The future of Chinese Herbal Medicine in the West?

[Guest guest]

Hi All, &

 

IMO, Todd is more or less correct in his assessment of the future of

herbal medicine, at least in the western world.

 

The FDA, EU and other western drug regulation authorities increasingly

insist on well documented evidence of safety, efficacy and quality

control for medicinal agents.

 

Legislation will allow, and practitioners' insurance companies cover, only

registered (authorised) drugs and medicinals. It will become more and

more difficult to source single ingredients that meet the approval of the

regulators. Many of the potent singles of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia

(including bungarus, centipede, cicada, lumbricus, moschus, scorpio,

toad venom, etc) will be banned in the West,

 

Western TCM herbalists will be left with a very depleted and sanitised

stock of authorised formulas or extracts. The " right " to construct

personalised formulas, or even to modify registered formulas by addition

or subtraction of single herbs probably will be banned soon.

 

This will cause traditional Chinese herbalism, as practised in the West,

to run aground in a stagnant backwater, from which there will be no

easy channel back to mainstream medicine.

 

In contrast, oriental herbalism is developing towards a biomedical

model, involving research to identify, isolate and synthesise the more

potent active ingredients from traditional herbs and formulas.

 

See for example the research at the Natural Products Research Institute

in Seoul, S. Korea: http://plaza.snu.ac.kr/~napri/eng/faculties.htm

 

Patents on specific molecules, or combinations of molecules (and their

sale and distribution via the pharmaceutical companies) are the likely

outcomes from this research. These new compounds will be used,

alone or with WM drugs, in biomedical models, using WM diagnostic

methods. TCM Dx, IMO, will decline.

 

We have often debated the need (or otherwise) for expert TCM Dx by

Pattern Differentiation etc. But we have little solid research to confirm

that TCM Dx is essential to effective therapy, be it by herbs or by

acupuncture.

 

These are sombre thoughts for 2005, but Todd's mails in recent weeks

have been pointing inexorably in this direction.

 

So, Quo Vadis CHA? What can we salvage, what SHOULD we salvage,

before the Titanic of TCM runs aground in the West?

 

Can we identify a few dozen essential TCM / herbal concepts that

should NOT be lost? Can we prove to skeptics, by well controlled

research data, that these concepts are valid? How do we popularise

them, and maybe even slip them into the thinking pattern of western

medicine?

 

Happy New Year to all.

 

 

Best regards,

 

 

Tel: (H): +353- or (M): +353-

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" Man who says it can't be done should not interrupt man doing it " -

Chinese Proverb