Hello,
Before you go any further, be warnedthat this is entirely about the chinese healthcare system, and I haven't written any of it myself. So, unless you have a specific interest..then..have a quick skim! It's more for my own interest than anything else.
It's a week later, i've not got much to report as I've been spending way too much time in my week off glued to this screen trying to finish off a case study essay (oh yes, no peace for..you know..we have exams too!). But, as is the way of procrastinating essay-writers, I've come across some interesting articles on the health system in China. I wrote a little last time about how what i have observed so far is far more efficient than, well, specifically the NHS..but I'm aware that this is only a small part of the picture - this is a top TCM hospital in an affluent urban area. so, as I have no desire to start writing another essay, and hey, nobody's marking this one, let's use a bit of cut and paste.
The articles I'm using are from the
(1)New England journal of medicine - Privatization and Its Discontents — The Evolving Chinese Health Care System by David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P., and William Hsiao, Ph.D. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/353/11/1165
(2)British Medical Journal - Health in China: Traditional Chinese medicine: one country, two systems - Therese Hesketh, research fellow,a Wei Xing Zhu, programme manager, East Asia b
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/315/7100/115
(3)Reflections on the Situation of Medicine in the People's Republic of China, 1987
From American Journal of Acupuncture, 1990, 18. 4: 325-343. http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~nsivin/medrefl.html
(4) University of Louisville/ centre for Asian democracy - “Intercultural Incommensurability and the Globalization of Chinese Medicine: The Case of Acupuncture,” by Robert St. Clair, Walter E. Rodriguez, Andrew M. Roberts, and Irving G. Joshua http://louisville.edu/asiandemocracy/home_files/papers.htm
Oh, and before I continue, some comments of my own on medical education here - although you see it often written that 'training in TCM is not as extensive and thorough as in western medicine - I can tell you, that of the recent graduates i've met, their knowledge is impressive - 40% of it is in Western medicine, allowing them to practice both systems simulataneously - they are the assigned to a specific department for 2 years after graduation, where they will work alongside and act as assistants to more senior doctors. If only we had a system like this...!
First, let's look at the impact of the Cultural Revolution on healthcare, and try and clear up that old question - so what is TCM (traditional chinese medicine), exactly? And we'll start with good old Wikpedia:
'Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM) is notably different from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The Nationalist government elected to abandon and outlaw the practice of CCM as it did not want China to be left behind by scientific progress. For 30 years, CCM was forbidden in China and several people were prosecuted by the government for engaging in CCM. In the 1960's, Mao Zedong finally decided that the government could not continue to outlaw the use of CCM. He commissioned the top 10 doctors (M.D.'s) to take a survey of CCM and create a standardized format for its application. This standardized form is now known as TCM.
TCM formed part of the barefoot doctor program in the People's Republic of China, which extended public health into rural areas. It is also cheaper to the PRC government, because the cost of training a TCM practitioner and staffing a TCM hospital is considerably less than that of a practitioner of Western medicine; hence TCM has been seen as an integral part of extending health services in China.'
and
(2) 'In the early 1950s it was feared that traditional Chinese medicine would be superseded by the "more modern" Western medicine. To counter this, a systematic assessment of the effectiveness of the traditional treatments was thought necessary. So thousands of experiments and clinical studies were carried out during the 1950s. Most were case series of patients with a specific Western disease who were then treated with traditional techniques—for example, a series of 112 cases treated for angina pectoris and another of 121 cases of bronchial asthma treated with subcutaneous acupuncture. The result of all this research activity was that in 1958 it was declared that traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine should be given equal respect and place in the healthcare system. 1 Since then there has been a consistent policy of support for the traditional system.'
It does seem, that, despite the horrific genocide, human rights abuses, persecution, mad political decisions, crazy personality cults and cultural destruction of the Cultural Revolution, it did in fact have a positive effect on the preservation of TCM. After an initial crackdown, it was decided to develop a standardised system that underlies modern textbooks today. Some would argue that this has lost the original meaning and is only a modern version. I would admit some truth in this, but argue that everything is referred back to the classical texts, which is more than you can say for some schools today..
