Question for Unschuld

[Guest guest]

>>I don't have time at the moment to elaborate these thoughts, but in

brief, if CM professionals want to be in the driving seat of their

style of medicine, much more work than I'm aware of as having been

done, needs to be done to explore the values, needs etc. of the

intrinsic development of CM, and this must be accompanied by a

developed critique of science and biomedicine as is relevant to CM

practice.

>>>>>I actually think that if we do want to stay in the driving seats

we need to adopt to practice in the west which means scientific

research. We could perhaps, stay in a kind of alternative mode that is

in fashion for a while. But long term staying power will strongly be

influenced by evidence based research. We need to design these studies

so that as much of CM rational is maintained. If we are going to just

reject evidence based professionalism we are going to pushed away

Alon>>

 

Alon,

I tend to agree with you, but this is a very complex area. As Emmanuel

(and I) have argued, there's a problem getting research money for the

type of research the CM profession would probably like to have done.

Even if we do amass evidence of the type that we deem suitable, it's

still likely to be swamped by the biomedical sort.

 

I don't have any definitive answers, but the following thoughts occur

to me:

1) We need to think through very careully what types of research meet

our needs professionally

2) This needs to be accompanied by a critique of biomedical assumptions

3) It would further us very much to be able to utilise oriental

research, and if the PRC is not currently useful from the political

angle because of doubts in the west about the rigour of oriental

research, we should, in my opinion, be liaising with centres of

excellence in the PRC and possibly elsewhere, to develop this

research, in addition to whatever we come up with in the west ourselves.

 

No matter what happens, my own feeling is that the future standing of

CM will depend a lot on what the PRC does. The PRC seems to dominate

the consideration of acupuncture in the WHO at the moment, and I can

only envisage this continuing. In many ways, I think that western CM

practitioners may, to a considerable extent, be bystanders between the

biomedical evaluation of CM currently taking place in the west, and

what the Chinese do, but I still think that we need to develop our own

positions as well as we can.

 

Wainwright

[Guest guest]

Alon wrote (regarding statistics) >>>It allows us to shoot a rocket to stars far

away, have this internet discussion and i do not think we will abandon these any

time soon.

 

Alon,

 

This is precisely my point. Statistics is actually calculus which is actually

physics with practical applications in rocket science and electrical

engineering. If you are a biologist or physician, you did not hear your name

called. For me this would be the end of the story. However, if you feel the

need to create a new paradigm of research for CM, I'm all for it. In fact as a

philosophy of science guy, I'm excited to even see what that looks like.

 

Emmanuel Segmen