Does Chinese medicine have only experience but no scientific research?

One of the main arguments that many people, including Fang, criticize Chinese medicine is that Chinese medicine has only empirical medicine and no scientific research, so Chinese medicine is not science at all, but pseudoscience.

It is undeniable that ancient Chinese medicine is indeed empirical medicine, and there is nothing more scientific to demonstrate its efficacy and rationality. But any medicine (including Chinese medicine) has the characteristics of absorbing the scientific and technological essence of the same era. The slow progress of Chinese medicine in a long period of time is closely related to the long-term slow progress of science and technology in China's agricultural society. Since science has swept the world, there is no need for Chinese medicine to refuse to absorb the essence of contemporary science. "Take its essence and discard its dross" is originally the philosophical view of the country on which Chinese medicine depends. At the same time, trying to make medicine a pure science, thinking that medicine is only a pure science, this extreme view will not work. Science is only an important part of medicine, which can help medicine to make rapid progress, but medicine also includes human literature. It is extremely wrong to think that only cold testing instruments and one-on-one precise treatment of drugs and diseases are needed.

Many people, including Fang, criticize Chinese medicine, always like to criticize mainstream western medical views, but never dare to mention what contemporary mainstream Chinese medicine is. This is a misplaced criticism, which has long been abandoned by Chinese medicine itself. For example, when criticizing Chinese medicine, Fang often quoted some ridiculous therapies in Compendium of Materia Medica that have long been abandoned by contemporary Chinese medicine: pour a bowl of hot rice into the place where the bed is wet, stir it, and secretly let the person who wets the bed eat this bowl of urine rice. Take a hot meal, pour it on the bed, mix it in the food, and don't let the patient know. I believe that all people who have studied Chinese medicine in modern times will not do this, and they have never learned these dross in their college studies, because this ridiculous treatment method limited by the times has long been abandoned with the gradual improvement of people's understanding. We must not laugh at the ancient invention of papermaking and printing just because the e-books we use now are advanced.

Many things that modern medicine is applying are naturally not western medicine, and modern Chinese medicine can also be used. Chinese medicine can't immediately respond that CT and MRI are western medicine. In fact, ct and MRI are not specially developed for modern medicine, but are widely used in other disciplines, such as geophysical CT and industrial CT. In addition to the medical field, nuclear magnetic resonance is also carried out by using nuclear magnetic resonance detection technology. Statistics is an independent discipline, which can be widely used in social development and evaluation, sustainable development and environmental protection, resource protection and utilization, e-commerce, actuarial science, financial database construction and risk management, macroeconomic monitoring and forecasting, government statistical data collection and quality assurance, statistical methods in molecular biology, statistical methods in high-tech agricultural research, statistical methods in biopharmaceutical technology, statistical methods in epidemiological law research and exploration, and statistical methods in human chromosome engineering research. Why do these critics of traditional Chinese medicine think that once it is used by themselves, it is not the progress of traditional Chinese medicine, but "bullying the teacher and destroying the ancestors" and "forgetting the ancestors after several classics" and copying western medicine? This is too much.

For example, if you criticize Chinese medicine as empirical medicine and there is no scientific research method, then search the literature of contemporary mainstream Chinese medicine core journals to see if Chinese medicine really has never had a scientific research method. In fact, it is not difficult to find that Chinese medicine, like modern medicine, is applying and absorbing all kinds of advanced basic and clinical research methods. There are not only a large number of randomized controlled clinical research documents, but also a large number of evidence-based medicine research documents, and the number of high-quality papers is increasing year by year.

At present, major Chinese medicine colleges and universities all over the country have set up courses such as clinical epidemiology, medical statistics and evidence-based medicine, and they have also spent a lot of money to introduce top epidemiologists and medical statistics experts at home and abroad. Our general practitioners continue to receive education and training in clinical epidemiology, medical statistics and evidence-based medicine every year. These research methods are not as far away from traditional Chinese medicine as people who oppose it think. Top Chinese medicine research projects, such as 973 project, national 11th Five-Year Plan key project and natural fund project, have always required a standard in the research methods of Chinese medicine and western medicine. However, we should fully realize that although randomized controlled study is the gold standard to verify a treatment, it still has its inevitable limitations. Therefore, even highly scientific modern medicine has to seek other non-gold standard research methods, including questionnaire survey, case-control study and cohort study. Even the clinical research methods that some critics of traditional Chinese medicine consider unscientific-expert opinions and case reports-have not been completely abandoned.

Many critics of traditional Chinese medicine, including Fang, also like to criticize the role of traditional Chinese medicine as vague, speculative and toxic. They don't know that there are also Chinese medicine colleges in major Chinese medicine colleges across the country, as well as various modern medical research disciplines such as pharmacology and toxicology of traditional Chinese medicine. These professionals have been engaged in pharmacological and toxicological analysis of traditional Chinese medicine all their lives. How can they just speculate and actually know nothing? It's just that traditional Chinese medicine itself is vast, and each traditional Chinese medicine contains many ingredients, so the research progress is relatively slow. Another reality that we have to admit is that the number of people who have toxic side effects due to the use of western medicine is far greater than that due to the use of Chinese medicine every year.

Modern mainstream Chinese medicine has never been criticized by Fang, only experience without research, only ignorance without science. I also hope that when they criticize Chinese medicine, since it is based on the mainstream view of modern medicine, the object of criticism should be the mainstream view of contemporary Chinese medicine. It should not be criticized by distorting Chinese medicine, stealing concepts and setting a fictional and ridiculous "fact" that does not exist at all. For example, Zhang Wuben and Ma Yueling are not TCM at all, and the dross in Compendium of Materia Medica is not the whole of TCM at all. As for confinement, it is only a folk custom, and its origin may have nothing to do with Chinese medicine. The function of modern Chinese medicine should be to improve and purify it.

This misplaced criticism can certainly attract a lot of attention from some people, but it is unfair and slanders and slanders Chinese medicine. It is unfair to practitioners of Chinese medicine and those who seek Chinese medicine treatment, which will hinder the better, healthier and more scientific development of Chinese medicine.