An “integrative” medical practitioner observes:
I just came from a lecture by a Chinese Prof. who has a cancer hospital in China (Fuda Cancer hospital). What is strange, was it didn’t use therapies from China, but rather technologies from the USA. They have cryoablation, photodynamic therapies, dendritic cell therapies, immunotherapy as well as chemoablation.
They claimed to have a very good success rate in increasing survival. Patients from all over have come to this hospital in Guangzhuo.
Why is he surprised?
As I’ve pointed out before, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is losing out to Western medicine in China. The number of TCM practitioners has fallen by 2/3 over the last several decades, while the number of doctors trained in Western medicine has soared by nearly 20-fold over the same period. There’s a reason for this: Western evidence-based medicine works, and the Chinese now know it. Indeed, even though, for example, the Fuda Cancer Hospital does devote part of its website to TCM, and there is unfortunately some significant woo there (although, oddly enough, it’s almost all Western woo, such as enzyme therapy), the vast majority of its website could have been written for a Western hospital, with long articles on colon cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, and pancreatic cancer, for instance, all of which discuss scientific staging and prognosis, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, with almost nary a word about TCM. Also, prominent mention is given to modern experimental therapies, such as cryotherapy, brachytherapy, dendritic cell therapy, and biological therapies and cancer vaccines.
I find it most ironic that, as we in the U.S. embrace woo and rush to integrate it into our medical schools and academic hospitals, China appears to be doing exactly the opposite. Indeed, the Chinese appear to be embracing Western scientific medicine and gradually drifting away from TCM. They may have a long way to go, but the trend appears to be real. If the 21st century ends up being the Chinese century, as some are predicting, this will be one reason why.
