(AU) Medicine man caught by new curbs on ancient cures

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Medicine man caught by new curbs on ancient cures

Leonie Lamont

Sydney Morning Herald

November 30, 2006

 

CENTURIES of Chinese medicine clashed with modern demands to protect endangered

wildlife when a Sydney court jailed a prominent traditional medicine

practitioner for 18 months for importing endangered species.

 

Central Local Court heard yesterday that Yu Long Yu, 49, of Edensor Park, was a

Chinese medicine practitioner, as his father and grandfather had been. But when

customs officers seized prohibited tiger, rhinoceros and musk deer materials

from Yu's home, and more than 200 kilograms of pangolin (anteater) scales and

the plant aucklandia lappa from a shipping container in September 2003, Yu faced

different problems to his forefathers.

 

Character witnesses - including Alan Bensoussan, director of the Centre for

Complementary Medicine Research at the University of Western Sydney - told the

court Yu was " absolutely exceptional " .

 

" There are very few clinicians of his ilk in Australia, " Professor Bensoussan

said of his friend and sometime business associate of 20 years. He said Yu was

devoted to his family and his practice. " I really am surprised … this has got

this far, " he said. Patients gave evidence about Yu's expertise with herbal

remedies and willingness to treat them free of charge if they were in difficult

circumstances.

 

Yu's barrister, James Conomos, said his client would not reoffend. Chinese

medicine had existed for millenniums, he said, and " what [practitioners] have to

learn is … you have to balance out therapy, traditional medicine, with the

needs of the planet " . Sentencing his client would not deter " buccaneers " who

tried to smuggle wildlife for profit, he argued.

 

But Magistrate Brian Maloney rejected that Yu had not known the shipping

container had species banned under the Convention on International Trade in

Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. He said Yu had tried to pull the

wool over officials' eyes. " Although [Yu] was out to help others … he was

propagating the decimation of protected species. Anybody in the chain of events,

from the poacher in the forest to the Chinese apothecary, from anybody else as

an end user, has to be deterred, " he said.

 

He fined Yu a total of $6000 and said Yu should be released from jail after six

months. Mr Conomos asked that Yu be granted bail pending an appeal. Yu was

released on bail and given 48 hours to hand his passport over to the court.

 

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/medicine-man-caught-by-new-curbs-on-ancient-\

cures/2006/11/29/1164777657683.html