So, how is the situation now?
(3)'The institutions that gave the rural majority inexpensive access to medical treatment during the Cultural Revolution have largely disappeared. The system of Barefoot Doctors in the countryside and Red Medical Workers and others in the cities, peasants and workers with a minimum of training who provided low-level medical care part time, has been quickly disappearing. The new emphasis on individual enterprise has made farming lucrative, doing away with the incentives that attracted farmers to doctoring. At the same time former Barefoot Doctors were being encouraged in 1987 to seek further medical education and even to take up private practice in what used to be collectively owned clinics. At the same time, the system of cooperative medical insurance in rural work units that protected the poorest against medical catastrophes has largely ended as official approval has moved from everyone sharing poverty to individuals getting rich. Those who are not getting rich, for instance those farming poor land, are no longer insulated from medical costs that, although very low compared to those in the United States, are high in proportion to their income. A number of experiments to finance rural health care are under way, but in the present climate they disproportionately benefit wealthy parts of the country. Most city-dwellers work in government enterprises and their medical expenses remain covered by the state.'
(1)'After Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist Party took control of China in 1949, they created a health care system that was typical of 20th-century communist societies that are now largely extinct. However, China added some unique features to meet the needs of its huge peasant population and to take advantage of ancient, indigenous medical practices.
The government owned, funded, and ran all hospitals, from large, specialized facilities (often serving communist cadres) in urban areas to small township clinics in the countryside. The private practice of medicine and private ownership of health facilities disappeared. Physicians were employees of the state. In rural areas, the cornerstone of the health care system was the commune, which was the critical institution in rural life. Communes owned the land, organized its cultivation, distributed its harvest, and supplied social services, including health care, which was provided through the Cooperative Medical System. The Cooperative Medical System operated village and township health centers that were staffed mostly by practitioners who had only basic health care training — the so-called barefoot doctors, who received much publicity in the West for their supposed effectiveness in meeting the needs of rural populations.5 Barefoot doctors provided both Western and traditional Chinese medical care and also many public health services.
From 1952 to 1982, the Chinese health care system achieved enormous improvements in health and health care.5 Infant mortality fell from 200 to 34 per 1000 live births, and life expectancy increased from about 35 to 68 years. These improvements also reflected major investments in public health through a highly centralized governmental agency modeled on the Soviet Union's system of the early 1950s.6 This public health apparatus achieved major gains in controlling infectious diseases through immunization and other classic public health measures, such as improved sanitation and the control of disease vectors, including mosquitoes for malaria and snails for schistosomiasis.5,7 By the beginning of the 1980s, China was undergoing the epidemiologic transition seen in Western countries: infectious diseases were giving way to chronic diseases (e.g., heart disease, cancer, and stroke) as leading causes of illness and death.
Then, in the early 1980s, China virtually dismantled its apparently successful health care and public health system overnight, putting nothing in its place. In retrospect, this startling and almost inexplicable event seems to have been collateral damage from a much more carefully planned and successful policy strike: the privatization of China's economy and a general effort to reduce the role of Beijing's central government in China's regional and local affairs. Only recently have Chinese authorities recognized the pain and the massive disruption in health care that they have caused.
Several specific decisions in the early 1980s created China's current health care turmoil. First, China dramatically changed the way it financed health care. It reduced the central government's investment in health care services, as well as in many other public services.
Second, the government imposed a system of price regulation that had dramatic, unintended effects. To ensure access to basic care, the government continued tight controls over the amount that publicly owned hospitals and clinics could charge for routine visits and services such as surgeries, standard diagnostic tests, and routine pharmaceuticals. But it permitted facilities to earn profits from new drugs, new tests, and technology, with profit margins of 15 percent or more. Those revenues depend heavily on sales of profitable new drugs and technologies. The result was an explosion in sales of expensive pharmaceuticals and high-tech services, such as imaging, and rapid overall increases in health care prices and spending.10 While health services became unaffordable for most Chinese citizens, a growing class of newly rich Chinese sought and received Western style, high-tech care.
