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Traditional Medicine

Shanghai, China - Blog III

Traditional Chinese Medicine

I had planned to be with Minister Chen at a medical college where they teach Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). I have written before about my interest in this subject. I brought Dr. Josephine Briggs, who heads the Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. Our purpose is to stimulate some scientific cooperation on how Western medicine can be informed by TCM.

We visited a large new hospital about an hour outside the Shanghai city center. It had 750 beds and is connected to the Medical School. We visited three departments at the hospital: the pharmacy, a general ward and the acupuncture center. At the acupuncture center, the management of the hospital had very cleverly identified some of the patients with Utah ties, people who had lived there during the time I was Governor. We walked through three small rooms and observed the treatment of a dozen patients for things ranging from knee problems and bells palsy, to infertility.

Afterward, we gathered in a conference room to ask questions of the medical staff. I find it rather easy to grasp the portions of TCM related to medicine. They use naturally grown plants in combination to produce a therapeutic result. The components obviously have active ingredients that have some impact on the human body. Over the years they have developed patterns of what works in various situations. Diagnosis is done through a form of observation and intuition.

TCM deals with concepts that are thousands of years old, and involves assessment of more than physical well being. It strives to find balance within the various systems of the body. I don't understand all of it, but I think it is important to respect that their approach is different than ours, and to acknowledge there may be a lot we can learn. In medicine, it is important to understand why something works. It appears to me in TCM, it is only necessary to believe something works. What I hope we can do more of, is applying scientific methods to understand why Chinese methods work. Blending knowledge from the two should be our goal. We are working on a Memorandum of Understanding to do just that.

I will admit that what I learned about acupuncture-aided surgery went over the top for me. They do major surgery with the patient awake and alert using acupuncture instead of anesthetics. I didn't see an actual surgery, but they had clips of video.

The difference between TCM and Western medicine typifies the challenge of working cooperatively with the Chinese; two different philosophies and two different systems. Neither should attempt to change the other, but rather to make our systems interoperable.

I spent about an hour at a TCM museum, which was helpful in understanding the history and philosophies. I found it helpful to see the development throughout a few thousand years. They also had a group of students who talked about the teaching techniques used in training TCM doctors. It is critical to remember this is a method of treatment hundreds of millions of Chinese prefer. They don't trust Western medical techniques.

Secretary Leavitt tours a Traditional Chinese Medicine Museum in Shanghai
Secretary Leavitt tours a Traditional Chinese Medicine Museum in Shanghai

Diplomacy Speech

The most pleasant part of the day for me was a diplomacy speech I did at the medical school with 300 students. My goal in the hour we had together was to make friends with them. I told them about me and my family. Then I told them about my job. After that, I let them just ask questions about anything. It was great fun. They asked me about TCM in the U.S. We talked about the Olympic Games. I told them stories about when my state hosted the games. We discussed health costs in the U.S. I was very candid about my concerns. They asked me for advice on how to succeed in life. I gave them some thoughts about goal setting.

I concluded my talk with the students by talking about why I meet with students like them. It is to plant seeds of relationship between our countries to help each of them know us better and for us to understand them. The students responded well, and we talked for an hour, but it could have gone much longer.

A Personal Curiosity

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped to see an animal display at the convention center. My interest was stimulated because a friend of mine, Ken Bearing, donated all the taxidermy. It is a spectacular display of African animals including an elephant, a 20 foot man-eating gator, a hippo and many others. It is displayed in a spectacular way. They have had over a million visitors since it opened a year ago.

On to Beijing

Tomorrow, it’s a speech to the American business community and then on to Beijing for meetings with various government officials.

Traditional Chinese Medicine

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The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is part of the National Institutes of Health.  Its role is to explore complementary and  alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science.  While in Beijing last week, I had experiences that  added to my instinct that there is value to be gained in understanding  traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) better.

The first experience was meeting the new Minister of Health for  China, Chen Zhu. He brings a reputation as a world class scientist to his new post. In  addition to our meetings at the Strategic Economic Dialog, Dr. Chen and I had breakfast  on Wednesday. It gave us an opportunity to talk about areas of  cooperation.  It also provided a chance  for me to get to know him on a more personal level. 

