On Chinese medicine and Nobel Prize...

I'm sure anyone who has used Chinese medicine in the past would pay particular attention to the Nobel Prize this year to the first Chinese (from mainland China) whose discovery of an ingredients forty years ago has become the mainstay to standard malaria treatment that has benefited countless lives.

It's easy to see why proponents to Chinese medicine construes the Nobel Prize as an endorsement of its significance, cue from "clinical trials" from its two thousands years of history. Equally curious is how opponents of it can quite easily find fault in Chinese medicine too, the most obvious ones is Dr Tu Youyou herself who made her significant finding forty years ago, but was never able to replicate the success since then. It's not hard to see why.

When a Chinese medicine doctor is effective, he can be really effective. But there's no "quality control" at all. As a patient, you can't automatically assume that one Chinese medicine doctor is just as good as the next because - surprise surprise - it doesn't.

A lot of criticism rests on the fact that the way Chinese medicine is learnt and practiced, is very much a one-on-one person-to-person knowledge transfer. Traditionally the trade-craft was only passed to male heir in the family. Secret recipe was always guarded jealously like top national secrets. (Sadly this is not just in Chinese medicine, but also in other trades practiced by Chinese, like famous chefs in restaurants.) You can call it self-preservation, you can call it selfish. Regardless, the result is the same: Knowledge is never meant to be assimilated or spread, otherwise success cannot and will not be guaranteed within the family, or so the thinking goes. Hence the criticism of Chinese medicine being so unscientific because it's so unrepeatable.

Some would argue that's not the case, exhibit A being the classical texts that contains all the medicinal details. Yes, that would be indeed the case, but traditionally those medicine books and texts were not meant for public consumption, they were meant only for apprentice or designated heirs of those famous doctors of old.

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I observe this in a rather first-hand way. Some years ago, my dad suffered from intense back pain that he could never find an effective cure. He tried all options, including western medicine (drugs), therapy, and even some chinese medicine doctors in Hong Kong and Australia, all to no avail. Western doctors proclaimed that the only thing left to be done, is a major operation to fix the eroded disks which was no guarantee that it would not recur. And then some acquaintance referred him to a supposedly famous doctor in a coastal Chinese region near Hong Kong, who was (and still is) the head doctor of the provincial hospital.

As a last-ditch effort, my parents went there to seek treatment. Due to concerns of hygiene and lack of facilities, they had to bring all the medical supply themselves, including syringes and even gauze pads.

Miraculously after an intense regiment of treatment of a month, dad came back with a back all cured. There was no more pain or discomfort. The issue had not recurred either in the years since. More curious was the fact that the doctor could never offer an actual diagnosis, all just a notion of "weak back." Everyone marveled at this chinese doctor's skills. Since then, my dad had personally referred countless other patients (friends and acquaintance of his who had a garden variety of ailments) to him and his hospital, and he loved my dad for it. And why not? After the cure, he solicited personal donations and gifts from my dad (cars and vans, meals, gifts, money) in the years since, and my dad willingly provided, though my mom had grown resentful of how this doctor could so shamelessly ask for all these personal gifts to benefit himself. It's highly unethical, to say the least.

Perhaps as an semi-indictment on how chinese medicine is practiced, this doctor is a particularly good case in point. He was very good at it, skill wise, and he's benefited hugely personally since he solicited personal gifts from all his patients. That seems to be the "norm" that all his cured chinese patients have come to expect to cough up, on top of the huge fees that his hospital would charge to all these overseas patients.

One would expect he would start some R&D to expand his reach, but that can't be further from reality. Instead of any R&D, he passed all his knowledge to his only son who, when he came of age, was appointed by him to be the head doctor of a new wing of this provincial hospital, while the father continued to be the head doctor of the old wing of this same hospital. The son was sent to Beijing to pick up some new skills. He's busier than ever taking in new patients, easily seeing hundreds of patients in a day. Yes, you might find that implausible, but I've visited that hospital once and saw how he would get his patients all lined up, literally, and he would do the procedure on each of them like an assembly line in factory, all of these patients would pay his fees personally. Again, there's no R&D, there's no residents in training to learn his craft. All the skills retained between this father-and-son team. Period.

You can call me cynical but I see it as it is. These doctors who might be otherwise skillful have absolutely no interests in teaching others the skills or promotion Chinese medicine for the benefits of all. All they focus on, is to concentrate the knowledge among themselves so that no one can replicate their success. Sadly to say, they are hardly alone, I've seen other chinese medicine doctors behaving the same way too.

As anyone would know, some of the basic premises of science include the study of a subject matter through scientific methods, test of hypotheses, to ensure the repeatability of results. One can hardly find such vigorous body of study in chinese medicine. Perhaps it's little wonder the Nobel selection committee specifically puts out the disclaimer for this Nobel Prize to Dr Tu that this is an endorsement of her contribution, but it's not meant to be an endorsement of chinese medicine.

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As a side note, some years later, it's almost quite certain that the doctor (the father) who treated my dad had quite decidedly led to the hastened death of one of my sister's friends. Incidentally she had had migrant headache for many years. My dad, out of his good nature to want to help, recommended this same doctor to her. She obliged and went back for treatment over the course of three weeks.

His diagnosis of her was some vague notion that she's "weak" in female anatomy. His prescription? She needed to eat more good food (chinese herbs) that would dramatically encourage her blood flow and protein. (This doctor almost always feeds his prized patients with placenta collected from the delivery room of the hospital.)

She stayed the course, came back, and died within a month. It was not known until the autopsy that she had suffered a growing brain tumor (that caused the serious migrant headache). Apparently she never suspected that, and this doctor, for all his skills, pulse reading and such, never knew it either. The conclusion was that, the changed diet could very well have hastened her death by providing all the nourishment that her brain tumor needed.

My dad was sorrowful about her death and the eventual finding of the brain tumor that even a mediocre western doctor might have suspected and found out from a CT scan or MRI. Other chinese medicine doctors had mentioned that the pulse readings should have shown irregularities as well. No matter, that doctor never even noticed or suspected it. After her death, my dad stopped referring anyone to that doctor. It's a painful lesson to learn, and it's such a shame that our friend should have to die from it.