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.
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.