However, Wikipedia editors counters Dr Cummings by saying all experts of "pseudoscience" don't believe their respective fields deserve that label. As unflattering as the label "pseudoscience" is, Dr Cummings didn't bring up scientific evidence in a blog titled "Is Acupuncture Pseudoscience? Like Dr Cummings, Chinese acupuncture experts aren't countering the accusations of "pseudoscience" with scientific arguments.
Acupuncture Society deputy director Li argued that acupuncture should be accepted as a science because it is so widely practiced. As well, Li offered this defense: "Just because Western medicine is scientific is no reason to call Chinese medicine 'unscientific. The Chinese netizen reaction to the news isn't quite how People's Daily is reporting it. The highest rated comment on one Weibo post regarding the news was "Chinese medicine is pseudoscience," while another said, "Chinese medicine is garbage; it's a trick used to fool people.
Nothing to see here. Still, other netizens could not accept the Wikipedia classification. One person asked: " Acupuncture is wrong just because you can't explain it scientifically? This simply signifies that modern science is not developed enough to understand it. Another person lashed out at theoretical science: "Why isn't the research into the unknown by that expletive Hawkings and his gang of scientists labelled 'pseudoscience'?
A compromise between the two sides was offered by on netizen who wrote: "Chinese medicine is effective and can be used to treat illness, but is absolutely not a science. If anyone wants to vent over this, you should try looking up the meaning of the word 'science,' and then see if the theory of Chinese medicine was derived from a scientific method. And yet, to others, the news took on another significance, like the person who wrote : "I can go online Wikipedia in China???
Since , Chinese netizens have had intermittent access to Wikipedia. After banning certain Wikipedia pages over several years, the entire site was temporarily banned in As much as acupuncture has its supporters in China, a number of recent local news stories have not inspired trust into the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine.
This past month, a leading TCM proponent busted the myth that traditional Chinese medicine can ward off the effects of smog. Last September, Chinese actress Xu Ting died of cancer when she chose alternative therapies like acupuncture and back scraping over chemotherapy.
Last year also saw a skeptic debunk a TCM practitioner who claimed to be able to diagnose a pregnancy just by feeling a woman's pulse. More stories from this author here. This has been tried and tried, by several people with knowledge in the area. Any attempts to change the page are treated as hostile and the users are banned by Wikipedia editors who have no knowledge of acupuncture, and they cherry pick their sources to suit their own point of view.
See www. So after reading L of C. Tongue in check, yes of course. As well, if Naturalism and Empiricism were truly and fairly applied, how are we assuming vaccination is valid on large populations. This when the larger non vaccinated population my have a statistical advantage as to survival from any disease to which some were vaccinated.
As well, from my view, we must consider, yes scientifically, that vaccination practically is a pure evil for some individuals. I do not poke too much fun or say this lightly of your link. When the wrong queries are investigated, the relevant variables ignored or discounted, clinical science confused with pure or ideal science, along with a failure to understand a uniqueness of living organisms and the terrain in which they exist, then we see why this method is flawed with regard to healthcare.
If not in the ideal, certainly as a practicality when applied to living organisms or the cosmos at large for that matter. Perhaps as applied by a Geologist reductionism is more absolute. But perhaps also, not so in healthcare or physics. If one applies the science of statistical analysis to the vaccination issue, one could conclude there is a very real link within that scientific analysis to autism.
I do not propose to win any argument of some form here in. But I do propose a questioning of absolutes that just are not so, dare one say, absolute. To come back to the topic of Acupuncture.
It is it's fundamental practice of integrating the uniqueness of the individual and the terrain in which that individual exists to a method of pattern diagnosis that makes Acupuncture a centuries old successful healthcare practice for humankind. This very basic difference in it's applied clinical science is why it will continue to survive and blossom in coming centuries. That unique practice as yet has not been factored into any science method to which you allude. Food for thought for some, cause of outright dismissal for others.
