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Dear Yeniseri,
I get the feeling you would like to encourage people to be clear-sighted in what Chinese Medicine (and other Internal Arts) can and can't do. Am I right?
If I'm right about that, then I appreciate your message. It is certainly a useful one. I think there are frauds and incompetents in every profession, medical and otherwise. How many times do we hear about some doctor removing the wrong limb during surgery, and yet it's just considered the cost of doing business. Also, two years ago I read a report that 70% of non-trauma cases in US hospitals are for chronic conditions that have been treated habitually by Western Medicine with the primary consequence being the need for the patient to return again and again. What do you think about this?
What would you consider the true success rate of Western Medicine to be? This may be a difficult thing to answer, but let's say again of non-trauma cases, what percentage of Western diseases can Western Medicine actually cure? By cure, I mean just that. Only because of the strictly material intervention of the M.D., the disease was cured. Cases where the patient was just continually redirected in a continuing series of new and novel side-effects of various medicines are not cures. My opinion is that it is certainly no more than 5%, in fact I think 2-3% is generous. I do not consider symptom management to be a cure even if it prevents death, such as hypertension medication, the side-effects of which are not fully appreciated and understood by Western Medicine. Generally, anything Western Medicine can cure is done so quickly. So, you see my feeling on the matter, and it is admittedly biased against Western Medicine, not because of my experience or preference with other systems, but because of what I have experienced myself and seen in general of Western Medicine. Certainly I acknowledge all the well-known benefits of Western Medicine/Science, such as reduction and elimination of certain communicable diseases like polio, cholera, smallpox, etc.
Overall, I think the strengths of Western Medicine are concrete and obvious, and so are its limitations. It lacks any philosoophy, and the de facto philosophy is the scientific method, always attempting to exclude the patient from its double-blind A/B testing, which is a very shallow sort of outlook. Because it lacks a philosophy, and because it's so new, it changes frequently in its views and treatments; and by frequently, I mean daily or hourly. And, most importantly, it only deals with the material world, ignoring the spiritual world completely.
I have read a little bit about some hospitals in China that teach both Western and Chinese Medicine, and have admitting procedures to direct patients to the system that will be the best for their condition, allowing for the patients to also use both systems when that is appropriate. I think this is a wonderful arrangement.
I don't want to chase after possible myths of Chinese Medicine like a naive martial artist searching the world for some power he read about in a Wuxia novel, and my first Taiji and Chinese Medicine teacher also said that a great deal of knowledge has been lost, but I think much has also been preserved and is very real. I hope you will talk more about your feeling on this.
Best wishes,
Michael
I get the feeling you would like to encourage people to be clear-sighted in what Chinese Medicine (and other Internal Arts) can and can't do. Am I right?
If I'm right about that, then I appreciate your message. It is certainly a useful one. I think there are frauds and incompetents in every profession, medical and otherwise. How many times do we hear about some doctor removing the wrong limb during surgery, and yet it's just considered the cost of doing business. Also, two years ago I read a report that 70% of non-trauma cases in US hospitals are for chronic conditions that have been treated habitually by Western Medicine with the primary consequence being the need for the patient to return again and again. What do you think about this?
What would you consider the true success rate of Western Medicine to be? This may be a difficult thing to answer, but let's say again of non-trauma cases, what percentage of Western diseases can Western Medicine actually cure? By cure, I mean just that. Only because of the strictly material intervention of the M.D., the disease was cured. Cases where the patient was just continually redirected in a continuing series of new and novel side-effects of various medicines are not cures. My opinion is that it is certainly no more than 5%, in fact I think 2-3% is generous. I do not consider symptom management to be a cure even if it prevents death, such as hypertension medication, the side-effects of which are not fully appreciated and understood by Western Medicine. Generally, anything Western Medicine can cure is done so quickly. So, you see my feeling on the matter, and it is admittedly biased against Western Medicine, not because of my experience or preference with other systems, but because of what I have experienced myself and seen in general of Western Medicine. Certainly I acknowledge all the well-known benefits of Western Medicine/Science, such as reduction and elimination of certain communicable diseases like polio, cholera, smallpox, etc.
Overall, I think the strengths of Western Medicine are concrete and obvious, and so are its limitations. It lacks any philosoophy, and the de facto philosophy is the scientific method, always attempting to exclude the patient from its double-blind A/B testing, which is a very shallow sort of outlook. Because it lacks a philosophy, and because it's so new, it changes frequently in its views and treatments; and by frequently, I mean daily or hourly. And, most importantly, it only deals with the material world, ignoring the spiritual world completely.
I have read a little bit about some hospitals in China that teach both Western and Chinese Medicine, and have admitting procedures to direct patients to the system that will be the best for their condition, allowing for the patients to also use both systems when that is appropriate. I think this is a wonderful arrangement.
I don't want to chase after possible myths of Chinese Medicine like a naive martial artist searching the world for some power he read about in a Wuxia novel, and my first Taiji and Chinese Medicine teacher also said that a great deal of knowledge has been lost, but I think much has also been preserved and is very real. I hope you will talk more about your feeling on this.
Best wishes,
Michael
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