Guest guest Posted September 15, 2003 Report Share Posted September 15, 2003 Venessa, > but I wonder what do you think of the issues short courses given to > chiroprators /MD's /Physiotherapist , and medical group not wanting to accept > or work together for the best care as in Comprehensive medicine and other > issues comming from the medical community towards alternative medicine?? > > Do you have any stand in this issues or better not to mess with them ? And if > you do I bet will be liberal to the extreme. I think we should teach other medical professional how, when and why to refer to us. I think Emmanuel's post on study mechanisms is right-on and will add only that we can not sit around waiting for anyone else to do it for us. We must develop new study models and find the funding sources ourselves, then present this information broadly. Meanwhile, as long as the promoters are making money, you can expect these course to continue regardless of what we think. Regarding Felix Mann, I don't know him and thus have no idea why he has been writing as he has. He certainly never bothered to translate very well and " Acupuncture Cure of Many Diseases " was never considered particularly authoritative. Maybe he just found a better market for himself. Atillio, > Actually Bob, you challenged us to make a case for... " where on the > planet you find any evidence that any population has found CM more > effective, or has chosen it over WM given equal access. " I replied that > thousands (really by now millions) of Western patients who have equal > access, chose CM over WM. As far as your point regarding " societal > level " I would state that society is a collection of individual real > people, and that an alarming number of these individuals are choosing CM The highest percentage of CM utilization I have ever seen claimed for a western country is for France and that was 5%. U.S. numbers are less than one percent, and in terms of government tax return data there are only something like 9,000 clinicians in the US, 3,000 of which are MDs. I have seen figures between 5% and 20% for the PRC and ROC, but have no idea how they are gathered. So, in terms of statistical or economic data, your supposition is unsupported. As I said, I am not trying to change your mind, but to put a different viewpoint before others and to defend my colleague from what I think are essentially ad hominum arguments. Bob bob Paradigm Publications www.paradigm-pubs.com P.O. Box 1037 Robert L. Felt 202 Bendix Drive 505 758 7758 Taos, New Mexico 87571 --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 15, 2003 Report Share Posted September 15, 2003 Hello Bob , I better be real ice to you I still buy books and you seem to be one of the central places to buy them Thanks for your response and tolerance. Vanessa >> " Robert L. Felt " <bob wrote: Venessa, > but I wonder what do you think of the issues short courses given to > chiroprators /MD's /Physiotherapist , and medical group not wanting to accept > or work together for the best care as in Comprehensive medicine and other > issues comming from the medical community towards alternative medicine?? > > Do you have any stand in this issues or better not to mess with them ? And if > you do I bet will be liberal to the extreme. I think we should teach other medical professional how, when and why to refer to us. I think Emmanuel's post on study mechanisms is right-on and will add only that we can not sit around waiting for anyone else to do it for us. We must develop new study models and find the funding sources ourselves, then present this information broadly. Meanwhile, as long as the promoters are making money, you can expect these course to continue regardless of what we think. Regarding Felix Mann, I don't know him and thus have no idea why he has been writing as he has. He certainly never bothered to translate very well and " Acupuncture Cure of Many Diseases " was never considered particularly authoritative. Maybe he just found a better market for himself. Atillio, > Actually Bob, you challenged us to make a case for... " where on the > planet you find any evidence that any population has found CM more > effective, or has chosen it over WM given equal access. " I replied that > thousands (really by now millions) of Western patients who have equal > access, chose CM over WM. As far as your point regarding " societal > level " I would state that society is a collection of individual real > people, and that an alarming number of these individuals are choosing CM The highest percentage of CM utilization I have ever seen claimed for a western country is for France and that was 5%. U.S. numbers are less than one percent, and in terms of government tax return data there are only something like 9,000 clinicians in the US, 3,000 of which are MDs. I have seen figures between 5% and 20% for the PRC and ROC, but have no idea how they are gathered. So, in terms of statistical or economic data, your supposition is unsupported. As I said, I am not trying to change your mind, but to put a different viewpoint before others and to defend my colleague from what I think are essentially ad hominum arguments. Bob bob Paradigm Publications www.paradigm-pubs.com P.O. Box 1037 Robert L. Felt 202 Bendix Drive 505 758 7758 Taos, New Mexico 87571 --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 15, 2003 Report Share Posted September 15, 2003 Hi Bob. Atti: I picked up the thread from your previous well constructed message. Firstly, I would like to know are you completely speaking for him? Or are you relaying these messages to him and gaining a response. I merely ask because what you say in your messages seem to be spoken on his behalf in his tongue. I in-fact and simply quoting his words from his speech. Bob: No pre-modern lay Chinese, any more than a modern Westerner, had a working knowledge of how effective the treatments they received may have been at scale. Atti: I'm not talking about the past which is of course Unschuld's chosen speciality. I'm talking about the present, the now. As Emmanuel rightly points out, we now fall in the realm of clinical efficacy, RCT's, methodology, cookbook approach and so forth. Acupuncture (and herbs) in certain episodes have been proven to be effective (Vincent 2001, p485, MacPherson et al 2001, p487, Ceccherelli et al 2002, p149, Carlsson et al 2001, p296, Margolin et al 2002, p55, Wen et al 1973a, 1973b, 1973c). We may of course then go onto the fact that these were small studies, the methodology was poor, the practitioner was a weekend warrior, the basis of tcm's syndrome differentiation does not fit the empirical model of testing and so on. Nevertheless, in these rare instances acupuncture has been shown to be effective and therefore is more effective in these areas tested than compared to WM. Also as the clinical safety of acupuncture is not rebutted but the side effects of pain killers for example are well known then it is clear