17th May 2005, 12:24 AM
Western medicine generally refers not to "scientific method." It rather refers to the medical tradition that grew from Europe and America, and namely, a 300 or so year old tradition of allopathic medicine. Is western medicine scientific ? It is in many parts, but you'd be amazed how much of medicine is not evidence based, but rather rational practice, or trial and error. Its method and history of development is similar to that Chinese medicine, but has made advances by leaps and bounds as a result of technology in the last 50-60 years, which is something Chinese medicine is still striving to catch up to, thanks to communism and the resulting backwardness of China during this breakthrough era.
All in all, western medicine is mostly evidence based, and generally based on the best avaliable evidence as opposed to absolute evidence shown in large randomized, double blinded studies. In many cases, its actually impossible to do double blind studies. For example, you won't be going around inducing random gunshot wounds to test whether or not a certain OR procedure works to extracting bullets, to cite an extreme situation.
Its always amusing to listen to amatuers talk on the subject because of the limited viewpoint. The NIH is interested in accupuncture because for them, it opens up a whole new area of research in nervous system stimulation and its effects. If they can elucidate the mechanism and pinpoint, they can probably figure out ways to enhance it to manipulate just about everything in the body just like Chinese medicine has.
You have to know that many of these skeptics hail from a "tradiition" of western civ chauvanism, and a very limited outlook into medicine to start with. They don't even realize that a LARGE portion of western medicine is not evidence based. Hell, half of the things that neurologists and neurosurgeons are doing is just a shot in the dark. They don't even know what the hell they're doing for the most part. Are we going to call these neuroscience fields quackery ? These "skeptics" probably wouldn't simply because its a specialty of allopathic "western medicine" which they assumed to be evidence based, when it really isn't all evidence based.
Speaking of fighting cancer with accupuncture.... Chinese medical research is split into 3 wings - purely western medicine, purely eastern medicine, and combination medicine of east and west. There have studies showing stage 4 gastric cancer (the type people usually die from) treated alone with chemotherapy is not as effective as chemotherapy with accupuncture, which is still not as effective as chemo, accupuncture, and herbal medicines. A case report from China have shown that combination treatment have brought a patient's whose gastric cancer was refractory to chemotherapy, to have reached near remission with simply the addition of accupuncture. Anectodal, but still the evidence from larger studies show improvement over chemotherapy alone prospective cohort studies.
Keep in mind too that accupuncture is only 1 of many treatment modalities in eastern medicine. Not all diseases are treated with accupuncture in China, and not all are treated with just herbs.
It might also interest you that many of the herbs that Chinese are simply natural sources of the active ingrediants of drugs we use, or have used. After all, the majority of western drugs are based of some kind of plant life anyways. In effect, western drugs are just purified herbal medicines.
All in all, western medicine is mostly evidence based, and generally based on the best avaliable evidence as opposed to absolute evidence shown in large randomized, double blinded studies. In many cases, its actually impossible to do double blind studies. For example, you won't be going around inducing random gunshot wounds to test whether or not a certain OR procedure works to extracting bullets, to cite an extreme situation.
Its always amusing to listen to amatuers talk on the subject because of the limited viewpoint. The NIH is interested in accupuncture because for them, it opens up a whole new area of research in nervous system stimulation and its effects. If they can elucidate the mechanism and pinpoint, they can probably figure out ways to enhance it to manipulate just about everything in the body just like Chinese medicine has.
You have to know that many of these skeptics hail from a "tradiition" of western civ chauvanism, and a very limited outlook into medicine to start with. They don't even realize that a LARGE portion of western medicine is not evidence based. Hell, half of the things that neurologists and neurosurgeons are doing is just a shot in the dark. They don't even know what the hell they're doing for the most part. Are we going to call these neuroscience fields quackery ? These "skeptics" probably wouldn't simply because its a specialty of allopathic "western medicine" which they assumed to be evidence based, when it really isn't all evidence based.
Speaking of fighting cancer with accupuncture.... Chinese medical research is split into 3 wings - purely western medicine, purely eastern medicine, and combination medicine of east and west. There have studies showing stage 4 gastric cancer (the type people usually die from) treated alone with chemotherapy is not as effective as chemotherapy with accupuncture, which is still not as effective as chemo, accupuncture, and herbal medicines. A case report from China have shown that combination treatment have brought a patient's whose gastric cancer was refractory to chemotherapy, to have reached near remission with simply the addition of accupuncture. Anectodal, but still the evidence from larger studies show improvement over chemotherapy alone prospective cohort studies.
Keep in mind too that accupuncture is only 1 of many treatment modalities in eastern medicine. Not all diseases are treated with accupuncture in China, and not all are treated with just herbs.
It might also interest you that many of the herbs that Chinese are simply natural sources of the active ingrediants of drugs we use, or have used. After all, the majority of western drugs are based of some kind of plant life anyways. In effect, western drugs are just purified herbal medicines.