Third, the government suddenly and completely dismantled communes to privatize the agricultural economy. A side effect was to rip apart the health care safety net for most of rural China. Without the Cooperative Medical System, Chinese peasants had no way to pool risks for health care expenses, and 900 million rural, mostly poor citizens became, in effect, uninsured overnight. In the meantime, the vaunted barefoot doctors became unemployed and were forced to become private health care practitioners. Virtually unregulated, they abandoned their previous emphasis on public health services, which were no longer funded and for which they were no longer compensated, and switched to providing more lucrative technical services for which they were untrained. As a result, their quality as clinicians is highly questionable.12 The former barefoot doctors quickly found that selling drugs was one of the best ways to stay afloat economically, and drug prices and sales exploded in rural areas as well. Fourth, China decentralized its public health system, as it had its health care financing and delivery system, and reduced central governmental funding for local public health efforts.9 Aside from adding to the disparities between rural and urban health care, this move resulted in reduced funding for public health programs in many locales.
In the meantime, the efficiency of the Chinese health care system has declined precipitously. With the growth of the private health care sector, the number of Chinese health care facilities and personnel have increased dramatically since 1980, but because of barriers to access, the use and thus productivity of the health care sector have declined.16 To many in the United States, this portrait of pockets of medical affluence in the midst of declining financial access and exploding costs and inefficiency will sound depressingly familiar.
Aware that their health care is poorer in quality, rural residents with serious illnesses frequently bypass local practitioners and facilities to seek care in the outpatient units of urban hospitals, leading to underuse of the former, overuse of the latter, and increased fiscal burdens on peasants who seek out more expensive, hospital-based services. Health expenses are a leading cause of poverty in rural areas and a major reason that peasants migrate to cities seeking proximity to better health care facilities and higher wages to pay for care.19 Differences in wealth also profoundly affect public health expenditures, which are more than seven times higher in Shanghai than in the poorest rural areas.
To its credit, the Chinese government has recognized and begun to address the huge health care problems that it created. It has done so with remarkable pragmatism, uninhibited by ideology and often importing (after careful examination) solutions pioneered in other countries. China also benefits at this time from a rare financial opportunity. Because of the rapid growth in its economy, national and local governments have sufficient tax revenues to make substantial health care investments without reducing spending for competing social services, such as housing and education, or for defense, which is now a priority for Chinese leaders.20
Since China now seems to consist of two societies, urban and rural, the government has launched different strategies for ameliorating problems in these two locales. It has tried to recreate an urban health care safety net through a system that knits together a variety of devices that will be familiar to U.S. health care policymakers. The first is mandated employer insurance.
The system is far from perfect. Some employers have refused to comply with state mandates, claiming they cannot afford the contributions. Many urban dwellers do not work for organized employers. Companies form and disband rapidly to avoid paying benefits to workers. Dependents of workers may not be covered. An indigenous Chinese private health insurance industry has arisen to sell health insurance to a wealthy minority that can afford it, and China is considering permitting foreign insurance companies to sell health care coverage as well. Whether the Chinese government will be able to cover the 51 percent of urban residents who still lack protection against the cost of illness, and how it would do so, is far from clear at this point.
The central government was slower and more reluctant to address health care problems in rural areas, but it was forced to act because of evidence that health care expenses were undermining other government efforts to alleviate poverty among the peasantry. In 2002, officials launched experiments to create a very rudimentary financial safety net for health care. Under these schemes, the government provides the equivalent of $2.50 a year to help cover a basic insurance plan for peasants, who must match this with an annual $1.25 of their own. Because of their modest funding, these plans cover only inpatient care (with a very high deductible) and leave peasants without adequate primary care services and drugs.
The Chinese example further reveals that government involvement may be essential to ensure an effective health care safety net and that, regardless of their language, history, or culture, providers will confer the services they are rewarded for offering. When Chinese doctors and hospitals were rewarded for providing high-tech services, they did exactly what U.S. doctors and hospitals have been doing for decades, with the same effects on use and costs. In fact, an overriding lesson of the Chinese experience is a warning to the rest of the world: if leaders anywhere care to, they can mimic and even exceed the inequities and inefficiencies that the U.S. health care system has exemplified for so long.
