China’s health minister calls for more respect to traditional Chinese medicine
With thanks to English People’s Daily Online
China’s Health Minister Chen Zhu has called for respect to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the scientific value of which is doubted by some people.
“A prudent scientist should not judge TCM in haste if he did not understand its meaning, advantage and core theories,” Chen, a Paris-trained hematology scientist, said in Beijing on Monday at a health forum.
Chen’s made the remarks amid continuing debate about the value and efficacy of medicine practices of TCM which go back millennia and are rooted deeply in Chinese culture.
Long before the start of modern medical science, the Chinese had developed complex theories about the treatment of illnesses. The first Chinese medical classic - The Yellow Emperor’s Canon of Medicine - dates back to between 403 BC and 221 BC.
Remedies made from natural ingredients, such as wild plants and animal parts, and simple tools such as acupuncture needles were used by TCM doctors to treat patients.
But in the mid 19th century, TCM declined due to the growing popularity of western medicine. TCM was even officially banned for a time under the rule of the Kuomintang Party.
After the founding of the people’s republic, TCM was rehabilitated and developed alongside western medicine. About 3,000 hospitals in China provide TCM treatments to nearly 234 million patients each year.
Despite its popularity, TCM is not widely used in health care systems abroad and faces criticism at home. Among the accusations, critics say TCM’s theories lack scientific evidence and its remedies are ineffective and, in some cases, unsafe.
A nationwide debate erupted over the survival of TCM last year after a proposal floated on the internet by a leading academic that it should no longer be practiced in hospitals.
The proposal, from Zhang Gongyao, a professor with Central South University, attracted strong opposition from the Ministry of Health. A spokesman said: “TCM is an inseparable and important component of China’s health sector.” Many outraged opponents said Zhang’s ideas “ignored history and might kill off Chinese culture”.
Minister Chen acknowledged that TCM did need to improve itself and move with the times as it had been resting on experience and philosophical arguments for a long time.
But he said cultural differences meant that TCM was very different from western medicine. “Experience and instinct served as key cognition methods in oriental culture, but in the west, people relied more on experiment and reasoning.”
Striking a comparison between classic western still-life oil painting and traditional Chinese landscape painting, Chen explained that western medicine focused more on clear details of the components, while TCM tended to present a vague picture of the whole.
Despite the differences, the minister said that the two medical theories also shared many similarities in basic concepts.
“TCM believes in the harmony of man with nature, which is pretty similar to western theories of the relations between health and environment; TCM emphasizes that diagnosis and treatment should be based on an overall analysis of the illness and the patient’s condition, while in western medicine, pharmacogenetics (the study of how genes affect the way people respond to medicines) is used to find the most effective remedies for patients…”
Chen said one noticeable phenomenon is that the high level of specialization within western medicine has “fragmentized” the whole medical system and the treatment procedure.
“Almost all the complicated diseases are affected by multiple factors… Under the fragmented diagnosis and treatment system, we’ve lost many chances for simple remedy and early intervention.”
The minister urged scientists to break the block between TCM and western medicine so as to develop a new medical science of the21st century, which could incorporate the advantages of the two medicines.
“If the core concepts of TCM, such as the holistic view, preventative approach and treatment based on patients’ conditions, could be further studied and developed, TCM is likely to have a far-reaching impact on the modern medical system, medical policy, pharmaceutical industry and even the whole economic sector,” Chen said.
Guangzhou, China—With all the stories from China about dangerous toys, environmental abuses, crowded and dirty cities and widespread poverty, it’s hard to imagine how the Chinese can live to a ripe old age.
But they do, with spectacular success, boasting of a life expectancy surprisingly close to that in the United States. China manages this feat while paying a fraction of the healthcare cost per capita spent in the United States, too.
How do they do it? Perhaps by stretching, twisting, dancing or otherwise exercising their way to good health en masse.
U.S. and China, by the numbers
The United States has by far the highest level of health spending per capita in the world: nearly $6,100 or 15.4 percent of the GDP, according the World Health Organization. Scandinavian countries, with their universal healthcare coverage, pay less than half of this.
Yet the United States has one of the lowest life expectancies among developed nations, at about 78 years, which is lower than Cuba’s and marginally beats Slovenia, according to United Nation’s figures.
Meanwhile, China spends only $277 per capita, or 4.7 percent of its GDP, on healthcare expenditures and has on average a life expectancy of 73 years.
Admittedly five years is a big gap, and spending only 4.7 percent of the GDP on health is small compared to other countries, which mostly spend between 5–10 percent. But this life expectancy average absorbs the high infant mortality rate in rural areas. In cities like Beijing and Shanghai, life expectancy is around 80 years, according to the Chinese Municipal Center for Disease Control.
Hong Kong has one of the highest life expectancies in the world, at over 82 years, followed closely by Chinese-ruled Macau, at nearly 81 years, according to the U.N.
Public calorie-burning
If you ever visited China, you might find these statistics unbelievable. Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai are filthy, with horrible air quality and tap water that needs to be boiled. Smoke and spit await you at every storefront. You return to your hotel with grimy hands that turn the sink black.
Is it the Chinese traditional medicine keeping people healthy, or something much more preventive?
Traveling through three major Chinese cities—Beijing, the capital; Wuhan, a large, central city near the Three Gorges Dam; and Guangzhou, a metropolis of over 11 million here in the south, near Hong Kong—one unifying feature has become readily apparent: Every morning and every night there are people, particularly older folks, thousands of them, who gather publicly to exercise.
As I walk the streets, I see one group practicing tai chi; another group is wrapped up in some hybrid form of line dancing and aerobics; circles of four to six people play a Chinese version of hacky sack; others meet for ballroom dancing.
These cities all have outdoor fitness areas, too, with chin-up bars and enticing exercise contraptions that are actually used. There seems to be no end to the number of people and the number of activities.
Staying limber, staying connected
The United States has its joggers, bikers, skaters and punks racing away from cops. There’s no shortage of exercising here, particularly since the jogging revolution in the 1970s.
In China’s big cities, however, exercising seems more widespread and woven into the culture. The social interaction seems to be as important as the calories burned and the joints lubricated. Most heartening is the number of older people out and about, fighting the isolation that often comes with old age in the United States.
Could it be that public exercise, as common as tea drinking here, helps ward off the cancers, strokes and organ diseases that surely would come from living in a polluted city? My sense is that if more Americans got out and just moved, we’d spend less on treating diseases and bump up our life expectancy to a level worthy of a civil society.
