United States and China Sign Research Agreement on Traditional Chinese Medicine
On July 16, 2008, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt and Chinese Vice-Minister of Health Wang Guoquiang signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreement to foster collaboration between researchers studying integrative and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in both countries. The MOU follows an earlier agreement, signed in 2006, between the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology. The new agreement encompasses a much larger number of interested institutions in the U.S. and China. Jeffrey D. White, M.D., director of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM) commented: “What’s exciting is that this new MOU strongly reflects an interest in TCM at the top levels of HHS, and it shows a growing, sustained interest on the part of the Chinese government to support evidence-based investigations of TCM, in collaboration with foreign investigators. From a practical standpoint, what this agreement does is set a framework for encouraging collaborative activity and will help shepherd projects along that are already underway.”
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