China: Where will oriental medicine go?

For most Chinese people as well as many other Asian countries, oriental medicine has become an indispensable part of life. But now in China, there is a wave of calls for eradication, suggesting that the government stop supporting traditional medicine research and development. Why?

The initiator of the ' anti- oriental war' is the scientific history researcher Zhang Cong Dieu, who works at the Department of Science, Technology and Social Studies of Central South University, Changsha City, Hunan Province. , China.

Thousands of years of oriental roles in China are being challenged (Photo: TTO)

On his blog (http://zhgybk.blog.hexun.com/), he called for the eradication of traditional medicine and corrected the 21 constitutions on encouraging the development of traditional medicine. He also lobbied the signature of medical experts and scholars. Some reports said that over 10,000 participants signed, but there were only about 150 signatures in Truong Cong Dieu's blog.

In fact, the debate about the pros and cons of oriental medicine has risen in China since 2000. However, the incident only became ' hot ' recently when Mr. Zhang Gongyu posted a series of articles on his blog. to protest in the same way as ' Farewell to Oriental medicine ', 'The treatise once again on the parting of medicine', ' Analysis of the cause of the failure of oriental medicine .'. He also called on health experts to sign to support the government's call to abolish medicine from government policy and to amend the constitution.

Mr. Zhang argued that medicine is also science, science must improve, but from a few thousand years ago the medicine stopped making progress. So now the medicine is still a bit magical. In the blog post, Mr. Truong said that oriental medicine is not science, because people cannot determine causality in traditional medicine, nor can it be expressed by experience and truth.

He said that so far, attempts to orient the oriental medicine have failed, for example, the ginseng is considered to be a very effective remedy, but according to research by Western scientists, multiply. Ginseng is completely ineffective, just a normal safe food. He argued that the advantage of oriental medicine compared to modern medicine is actually just a mental placebo effect.

Mr. Zhang's opinion has been controversial online. Supporters of renunciation of medicine give arguments, evidence that traditional medicine contains many shortcomings. For example, many people mentioned that a traditional oriental medicine was found to contain 117,000 times more mercury than the permitted standard, and taking this to prove that oriental medicine also had side effects.

A oriental student wrote a long commentary in Mr. Zhang's blog: 'I practiced with an old oriental physician, a provincial traditional medicine. Every day I copied the prescription. In less than three days, I discovered that he actually used only one prescription repeatedly.

On the contrary, the Oriental supporters said that Oriental medicine did not need to have medicine just like western medicine. Although many of the oriental arguments are not suitable for Western anatomy and physiology, although they have not yet written the formula of the effective component of oriental medicine ., it is not enough. persuading the Chinese to give up medicine.

To prevent this controversy from going too far, in mid-October 2006, the Chinese Ministry of Health held a press conference, announcing the ministry's resolute opposition to speech and behavior calling for the elimination of Oriental medicine and literacy. sign. The spokesman of the ministry said those who called for the eradication of oriental medicine were senseless in history, erasing the important role that oriental medicine is contributing to life.

Where will oriental medicine go, what role does it play in society? It is not only a medical issue but also contains many social, cultural and political factors. The debate about keeping or not keeping the medicine is still going on online, and with the development of science and the improvement of people's knowledge, it may not stop there.

WISH (Beijing)