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Rigidly copying, becoming a laughingstock
Original Link
https://www.zhihu.com/question/615179901/answer/3147930102
Main Text
It will become another big “laughingstock” of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
Because the issue of “Western medicine becoming Chinese medicine” is not only something TCM practitioners have done, but they have done it in a particularly outrageous and absurd way.
In the 1980s, TCM faced a huge problem: Western medicine was constantly introducing new drugs every year, and clinical medication increasingly emphasized innovative Western drugs.
However, in the past two or three centuries, TCM introduced very few new drugs, and the clinical medications were still mostly old drugs from hundreds of years ago. This really embarrassed contemporary TCM practitioners.
The good things left by ancestors are inherited and innovated by you in such a way—how can you face the Yellow Emperor and Fuxi a hundred years later?
But new drug development takes a long time and costs a lot. Is there a way to rapidly increase the variety of TCM drugs in a short time without spending much money?
These dutiful descendants of TCM came up with a cunning method: since Western medicine has innovative drugs every year and has accumulated thousands of clinical drugs, why not just rename Western drugs as Chinese medicine?
After all, TCM practitioners are all cultured and educated people. “Is it really stealing if it’s something educated people do?”
…
Where there is an idea, there is action. At the end of the 1990s and into the 21st century, the TCM community launched the grand “Western Medicine to Chinese Medicine Movement.”
So what is “Western Medicine to Chinese Medicine”?
The properties of traditional Chinese medicine are expressed through seven aspects: taste, meridian tropism, efficacy, indications, contraindications, dosage, and administration method.
At the time, TCM practitioners thought that by finding these seven attributes for Western drugs, they could use Western drugs according to TCM theory.
And Western drugs used according to TCM theory would be considered Chinese medicine, moreover “scientific Chinese medicine.”
With the theory and methodology established, the next step was simply to classify Western drugs according to the Pharmacopoeia.
As an important development direction for the “scientification” of Chinese medicine, this task was assigned to the Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine’s Institute of Chinese Materia Medica.
At that time, the Institute believed the process of “Western Medicine to Chinese Medicine” could be divided into three steps:
- Find TCM theoretical expressions for Western drugs, such as taste and meridian tropism
- Find TCM academic terms and indicators for Western drug efficacy, such as activating blood and removing stasis, clearing heat and detoxifying, relieving depression, regulating qi, excess heat, deficiency heat, lung heat cough, qi deficiency constipation, etc.
- According to TCM drug compatibility principles and laws, find drugs that can be used together with Western drugs, such as monarch-minister-assistant-messenger relationships, seven feelings, drug pairs, etc.
Don’t think this is ridiculous. At that time, TCM practitioners not only did not feel they were plagiarizing but believed that “Western Medicine to Chinese Medicine” could avoid and reduce the toxicity, side effects, and allergic reactions of Western drugs, and prevent drug-induced diseases.
In their view, “Western Medicine to Chinese Medicine” was not plagiarism but an important measure by TCM to help Western medicines improve and perfect themselves; it was a “great contributor” with benefits on both sides, and truly a…
With this self-righteous attitude, soon the first batch of “Western Medicine to Chinese Medicine” results was born.
TCM first found the “TCM drug properties” for aspirin.
If you ask TCM practitioners what evidence they have to prove aspirin fits this “TCM drug property,”
they say the theoretical basis is here:
Wow, I never knew aspirin had such astonishing “medical properties.”
The process by which TCM inferred aspirin’s taste and meridian tropism was also quite “thought-provoking.”
First, the four natures (si xing).
The four natures, also called four qi, are defined in TCM as cold, heat, warm, and cool. Determining these natures is based on the drug’s cold or hot effects on diseases, corresponding to syndromes.
Aspirin, as an antipyretic and analgesic, is mainly used clinically to treat wind-heat syndrome in rheumatic fever. So, based on “treating heat with cold and cold with heat,” TCM inferred aspirin belongs to the cold and cool nature.
Then the five tastes (si wei).