Many of these deaths do occur however, when patients self prescribe herbs or take unprocessed versions of toxic herbs. The raw and unprocessed form of aconite , or fuzi is the most common cause of poisoning. The use of aconite in Chinese herbal medicine is usually limited to processed aconite, in which the toxicity is denatured by heat treatment.
Furthermore, potentially toxic and carcinogenic compounds such as arsenic and cinnabar are sometimes prescribed as part of a medicinal mixture or used on the basis of " using poison to cure poison ". Unprocessed herbals are sometimes adulterated with chemicals that may alter the intended effect of a herbal preparation or prescription.
Much of these are being prevented with more empirical studies of Chinese herbals and tighter regulation regarding the growing, processing, and prescription of various herbals.
The Ephedra ban was meant to combat the use of this herb in Western weight loss products, a usage that directly conflicts with traditional Asian uses of the herb. There were no cases of Ephedra based fatalities with patients using traditional Asian preparations of the herb for its traditionally intended uses.
This ban was ordered lifted in April by a Utah federal court judge. However, the ruling was appealed and on August 17, , the Appeals Court upheld the FDA's ban of ephedra, finding that the ,page administrative record compiled by the FDA supported the agency's finding that ephedra posed an unreasonable risk to consumers.
Many Chinese medicines have different names for the same ingredient depending on location and time, but worse yet, ingredients with vastly different medical properties have shared similar or even same names. In some Chinese medical texts, both names are interchangeable [12]. Chinese herbal medicine authorities are working towards improved standards in this area [13].
Within China, there has been a great deal of cooperation between TCM practitioners and Western medicine, especially in the field of ethnomedicine. Chinese herbal medicine includes many compounds which are unused by Western medicine, and there is great interest in those compounds as well as the theories which TCM practitioners use to determine which compound to prescribe.
For their part, advanced TCM practitioners in China are interested in statistical and experimental techniques which can better distinguish medicines that work from those that do not. One result of this collaboration has been the creation of peer reviewed scientific journals and medical databases on traditional Chinese medicine.
While more and more medical schools are including classes on alternative medicine in their curricula, older Western doctors and scientists are far more likely than their Chinese counterparts to skeptically view TCM as archaic pseudoscience and superstition. This skepticism can come from a number of sources. For one, TCM in the West tends to be advocated either by Chinese immigrants or by those that have lost faith in conventional medicine.
Many people in the West have a stereotype of the East as mystical and unscientific, which attracts those in the West who have lost hope in science and repels those who believe in scientific explanations. There have also been experiences in the West with unscrupulous or well-meaning but improperly-trained "TCM practitioners" who have done people more harm than good in many instances.
Most Chinese in China do not see traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine as being in conflict. In cases of emergency and crisis situations, there is generally no reluctance in using conventional Western medicine.
At the same time, belief in Chinese medicine remains strong in the area of maintaining health. As a simple example, you see a Western doctor if you have acute appendicitis , but you do exercises or take Chinese herbs to keep your body healthy enough to prevent appendicitis, or to recover more quickly from the surgery.
Very few practitioners of Western medicine in China reject traditional Chinese medicine, and most doctors in China will use some elements of Chinese medicine in their own practice. A degree of integration between Chinese and Western medicine also exists in China. For instance, at the Shanghai cancer hospital, a patient may be seen by a multidisciplinary team and be treated concurrently with radiation surgery, Western drugs and a traditional herbal formula.
In other countries it is not necessarily the case that traditional Chinese and Western medicine are practiced concurrently by the same practitioner. TCM education in Australia, for example, does not qualify a practitioner to provide diagnosis in Western medical terms, prescribe scheduled pharmaceuticals, nor perform surgical procedures.
It is worth noting that the practice of Western medicine in China is somewhat different from that in the West.
In contrast to the West, there are relatively few allied health professionals to perform routine medical procedures or to undertake procedures such as massage or physical therapy. In addition, Chinese practitioners of Western medicine have been less impacted by trends in the West that encourage patient empowerment, to see the patient as an individual rather than a collection of parts, and to do nothing when medically appropriate.