At the same time, optimists can find reason for hope as China struggles with its self-inflicted health care wounds. China's leaders have begun purposefully and soberly to tackle the enormous social engineering challenge of repairing past damage and shaping a new health care system that fits their unique social system and culture. It is hard to say precisely what that system will look like, but it will undoubtedly combine private and public provision of both insurance and services, and it will look very different in rural and urban areas. A major unaddressed challenge for China (and for the United States) is how to reform an inefficient, poorly organized health care delivery system that is bloated in urban areas and threadbare in rural sectors. A further challenge facing China will be instilling in health care professionals, and especially physicians, an ethic of professionalism that is essential to ensure that private health care systems protect the interests of patients and provide care of reasonable quality. For several generations of Chinese physicians, loyalty to the state and communist ideology replaced professionalism as an ethical framework.12 Another challenge will be China's sheer size and diversity.'
Phew..now..let's consider what role TCM has to play in this.
(2) 'China is the only country in the world where Western medicine and the traditional medicine work alongside each other at every level of the healthcare system. Traditional Chinese medicine has its own department at the Ministry of Public Health and at provincial and county Bureaus of Public Health. It has its own medical schools, hospitals, and research institutes.
Overall, it is estimated that 40% of health care in China is based on traditional Chinese medicine, with a higher proportion in rural areas.2 This figure does not include the massive amount of self medication with traditional drugs, which are used not only to treat illness but also as health promoting drugs, ranging from nutritional supplements and tonics to aphrodisiacs.
Every city has a hospital practising traditional Chinese medicine, and there is a plan for every county to have one. In 95% of the hospitals practising Western medicine there are departments of traditional Chinese medicine, most with inpatient beds; when patients arrive at the outpatient department they can opt for Chinese or Western treatment. In Jiangsu province, one of the richer, more sophisticated eastern provinces, one quarter of all outpatients in one year (10 million) had opted for traditional treatment.
The collaboration between the two systems is well illustrated by the fact that in Western medicine hospitals around 40% of the medicines prescribed are traditional. Similarly, in the traditional hospitals 40% of all prescribed drugs are Western medicine. At township and village levels, doctors often prescribe both types of treatment simultaneously, without apparent contradiction. A survey carried out in two village health clinics in Zhejiang province showed that children with upper respiratory tract infections were being prescribed an average of four separate drugs, always a combination of Western and Chinese.
Training in traditional Chinese medicine varies from family apprenticeships to three to five year university training at a college of traditional Chinese medicine, though the educational standard of these undergraduates is generally lower than their counterparts at the Western medical schools. All Western medical schools devote around 10-15% of curriculum time to traditional Chinese medicine, so all doctors have some traditional training. Nurses too are trained in both and many perform acupuncture and acupressure independently.
Central government continues to have a policy for expansion of traditional Chinese medicine. An increase in the number of traditional doctors is one of the priorities for manpower development; their number continues to increase and is now over 300 000. In addition, 20% of the planned increase in hospital beds is to be for traditional Chinese medicine6; since 1985 there has been an annual increase of 8% in inpatient beds.3
But the wisdom of this planned expansion is being questioned, especially with the pressures of the healthcare market. Many traditional hospitals operate at a deficit. The better equipped Western hospitals, with their better qualified staff, attract more patients. In addition, traditional Chinese medicine is largely an outpatient, low technology specialty, so most of the income of traditional hospitals comes from the sale of drugs. Even with the 25% markup allowed, it is hard to cover operational costs. Government subsidies currently ensure survival, but there is no surplus for improving services.
Traditional Chinese medicine has become a source of great interest to the international research community. It is acknowledged that many of the treatments have enormous potential and could be utilised more widely. With this in view, research is essential in a number of areas. Firstly, randomised controlled trials are needed to establish the effectiveness and safety of treatments. There is still a real shortage of controlled trials of the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine and there are almost no double blind, placebo controlled trials. In China such trials are considered unethical because it is wrong to withhold potentially beneficial treatment.1 But the need for such trials is being increasingly recognised, and several are underway in China and other countries. The herb trichosanthin is undergoing trials by the Food and Drug Authority for use in treating AIDS.