I asked Dr. Chen to tell me more about his youth.  He told me that despite having parents who  were both sophisticated physicians in urban areas, during the difficult days of  the Cultural Revolution, Chen Zhu was required by the government to live in  very poor areas of China,  working on the land until his adolescence. Those experiences clearly gave him sensitivity  to the plight of the poor and underserved.  During that time he taught himself English by  comparing the English and Chinese versions of Mao’s Red Book.   He later  became a physician and medical researcher of some renown, becoming a member of  the National Academy of Sciences in France  and China. 

When he was in medical school, Dr. Chen learned western  medicine and traditional Chinese medicine techniques which he had observed as a  boy in the countryside. He described how an insight he gained from traditional  Chinese medicine unlocked a major discovery in developing response for a form  of leukemia.  He had a hunch, based on  what he knew of Chinese medicine, that arsenic could play a productive role in  treatment.  Turns out, he was right.

During a visit at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, I  visited a museum devoted to recording the history of TCM.  On display are many of the different  botanical, animal and mineral substances used in treatment.  Each of the components in the collection was  displayed in a clear jar with a short description. 

I asked the curator how discoveries had typically been made  and recorded.  She explained that most of  them had come because of the connection between medicine and food.  People were constantly looking for ways to  nourish themselves.  They found that  eating certain things had additional benefits beyond just satisfying their  hunger. 

Walking through the museum, I found myself thinking what a  remarkable earth we live on that can produce so many varieties of  vegetation.  Surely each one of them has  a molecular structure with active ingredients capable of affecting the human  body in different food.  We turn to these  plants for our nourishment; why not for our healing? 

After visiting the museum, I went to a clinic at the medical  school where students were examining patients using TCM methods.  I watched acupuncture therapy being  applied.  I sat in (with the patient's  permission) as a seasoned doctor surrounded by three students interviewed and examined  a patient who had been referred by a local hospital.  He carried with him pictures of the inside of  his stomach taken by a scope of some kind at the hospital.  I watched the convergence of western medical  science and traditional Chinese medicine as the doctor looked at the scoped  photos and then examined his tongue for clues.   His examination was concluded by carefully feeling the patient’s  pulse. 

At the medical school, they teach both western medicine and  TCM.  Apparently it takes many years of  practice before a doctor is able to practice TCM on their own. Much of it is  learned from experience. 

When the examination was complete, the doctor dictated a TCM  prescription which was filled at the pharmacy.   The pharmacist had eight or ten prescriptions being completed at once on  the counter in front of him.  Each one  was the aggregate of several small piles of plant leaves, bark, seeds, flower  pedals and minerals.  The patient takes  them home, and following instructions either boils them, drinking the broth as  the medicine, fries them for eating or grinds them into another form for  ingestion.

I want to be clear here.   I am not advocating a substitution of TCM for the western style  treatment we receive in the United    States.   I would observe that in the United States, a doctor develops  his/her diagnosis based on similar techniques. They take vital signs, ask for a  medical history and seek to understand the nature of the patient's complaint  and its source.  In many cases they would  also offer a prescription which comes in a small plastic bottle containing tablets  of processed elements of the earth, generally in the form of processed chemicals  held together and colored by other chemicals.

Elsewhere on my blog you will find entries about  personalized medicine where patients get treatments customized for their use.  The TCM approach to treatment seems less precise in some ways but the  prescribed medical treatment in many ways is more personalized. 

One more thing; I don’t know exactly, but I’m guessing the  total cost of the elements for any one of the TCM prescriptions would have been  under a dollar.  When I was in western China a year  ago, I came to understand better why that is significant.  If a nation is responsible to provide health  care to 1.3 billion citizens, on an average of $6 to $12 dollars a YEAR, they  probably won’t be able to afford many brand name pharmaceutical products.  It should also be noted that the mortality  and morbidity results in China  and the United States  are not all that different. 

Through the National  Center for Complimentary and  Alternative Medicine at NIH, and a number of other institutions within the United States,  researchers are working to find ways to understand TCM better.  We need to do more of that.  Dr. Andy Von Eschenbach, the Commissioner of  the United States Food and Drug Administration, and  Director of the National Institutes of Health,  Dr. Elias Zerhouni and I have been discussing a trip to China next year to  increase the levels of collaboration.

During our visit at breakfast, Minister Chen and I agreed to  actively explore ways we can work together applying rigorous science to  traditional Chinese medicine.  More  science-based understanding could lead to a convergence of real value.