Chinese practitioners of Western medicine have been widely criticized for over-prescribing drugs such as corticosteroids or antibiotics for common viral infections. It is likely that these medicines, which are generally known to be useless against viral infections, would provide less relief to the patient than traditional Chinese herbal remedies. Traditional Chinese diagnostics and treatments are often much cheaper than Western methods which require high-tech equipment or extensive chemical manipulation.
TCM doctors often criticize Western doctors for paying too much attention to laboratory tests and showing insufficient concern for the overall feelings of patients. Modern TCM practitioners will refer patients to Western medical facilities if a medical condition is deemed to have put the body too far out of "balance" for traditional methods to remedy.
Animal products are used in certain Chinese formulae, which may present a problem for vegans and vegetarians. If informed of such restrictions, practitioners can often use alternative substances. The use of endangered species is controversial within TCM. In particular, is the belief that tiger penis and rhinoceros horn are aphrodisiacs although the traditional use of rhinoceros horn is to reduce fever. Medicinal use is also having a major impact on the populations of seahorses.
Shark fin soup is traditionally regarded as beneficial for health in East Asia. According to Compendium of Materia Medica, it's good at strengthening the waist, supplementing vital energy, nourishing blood, invigorating kidney and lung and improving digestion. However, such claims are not supported by scientific evidence.
Furthermore, they have been found to contain high levels of mercury, which is known for its ill effects. The animal rights movement notes that a few traditional Chinese medicinal solutions use bear bile.
To extract maximum amounts of the bile, the bears are often fitted with a sort of permanent catheter. The treatment itself and especially the extraction of the bile is very painful, causes damage to the intestines of the bear, and often kills the bears. However, due to international attention on the issues surrounding its harvesting, bile is now rarely used by practitioners outside of China, gallbladders from butchered cattle are recommended as a substitute for this ingredient [7] Bensky, Clavey and Stoger's comprehensive Chinese herbal text deals with substances derived from endangered species in an appendix, with an emphasis on recommending alternatives.
Starting from late 19th century, politicians and Chinese scholars with background in Western medicine have been trying to phase out TCM totally in China. Some of the prominent advocates of the elimination of TCM include:. The attempts to curtail TCM in China always provoke large scale debates but have never completely succeeded.
These efforts remain hampered by the difficulty of creating effective placebos for acupuncture studies. However, in the s a movement emerged that attempted to restore traditional medical practice, especially acupuncture. This movement, known as the Meridian Therapy movement Keiraku Chiryo in Japanese persists to this day.
Furthermore, many Japanese physicians continue to practice Kampo, a form of traditional medicine based on the Shang Han Lun tradition of Chinese herbal medicine.
On September 6, , Abraham Chan, President of the Modernized Chinese Medicine International Association in Hong Kong announced that Traditional Chinese Medicine is getting a modern dose by transforming the plants and ingredients to soluble granules and tablets. He said that the pills and sachets used plant and fungi ingredients and about 25 from non-plant sources such as snakes , geckos , toads , bees and earthworms.
JPG An old Chinese medical chart. Main article: TCM model of the body. File:Seahorse Skeleton Macro 8 - edit. No longer do healers look for a supernatural cause of disease: they now observe Nature and, with a combination of the inductive and deductive method, the set out to find patterns within it and, by extension, apply these in the interpretation of disease" - from an introductory textbook used by many acupuncture courses - Maciocia, Giovanni There have been any number of illicit Wikipedia edits in recent years, mostly to the pages of celebrities like Taylor Swift and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
But the latest Wikipedia war centers on medical science, specifically the efficacy of acupuncture. Admittedly acupuncture is not a cure-all—Chinese actress Xu Ting died of cancer last year after choosing alternative therapies like acupuncture over chemotherapy. Thanks for signing up!
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