi
tional_medicine_under_attack_by_western_ways/?page=1

XIKOU, China -- The fur is flying, not to mention the acupuncture
needles, the herbs, and the $15,000-a-pound bull gallstones.
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 a protected status in China that, in theory, guarantees it equal
footing with its Western counterpart.

Zhang Gongyao and other 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, and then employs a host of excuses if the treatment does
not work.

For adherents of the 3,000-year-old system, this borders on heresy.

The Health Ministry labeled Zhang's ideas as "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, money-
obsessed nature of Western health care.

On a trip to China in mid- December, the US Health and Human Services
secretary, Mike Leavitt, said 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 US," he said.

Many Australians, Europeans, and Americans see limitations in
advanced science, said Rey Tiquia, a specialist in Chinese
traditional medicine based in Australia, even as more Chinese begin
to view their traditions as old-fashioned.

"For Chinese," he said, "it's still the lure of something new and
shiny, like riding a car rather than a bicycle."

Since 1949, the number of traditional doctors trained in China has
fallen by almost half, to 270,000, while the number of Western-
trained doctors has jumped twentyfold, to more than 1.7 million.

Criticism that traditional medicine is not scientific dates back
centuries.

But Zhang's remedies -- an end to national insurance coverage for
traditional medicine, rigorous scientific standards, and obligatory
Western training for traditional doctors -- have hit a nerve at a
time when adherents of traditional Chinese medicine are increasingly
on the defensive.

At Beijing's prestigious Xiehe Hospital, cardiology, gynecology,
internal medicine, and other Western specialties are housed in a new
6-story building filled with shiny equipment, well-maintained halls,
and renovated toilets.

The traditional medicine department is relegated to eight consulting
rooms and a therapeutic facility in an outer building with peeling
green paint, water-stained walls, and a foul smell emanating from a
dimly lighted toilet.

Some blame skewed financial incentives and a government that is
forgetting its roots.Continued...


China's traditional medicine under attack by Western ways
Adherents say holistic strategies are misunderstood
A pharmacist prepared a prescription of traditional Chinese medicine
at a hospital in China's Jiangsu Province last month. Traditional
remedies tend to be less expensive than Western ones. (reuters)
By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times |
January 21, 2007

XIKOU, China -- The fur is flying, not to mention the acupuncture
needles, the herbs, and the $15,000-a-pound bull gallstones.

China's ancient healing arts, as integral to the national identity as
the Great Wall or steamed dumplings, have become embroiled in the
country's struggle to balance tradition and modernity.

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 a protected status in China that, in theory, guarantees it equal
footing with its Western counterpart.

Zhang Gongyao and other 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, and then employs a host of excuses if the treatment does
not work.

For adherents of the 3,000-year-old system, this borders on heresy.

The Health Ministry labeled Zhang's ideas as "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, money-
obsessed nature of Western health care.

On a trip to China in mid- December, the US Health and Human Services
secretary, Mike Leavitt, said 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 US," he said.

Many Australians, Europeans, and Americans see limitations in
advanced science, said Rey Tiquia, a specialist in Chinese
traditional medicine based in Australia, even as more Chinese begin
to view their traditions as old-fashioned.

"For Chinese," he said, "it's still the lure of something new and
shiny, like riding a car rather than a bicycle."

Since 1949, the number of traditional doctors trained in China has
fallen by almost half, to 270,000, while the number of Western-
trained doctors has jumped twentyfold, to more than 1.7 million.

Criticism that traditional medicine is not scientific dates back
centuries.

But Zhang's remedies -- an end to national insurance coverage for
traditional medicine, rigorous scientific standards, and obligatory
Western training for traditional doctors -- have hit a nerve at a
time when adherents of traditional Chinese medicine are increasingly
on the defensive.

At Beijing's prestigious Xiehe Hospital, cardiology, gynecology,
internal medicine, and other Western specialties are housed in a new
6-story building filled with shiny equipment, well-maintained halls,
and renovated toilets.

The traditional medicine department is relegated to eight consulting
rooms and a therapeutic facility in an outer building with peeling
green paint, water-stained walls, and a foul smell emanating from a
dimly lighted toilet.

Some blame skewed financial incentives and a government that is
forgetting its roots.

Page 2 of 2 --"The Health Ministry is actually the Ministry of
Western Health," said Lin Zhongpeng, a researcher with the Beijing
Tianren Yiyi Traditional Medicine Institute. "It's also shocking that
doctors get 15 percent kickbacks selling Western drugs."

Traditional remedies tend to be less expensive than Western ones. At
Tongrentang traditional pharmacy and clinic along Dashila alley in
Beijing, a dozen people waited for football-sized bags of herbs for a
few dollars each.

But there are more expensive exceptions.

In glass cases, beneath an ad touting an herbal tonic for avian flu,
shelves brimmed with dried snakes, sea horses, ground-up pearls, and
deer-horn powder, used for ailments such as rheumatism, paralysis,
asthma, epilepsy, gastritis, and acute infantile convulsions.

"The most expensive would be bull gallstones," a clerk said, pointing
at a yellowish shrink-wrapped object the size of a nickel, used for
fevers and inflammation.

In an adjoining building, a third-generation traditional doctor, Guan
Qingwei, examined several patients, prescribing different herbal
combinations for insomnia, high-blood pressure, and rashes.

Unlike Western medicine, which focuses on the disease, traditional
medicine takes a holistic approach, he said.

Adherents of "ZangXiang," one of the discipline's fundamental tenets,
believe the body gives external clues to the imbalance of internal
organs, which can be rectified with herbs and acupuncture.

Both systems have their strengths, Guan said, but judging traditional
medicine according to Western scientific theory and using "double-
blind" tests on herbal remedies is inappropriate.

"Not only is it unfair, it's laughable," he said. "It's like judging
hamburgers based on the taste of dumplings."

Although Chinese schools pump out thousands of traditional medicine
graduates each year, nearly half never practice -- they chose the
specialty because other departments were full.

A Chinese government delegation on a recent visit to California said
the United States could surpass China soon as the best place to learn
traditional medicine, said Lixin Huang, president of the American
College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in San Francisco, the
nation's oldest such graduate program.

A common criticism of Chinese medicine involves its often unregulated
ingredients.

"Many herbal medicines considered innocuous are actually very toxic,"
said Fang Zhouzi, a biochemist, columnist, and founder of a website
that targets academic fraud. "But practitioners and proponents cover
this up using various excuses."

The Food and Drug Administration banned products marketed as Chinese
herbal medicine during the 1970s and 1980s after they were implicated
in several deaths. In 2004, the FDA issued a ban on the herb ephedra
after it was linked to heart attacks and strokes.

Chinese traditional specialists have attributed this to misuse. They
point to "guan mu tong," which has been used for centuries to treat
urinary-tract infections. Problems surfaced only when Westerners used
it incorrectly for weight loss, they say.

Nor are Western drugs free of powerful side effects, others counter.

"Why don't people talk about Western medicines that cause problems?"
said Zheng Jinsheng, a professor at the Academy of Chinese Medical
Sciences in Beijing, who thinks both disciplines have their
place. "Why is traditional medicine always blamed?"