by Bob Flaws

Ever pick up Acupuncture Today (AT), turn to an article that is supposedly about the Chinese medical treatment of a Western medical disease, and then wonder where the Chinese medicine is? All too often such articles are long on Western biology and biomedicine and short on the actual Chinese medicine. Frequently, there is only a paragraph on Chinese medicine in an article that is 2-3 pages long, and yet the article is supposed to mainly be about Chinese medicine. At least that's what the title advertised. This problem is not just AT's. This is a common problem in a number of English language journals published in the West.

...

This problem comes from the fact that most of the authors writing these articles don't read Chinese. We can tell this immediately by simply looking at the endnotes. If there are any endnotes, which, in itself, is often a problem, they typically only cite Western language sources. If they do cite a Chinese language source, rarely is it the Chinese language source in its own language. Rather, it is usually an English translation of a Chinese source. Therefore, these authors have no access to the Chinese language literature. If they did, then such articles would (or at least they could) be a half-page or page of biomedicine and 2-3 pages of Chinese medicine.

It's so easy to Google a Western medical disease and pull up all sorts of information on its Western medical definition, nosology, etiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment, and I'm not saying we all don't need to know this information. But, students and practitioners alike also need to know the Chinese medicine, and not just a one paragraph summary version. In addition, if that one paragraph summary is the author's own opinion as opposed to the professional consensus, then the author has an obligation to state that and to explain how they arrived at that opinion. For instance, how many cases of that disease has the author treated over what period of time?

When you look at similar articles in Chinese medical journals, typically the author begins with reframing the modern Western diagnosis into its constituent Chinese medical disease categories. In other words, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) would bge reframed into diarrhea, abdominal cramping, or alternating diarrhea and constipation, each a Chinese medical disease category in its own right. Then the Chinese author reviews the literature through the dynasties showing how the ideas about and treatment of these Chinese disease categories have evolved over time. When they come to modern times, they may present the ideas of several different authorities both on disease causes and mechanisms and treatment based on pattern discrimination. Rarely is there a single "truth" about anything in Chinese medicine. Just as importantly, theChinese author typically also reviews the outcomes of any published RCTs using Chinese medicine, thus telling the reader what kind of evidence there is for outcomes and what kind of outcomes to actually expect in clinic. Each and every bit of this information is important information if we are really going to understand a Western disease from a Chinese medical point of view.

So what's an aspiring author to do if he or she can't read Chinese? On the one hand, start learning. The sooner you start, the sooner you will be able to access this kind of information. On the other hand, Blue Poppy Press has published more 1500 translations of Chinese journal articles, not to mention the 100 of so books we also publish, including a number of classics. Our translations of Chinese journal articles are searchable at our TCMinfoline. Using our books and articles, authors could do a much better job at presenting the Chinese medical portions of their papers.

In my opinion, a large part of this problem also goes back to our schools. Our schools are remiss at not requiring our students to write more research papers. The problem there is that they do not have the money to pay their faculty to read such papers, and, therefore, the faculty are reluctant to assign them. Although I don't have a solution for that, I would like to call upon anyone thinking of writing such an article (for AT or any other journal or newsletter) to at least first do their homework in Chinese medicine. In this day and age, there's no excuse for including only a single paragraph or two in an article purporting to be about Chinese medicine. We all deserve better than that.

Copyright Blue Poppy Ent., Inc., 2009. All rights reserved.