It seems like you're not grasping the simple concept that thousands of years of practice does not validate any given procedure. The only way we know to prove the efficacy of something is the scientific method. Now, it may be true that some isolated TCM procedures have been studied in clinical settings, but to say that TCM itself is scientific is unsupported. Sorry. Yes. How does acupuncture prove the validity of TCM?
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Does everything have to be proven using scientific method before it is valid? If you are sick and I give you some TCM and you are cured, is that not good enough? So thousands of years of empircal evidence doesn't mean a thing if it is not done in a controlled environment, got it.
Yes, per the definition of "valid." No. The fact that I am "cured" does not imply that TCM worked. There could be any number of alternate causalities. The thing is, pirc1, without proper controls there is no way of knowing what your empirical observations are evidence of.
Things are being done to make TCM more scientific as we speak, what is medicine, just some chemical substance be it man made or natural. As long as you get the right reaction, that is all that matters. Talk about extremely narrow minded perspectives.
not necessarily true. Ancient Chinese made numerous advances and were scientifically advanced. There's no reason to think they didn't learns the medicinal benefits of herbs in healing through repeaded observation and tracking of results. Like I said, they had 5,000 years to do that. Western Medicine is only a few 100 years old. What we have in the scientific method they make up for with a very long head start.
You are talking about two different things here. First you cant argue TCM is inferior because it is not science. That just shows you have no idea what you are talking about. Chinese medicine really works for a lot of illness. It has been trialed and proven for thousands of years. And there are already studies about some of the chemical effects of Chinese medicine. Who gives a bleep if Chinese medicine was discovered or structured like Western medicine. What is your scientific method? Describe it. You are just throwing out some big words out there without quantifying it. All I know Chinese medicine works for a lot of stuff.
Weak insults aside, I think you are misunderstanding my point. TCM, as opposed to modern medical science, is NOT a science-based approach to medicine. Recent attempts to scientifically validate specific practices within the body of TCM do not say anything about the overall validity of the TC approach nor the theories behind it. How do they have a head start? Non-Chinese people, too, have been practicing the art of healing since the beginning of history. Western society just developed a more advanced system by use of the scientific method. Never said that. Educate yourself. I'm not going to dispute what you claim to know, but without sound scientific support the claim that "Chinese medicine works for a lot of stuff" is not valid knowledge.
How about 5000 year trial history for emperical evidence. How about numerous texts dating back as early as two thousand year ago for hypotheisis. How about numerous mordern researches studying and verifying chemical effects for some of the Chinese medicine. Look Chinese medicine is not the kind of medical science, maybe, you know. I certainly wouldnt bet my money on it to make break through to cure virus disease before western medicine. But there were discovery made by TCM, just like PCN as the other poster mentioned. There are thousands of years emperical evidence to support it. I had impression you were dismissive about Chinese medicine because it is not structured around western scientific method. That was just narrow minded to say the least. Eastern medicine is catching up like a wild fire here in the US institution recently.
I am not a doctor, and dont pretend to be one. But from my absurdly laugable medical knowledge, I thought it would make a better argument to say Chinese medicine focuses more on treating the disease, instead of pathology as western medical science does.
No... that's not good enough. I've already explained why. You obviously aren't making an honest attempt to comprehend my posts. I've said numerous times that specific TCM techniques could gain validity through the scientific process. I'm not sure what about my posts you find narrow minded. I never dismissed TCM except on the grounds that it is not based in science. Really, that's the only claim I've made in this thread. As I expected would happen, I was basically called out as ethnocentric for stating the fact that TCM, as a body of work, is not scientifically valid.
Yes, that's what I meant by my challenged medical terms. TCM focuses on treating the disease, recording what works to cure a certain disease, instead of studying the disease. It's done through trial and error. Like I said TCM certainly is not the future of well being of man kind, but let's not dismiss or ignore its discoveries that has been proved to work for thousands of years. For foot, ankle rehab, TCM does do wonders. Also I dont agree that you are saying it's not scientificly valid. Part of it has been proven by scientific method like why acupunture works for certain case. Something not discovered by scentific method is different from saying it is not scientificly valid.
WOW, lost your mind? If you got a weak brain and a narrow mind, the world gonna leave you way behind. Traditional Chinese doctors have often been called "empirics".
I guess xenophobia is empirical validity. Methinks that 1.3 billion people in China doesn't know what is empirical evidence and rush to build grand TCM hospitals in every major city so that voodoo magic can be performed and patients fooled. And there are idiots around the globe that found TCM study centers and rush to China to study their voodoo magic. The Guangdong Hospital of TCM: http://www.gdhtcm.com/index.aspx It has branches all over the Guangdong province, such is true for most of the medium or big cities in China.
