Is Chinese Medicine a True

Medicine?
Scientific Method
Effectively cures
Established Medicine specific symptom(s),
Eases illness.

Hypothesis is true,
proven by tests
Theory
Drug may Drug will cure a specific
Illness/ symptom ease illness symptom of illness

Observations Hypothesis Prediction

Modification

Tests
Does the drug cure that specific symptom?
Double-blind Study
 Randomly assign patients and experimenters into two
groups- control and experimental
 Control: established drug
 Experimental: drug to be tested for effectiveness
 Neither patients nor experimenters know who is in
which group and which drug used
 Objective results: supposedly not affected
by emotions, perception and reason
Chinese Medicine Scientific Method
 Same as Western Medicine
 But based heavily on empirical evidence
 Historically proven with real-life patients over
thousands of years
 More recently goes through blind studies and
approval of FDA before drugs go public
 Based on fundamental theories that have not
changed over thousands of years
Double-blind Study

However, there are disadvantages:

 Isolated, controlled, assume only one variable affects

illness and concentrates on investigating this one factor
 unrealistic
 Double-blindness can become ineffective
 Results affected by scientist’s egoism to get good
results and launch new medicine as quickly as possible
Differences between Traditional Chinese
Medicine and Western Medicine
Western Medicine:
 Aims to cure illness
 Target-oriented: treats
patients as constants, same
medicine cure same
symptoms in different patients
 Single purified compounds
 Known to have side-effects
 Standardized
 Much higher % of doctors, all
registered
Chinese Medicine:
 Aims to prevent illness
 Treats patients as individuals,
symptoms and remedies
unique to the patient
 Multiple compounds
 Combination of medicine
depends on judgment of
Chinese Medicine doctor
 Rarely has side-effects
 Popularity increasing,
although lower % of doctors
Conclusion

Chinese Medicine is definitely a true

medicine because:
Can be proven effective by following the same Scientific
Method
 Paradigm Shift:

increase in popularity
But…
 Still underdeveloped
 Needs more studies to prove

its validity and effectiveness