Secondly, from a Western standpoint, there is a need to identify the biochemical composition of the active agents in many of the herbal preparations. This approach has been successful in research into the antimalarial drug qing hao su. This herb has been used in China for treating fever for over 2000 years. In 1971 it was found to have specific antimalarial activity and the active compound artemesin was isolated. In clinical trials, parasite clearance times were shorter than with chloroquine, symptoms responded more rapidly, and there was no serious toxicity.7 Qing hao su has now become a first line drug for malaria in many parts of Asia.
Thirdly, research is needed to determine which illnesses are best treated through one approach rather than the other. In China, Western medicine is often regarded as more effective in acute situations or where the aetiology is known, while traditional Chinese medicine is more effective for immune conditions, chronic illness, or where the aetiology is unknown.1 But in practice simultaneous use of both types of treatment is so commonplace that the individual contributions are hard to assess. If the two systems are to be truly complementary more research in this area is essential to facilitate a more rational approach.
As China has opened up more to the West there have been concerns that traditional Chinese medicine would be superseded by Western medicine. This has happened for many types of acute illness, but the opposite has also happened: medicine in the West has become greatly influenced by traditional Chinese medicine. As more studies show the clinical effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine, an integrated approach to disease using a combination of both forms of treatment becomes a possibility. This may transform the practice of medicine in the new millennium.'
And finally...so how can these different schools be effectively integrated? Some interesting thoughts from, er, someone who isn't me... on the theories of Thomas Kuhn. He put forward a theory of scientific revolutions that went something like this:
(4)
The Structure of Scientific Change
1)Normal Science - The golden age Old journals reject papers that do not confirm normal science views
2)Period of Crisis - Loss of belief in the old paradigm. Journals accept a wide range of articles that attempt to repair and revise the normal science model
3)Revolutionary Science - Community of scientists shift to the new emerging paradigm.
New journals reflect the revolutionary changes in science. Eventually older journals are taken over by the leaders of the new paradigm
What is Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions and why is it so
important? Kuhn noted that there are cycles of change within the sciences
and that these cycles are structured and they repeat themselves at regular
intervals with the passage of time. In physics, for example, the revolutions
came every three hundred years. Now that more and more scientists are
working on the same ideas, these revolutions are beginning to appear
more frequently. The first period in the history of scientific change is
known as normal science. Kuhn depicts this as the golden age of a science.
It is a time when one takes pride in the great achievements of the past.
Scientists argue that they have just about solved all of the problems in
their research and that they will soon nothing left to discover. Kuhn noted
that there are several characteristics that mark this period. One of them
has to do with publications. It turns out that new ideas are rejected during
such times of intellectual contentment. Grants during such a period of
normality obviously attempt to reiterate common knowledge. Anyone
who proposes anything new or different will have his funding rejected.
The golden age of science, as Kuhn explained, cannot last forever.
With the passage of time, the practitioners in the field will note more and
more anomalies. Definitions will fail to adequately describe events. There
will be inconsistencies within the various parts of a theoretical model.
Experiments will fail from time to time. In such instances, the theories are
never questioned, only the methodology of the laboratory workers. As
these anomalies mount, the scientific community will become more and
more restless and at some point scholars will begin to talk about them
openly at national conferences, in graduate seminars, and in their
publications. When this shift takes place, the next level in the structure of
scientific progress takes place. This new stage is called the period of crisis.
