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[Following article was first published
at Yahoo TCM Group (Traditional_Chinese_Medicine@yahoogroups.com)
on Jan 15, 2005.]
ACMA
Publication Issue March 1, 2005
The
future of Chinese Herbal Medicine in the West -- (2)
Bob
Xu, CMD, MS
-
- Hi
David,
It seems there exist misunderstandings in our communications. Due to
time limit, I couldn't elaborate in details here. Following, I will
discuss a few points briefly.
(1) In my initial message, under that environment, I focused on the
importance of Chinese Medicine's standards and methodologies. This,
however, did not mean that I don't support mathematical approach. In
fact, I am an advocate for mathematical medicine. In 2001, I called for
new mathematics for Chinese Herbal Medicine [1]. In 2002, I proposed to
establish a "Department of Theoretical Herbal Medicine" within the
FDA [2]. All those efforts were aimed at developing new mathematics
for Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) system.
(2) Mathematical medicine is a very complicated field. It
involves not only the profession of medicine, but also the profession of
mathematics. Up to today, there is still no mathematical tool for
Chinese Herbal Medicine system. The mathematics employed by Western
Medicine cannot provide accurate solutions for Chinese Herbal Medicine
system.
(3) Currently, many people take it for granted that Western Medicine
methodologies and approaches can be applied to Chinese Medicine. This,
however, is only an assumption. It has not been proved, and it
actually is incorrect. Current trend of fitting CHM to Western
Medicine's mathematics model is inappropriate. CHM has its own rules
and regularities, which are governed by some special mathematics (that are
still unknown yet). The appropriate way is to find and develop the
special mathematics to describe CHM's rules and regularities, and to direct
more accurate, consistent, and reproducible clinical outcomes.
(4) Mathematics is important. However, it is only a tool.
The new mathematics should come from medicine, and go back to medicine.
Mathematics for mathematics sake is useless in medicine. Due to this
reason, I would like to go back to my original message: Chinese Medicine's
standards and methodologies should be the sources and criteria of any new
mathematical medicine in the future.
I have addressed
above issues in more details in the Unified Medicine Project (to be
published). Hoping the Unified Medicine Project can answer your
questions in more details.
References:
-
[1]
Recommendation on Chinese Medicine in the United States of America.
ACMA Publication Issue Dec 2001. http://www.AmericanChineseMedicineAssociation.org
[2] Letter to the Congress. ACMA Publication Issue Aug 2002. .http://www.AmericanChineseMedicineAssociation.org
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