Looking into the Chinese 'Mirror'
- By Sabine Weber
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E-mail China Today, September 21, 2017
Old and New, Competitive and Complementary
In East Asia (in general), as well as in China (in particular), this empirical approach based on the application of the scientific method initially appeared as a foreign entity. However, the reproducible and verifiable effects of the new cognitive mode were found fascinating and eventually led to growing acceptance.
For traditional Chinese medicine, the new concepts from the West brought about a difficult time of explaining and justifying its methods and achievements. Chinese medicine had to redefine and legitimize itself.
Meanwhile, China also faced the daunting task of providing at least basic healthcare for a large number of people in the peripheries of the vast country.
This was the starting point for a discussion that lasts to this day and projects this narrative of a "competition" of sorts between modern Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. The debate becomes further convoluted due to the emotional dimension on one end, and lack of well-informed opinions on the other.
For modern physicians, the encounter between modern and traditional medicine revolves around the question of where and how the veracity of the medical effects can be proven.
"Surely, from an objective perspective, modern Western medicine has in this aspect achieved greater success," Labisch said. But at the same time he feels people should also be aware of the many highly valuable though mostly indirect approaches of traditional Chinese treatment methods.
This, in his opinion, is particularly true for everyday symptoms and preventive healthcare – for example, dietary means or physical exercise. In this way, traditional medicine complements modern methods, suggested Labisch.
However, this is only a small aspect of the true potential of what traditional Chinese medicine has to offer. Its traditional remedies and formulae possess multiple means of extracting positive effects also in a modern sense.
"A good example for this is Tu Youyou. In 2015, the female Chinese pharmacologist was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for her work in the 1970s, when she examined the efficacy of annual mugwort in the treatment of malaria. In traditional Chinese medicine this plant was known for centuries and treasured for its pharmaceutical effects," Labisch explained.
However, Tu Youyou was the first to use the methods of modern Western medicine and scientific research to identify and isolate the specific active ingredient: Artemisinin. Her discovery and approach resulted in the possibility to develop and produce medicines useful in the treatment of patients suffering from malaria.
"Today, artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) is used worldwide to treat acute malaria. ACT is a global success story of traditional Chinese medicine," Labisch said.
"This example shows that if traditional Chinese pharmacology verifies its findings with the scientific and clinical methods of modern medicine, it can bring wonderful results and approaches that are effective, ideally without any side effects, and can also be used by modern clinical medicine. That is where I see the future of traditional Chinese medicine."
SABINE WEBER is a PhD candidate of Sinology at the University of Bonn, Germany. She is currently located at BFSU, Beijing, conducting research on representations and perceptions of technology and knowledge transfer in late Qing Fiction.
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