Kuhn referred to “crisis” in the singular, but such is not the case. More
than one crisis occurs. Many different attempts to solve the conflict may
occur during this time. In linguistics, for example, there were nearly a
dozen such conflicting models of neo-structuralism during this period of
crises. There are certain characteristics which define this period or stage
of development in the progress of a discipline. At such a time, new ideas
are openly accepted and entertained. It is a time for exploratory
discussions about what is wrong with the old model and what possible
changes could or should take place. Editors openly look for new ideas and
suggestions for their journals. Granting agencies entertain new models of
research for funding. It is a time when people within the scientific
community have open attitudes towards problem solving. It is important
to note that what makes the natural sciences different from what has been
called the human sciences (i.e., the humanities) is this attitude of problem
solving. Scientists never complain about what is wrong with a theory,
they keep their controversial ideas in abeyance. It is only when they think
that they have a solution that they openly point out the anomalies in the
older model and propose new solutions to old problems. Kuhn argues that
science is all about problem solving. The search for solutions provides the
driving force behind scientific research and theory building.
The next stage in the development of scientific progress comes about
when one of the competing models from the period of crises is hailed for
its success in problem solving. When this event occurs, the scientific
community encounters a period of scientific revolution. Such a model or
theory is accepted by the scientific community because it is successful in
solving the very problems that plagued other scientists.
A mature science, according to Kuhn (1970), experiences alternating
phases of normal science and revolutions. These alternating phases are
paradigms and Kuhn argues that it is the most misunderstood aspect of his
book (Kuhn, 1962). Scientific paradigms have the consensus of a
disciplinary matrix that function as exemplars. Immature sciences lack
this consensus and consequently there is little opportunity for progress. In
mature sciences a great amount of intellectual energy is invested in
arguing over fundamentals. Once these fundamentals are accepted, further
scientific progress is made. This success is due to the fact that energy is
no longer spent arguing with competing models over fundamentals.
Scientific paradigms are about solving problems and this is once of the
characteristics of a mature science. It is also able to envision new
problems, suggest approaches to those problems, and provide a standard
by which such puzzles can be articulated and tested. The scientific method
used within a paradigm encapsulates the rules of scientific rationality.
Anyway..what has this to do with TCM, you may well ask?
Let's see..
(4)Paradigmatic Incommensurability:
How does one reconcile the germ theory of medicine with its causal
complexes with the Five Element Theory of Chinese medicine? From the
perspective of western medicine, the Chinese philosophy of science is
based on a system of homeostasis, a balancing of yin and yang, (passive
and aggressive; inside and outside; dark and light; feminine and
masculine; blood and energy; anatomy and physiology). These terms are
used metaphorically. As the sun moves over a hill, it produces two
simultaneous conditions. The sunny side of the hill is called yang and the
shady side is called yin. Life cannot be sustained by only living in the
light or in darkness; it requires a balance between them.
One of the areas of incommensurability between these two systems
exists in the contrast of scientific reductionism and the holistic approach
in alternative medical practice. Western science functions in a context of
reductionism, linearity, and causality. Individual events are isolated from
their larger and more holistic complex of interactions and subjected to the
scientific method. Hypotheses are posed regarding these isolated events
and experiments are designed to either prove or disprove these hypotheses.
From this practice, laws or principles are established and theories are
formulated that verify and predict those very principles. It is a quantitative
science. Chinese science, on the other hand, is a qualitative science. It is
holistic in that it is derived from a context of inclusion, concurrence, and
induction. Events are seen as initially interconnected; they influence each
other. These events are studied in context with it interrelationships and
counter influences. Upon observing the phenomena, laws are established
based on how these events are experienced. Are these two systems
incommensurate? They both make conclusions about the same
phenomena. However, western medicine the approach to theory building
espoused by traditional Chinese medicine because it is non-technical and
qualitative. They cannot understand why the Chinese felt no compunction
to quantify phenomena. They cannot relate to the qualitative measures
used by the Chinese philosophers (Yin, Yang, wuxing, and baqua). They
are not comfortable with the metaphor of the path or the way and prefer to
seek causal relationships of a different nature.
When Thomas Kuhn (1970) claimed that some scientific paradigms my
be incommensurable with each other, he had in mind the fact that they
may differ in their lexicon as evidenced in the models being discussed. He
noted that these paradigms could also be embedded in different research
traditions as also evidenced in the models being discussed. However, the
most threatening of all forms of incommensurability occurred
ontologically. This occurs when two conflicting paradigms have disparate
beliefs about reality and because they have different beliefs, they also
develop different epistemologies. Is this the case with modern medical
science and classical Chinese medicine? There are many who would argue
that such models are not really incommensurable if they are investigated
from the perspective of electrophysiology.