that CM can be, but not always, more effective than WM. Therefore the statement that Unschuld makes " Chinese medicine is not preferred by a segment of the population because it is more effective than Western medicine (that is definitely not the case) " , is simply wrong, no if or no buts. This is the point I'm focusing on. Bob: I think the most dangerous are the ideas that Chinese medicine exists as a congruent intellectual monolith, or that there is a " true " Chinese medicine that is THE sine qua non . This includes the idea that systematic correspondences describe universal " truths, " rather than heuristic methods of problem solving, as well as the idea that there is someone, or some tradition that has access to an ultimate CM (and thus that others are technically or morally inferior). Ironically, these notions assume that the Chinese logic is identical to our own and thus disguise Chinese thinking. To the contrary, Chinese thinking (about medicine or anything else) never developed methods for removing from the corpus of knowledge that which had been in some manner labeled as false. Atti: This is a very valid point, but again I'm making reference to present research and present comments made against it. Bob: You are irritated by Dr. Unschuld because he has claimed that CM is not more effective than CM. Correct? Well, make you case? Don't tell us what you believe, tell us where on the planet you find evidence that any population has found CM more effective, or has chosen it over WM given equal access? If not in East Asian, where? And, East Asia, perhaps even particularly China, has had no difficulty embracing WM, in part, as Unschuld points-out, because the two forms share essential principles. Atti: Come on, I'm not that niave, stupid and narrow minded to demand that anyone who has tried, heard or been blessed by CM should stand up on a stage and proclaim that CM is man's salvation! As you well know, and as I've stated above, regrettably, with the limited number of RCTs, something in the empirical model needs to change or we won't be seeing much more research into CM at all. I've posted a wonderful article on efficacy driven research which highlights these points I've just made (should be straight after this email). As far as China embrassing WM, I think that if they had the WM infrastructure with WM docs straight after the revolution, then CM would have been banned altogether in a blinded effort to make everything `western'. Bob: Consider, for example, surgery and public health -- two medical arts that CM never fully developed despite very early intimations. While you may complain of overuse, too quick use, or other over- valuation for surgery, or you can complain that you do not hold to the germ theory on which public health measures from city sewers to water purification are based, you cannot dismiss that life expectancy, and the incidence of crippling and debilitating illness, have been greatly ameliorated by the biosciences. The fact that surgery and chemotherapy do not cure cancer handily does not eliminate the fact that people do not die in vast numbers from cholera and typhoid in any population where WM services can be afforded. Atti: The biggest medical revolution that occurred in WM was the idea of hygiene. From this, the big epidemics were understood and managed but not cured. You then jump a few hundred years later when WM really started to find its feet and all of this has moved along and been driven by technology. WM moved away from its origins and developed its own philosophy on illness and disease it has created a personalisation of the physician. Chinese medicine however, is a collective weight of its tradition as a whole. Individual Chinese doctors skills lie in their ability in translating and interpreting traditional texts. This is better accomplished with a collective amount of practical experience. This is why so much importance is given to practical application rather than theory. Bob: There is no more possibility that everything in CM is useful than there is possibility that nothing in CM is useful. Once that is admitted, the idea that CM is valid because it is rooted in a set of universal, always-true principles, must be abandoned along with the other easy justifications for its efficacy. For example, the more we know about the intellectual history of CM, the less we are able to say that CM has proven its efficacy by longevity. It has proven the ability to adapt to changing circumstances and that implies that a sufficient number of its clients percieve a benefit, which in turn implies efficacy. However, the pretense that we do not have a case to prove to our own populations has done us no good. Atti: I couldn't agree more and these are things that I'm not debating with you. I'm debating the things that have been said and not things that you think I'm saying. Although now that you've brought the subject up, I believe that CM is a mis-mash of quite contradictory believes or principles that have been carried through time and history to our present day. Although in a balanced view, the fact that WM offers a one medicine for all, cookbook approach is the very reason why so many thousands of people die each year from its attempts to cure the ill. WM hasn't changed like CM over its short history, apart from when technology allowed it to. There is a highly significant paradox to Western medicine: it is an unresolved dis-equilibrium between the powerful science-based medical establishment and the larger issue of unfulfilled health requirements of the people. Humanity today, lives in a wishful dream ideal of genetic molecular biology, when everywhere around us there is still disease, ignorance and unanswered questions, hundreds of years old, rotting in the corner where no one wants to look. Western medicine needs to change and update its philosophy if it ever wants to restore people's faith in it. This can only be led by an evolutionary step in Western philosophy as Unschuld points out, but is it gonna be patient driven or technology driven? Attilio Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 15, 2003 Report Share Posted September 15, 2003 Bob Felt wrote: The highest percentage of CM utilization I have ever seen claimed for a western country is for France and that was 5%. U.S. numbers are less than one percent, and in terms of government tax return data there are only something like 9,000 clinicians in the US, 3,000 of which are MDs. Bob, this is intriguing information. All the more so since over 16,000 MDs are graduated per year in the U.S. Imagine if people had to compete with 16,000 new graduates per year. In gratitude, Emmanuel Segmen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 15, 2003 Report Share Posted September 15, 2003 Great post by Attilio, nothing better than this. I am speachlesssssssssssssssssssssss Vanessa >> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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