TCM holds that drugs have five tastes: sour, salty, sweet, bitter, and pungent. Aspirin tastes sour and slightly bitter, so according to "sour, bitter, salty, and cold are thick tastes,” aspirin’s taste is sour and slightly bitter.
The meridian tropism categorization is even more bizarre.
TCM considers meridian tropism as based on the zang-fu organs and meridians, and drug treatment of diseases to indicate the drug’s site of action.
Aspirin is mainly suitable for colds, fever, joint pain, rheumatism, and inhibiting platelet aggregation to prevent thrombosis.
These symptoms mostly belong to lung-heat syndrome, which is caused by unstable defensive exterior and disharmony between ying and wei, with the lung as the disease site, belonging to TCM’s “Bi syndrome,” closely related to the lung, liver, kidney, and spleen. So aspirin’s meridian tropism is assigned to the heart and lung.
Wow, this is the first time I’ve seen drug properties deduced backward from clinical symptoms.
It’s like we cut off a spider’s legs, then stimulate it with various sounds and find it does not move, so we conclude the spider’s ears are on its legs.
If you think aspirin’s “Chinese medicine transformation” has crossed your bottom line, then you clearly didn’t know your bottom line could be this low.
In the 1980s and 1990s, organic phosphorus pesticide poisoning was frequent in rural areas, so many grassroots hospitals were equipped with the Western drug atropine for emergency use.
Following the principle of “theoretical innovation concurrent with clinical practice,” the TCM community also “Chinese medicine-ified” atropine.
The results are as follows:
TCM believes pesticide poisoning belongs to “collapse of yang qi” syndrome, so the treatment should be restoring yang and rescuing from reversal, tonifying qi to secure collapse.
Atropine has the effect of rescuing near-death patients, so its “indication” in TCM is restoring yang and rescuing from reversal.
Is this reasonable? Perfect? Scientific?
What’s funny is the process by which TCM inferred the TCM theoretical expression of pesticide poisoning symptoms.
TCM believes vomiting in pesticide poisoning patients is caused by yang qi deficiency, disharmony of ascending and descending, inability to secure, loss of qi transformation control, and upward stomach qi counterflow.
TCM believes dizziness in pesticide poisoning patients is caused by unstable defensive yang.
TCM believes rapid breathing, deep and slow or choppy or weak rapid pulses in pesticide poisoning patients are caused by phlegm-damp obstruction.
Therefore, atropine’s effective pharmacology can be conveniently “explained” as TCM’s “resolving phlegm, awakening the brain, opening orifices, warming the middle and dispersing cold, restoring yang and rescuing from reversal”…
Don’t think “Western Medicine to Chinese Medicine” was just a passing trend—in 2019, some TCM practitioners were still discussing the “Chinese medicine transformation” of ibuprofen, assigning four natures, five tastes, meridians, and indications for ibuprofen.
And funding surprisingly came from the Provincial Science and Technology Department.
It seems the funding for TCM research is really easy to get… oh no!… is really easy to obtain.
To summarize:
The questioner asked, “What would happen if Western medicine were incorporated as Chinese medicine?”
I am not an insider, so I won’t judge, but back then some TCM practitioners had a bold vision for “Western Medicine to Chinese Medicine.”
At that time, a TCM practitioner proposed using 2,000 people over 10 years to “Chinese medicine-ify” all more than 1,000 commonly used Western drugs listed in the Pharmacopoeia.
If they had really accomplished this, today’s Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) would have it much easier.
No more chemical drug approval codes (H); one Chinese medicine (H) approval code would solve everything, making drug registration faster and more convenient.
Hospitals wouldn’t have to struggle whether to prescribe Chinese patent medicine or how much, greatly improving medical efficiency.
Health insurance departments wouldn’t have to give “special treatment” to Chinese medicine, significantly reducing insurance expenditure.
More importantly, the issue of difficult new drug development in Chinese medicine would be solved forever.
Just stay at home monitoring the CFDA’s annual new drug approval projects online, and following the previous “clinical practice-guided pharmacological analysis” excellent experience, wait to assign meridian tropism and classification to newly approved Western drugs, and continuously produce new Chinese medicines.