The most promising bridge between these two paradigms can be
found in the field of bioelectromagnetism (BEM) which is the study of the
subtle electromagnetic fields that underlie life processes. BEM is a viable
research paradigm in Europe and it is not widely investigated within the
United States (Selden and Becker, 1987) where medical treatments are
largely based on drug therapies and surgical interventions. Lakhovsky
(1992) investigated the interrelationships between high-frequency
electromagnetic fields and living things. In this book, he asked the
question: “What is life?” His response is that life is the harmony of
multiple radiations which react upon one another. He then went on to ask:
“What is disease?” His answer was that disease was the oscillatory
disequilibrium of cells and that this disequilibrium originated from
external causes. Lakhovsky explained that living things receive and emit
electromagnetic radiations. It is the exchange of these energies between
life forms constitutes electromagnetic communication. Pressman (1970), a
Russian scientist, argued that it is electromagnetic radiation that enables
living things to sense information about the environment, facilitate and
control within the organism, and communicate between living things.
Popp and Becker (1988) referred to this energy forms as biohotons and
explained how they regulate many physiological functions such as growth,
maturation, cell differentiation, enzymatic activity, and immune system
functions. This electromagnetic fields within the human body is seen as a
model of resonance in which particles move harmoniously through an
electromagnetic field This research is reminiscent of quantum physics
which is based on the principle that all parts of the universe are connected
to each other and are in communication with all of its parts. The ancient
Chinese description of Qi and its pathways and accumulations in the body
closely correlate with research in BEM. The acupuncture system with its
meridians is largely based on such electromagnetic energies.
Scholars working in BEM research have noted that some points on the
body were more conductive than others to a 12-volt current that was applied
to the skin. These low-resistance spots are good electro-permeable points.
These acupoints are 50% more conductive and function as capacitors in that
they hold and store electrical energy within the body. This research notes
that the potential between these points are concomitant with the concept of
meridians in the human body as described by classical Chinese medicine.
Scientists have used the “beaver dam” metaphor to explain how these
electrical currents function in the body by holding energies back and
releasing them to create surges of electrical force. Bjorn Nordenstrom
(1989), a Swedish radiologist, has successfully used the BEM model of
energy medicine to treat cancer. He considers the meridian system to be a
vascular-interstitial closed circum that is powered by imbalances of positive
and negative ionic charges over long distances within the body. Cancer
cells , he noted, are more sensitive to electrical energy than healthy ones
and they are more sensitive to the use of externally applied currents.
Nordenstrom placed the positive pole of the galvanic stimulator on the
tumor and the negative one some distance away. This causes the tumor to
become dehydrated though electro-osmosis
Semi-conduction and Piezo-electricity are two electrical qualities of
crystalline substances that occur in the human body. Both are highly
relevant to the understanding of the electrical qualities that occur within
the meridian system. Szent-Gyorgyi (Selden and Becker, 1987) was the
first to point out that the molecular structures of the human body are
organized to support semi-conduction by passing information along
chains of protein molecules.
Traditional Chinese Medicine and modern medical science are not
incommensurable if one views current germ theory from the perspective
of BEM research. The secret to avoiding incommensurability within the
historiography of medical science is through the adjustment of
epistemological views so that they will be more consistent with
ontological ones.
The globalization of medicine has taken an interesting turn. Classical
Chinese medicine has made its journey outside of the Middle Kingdom
and into the medical practice of the western nations. One of the major
problems with this transition had to do with paradigmatic
incommensurability. Even though the languages involved were different
and even though the medical practices differed substantially, the two
models were found to be commensurable because of scholars who
understood the significance of the Chinese tradition and its implications
for BEM research. One is reminded that when paradigms overlap, they
become partially compatible and their findings can be made more
commensurable with each other. Such commensurability, however, would
not have occurred if such peripheral practices were not tolerated by the
core medical sciences. Tolerance has its virtues.'
If you made it to this point, you get one big giant gold and purple star!