Supporters and practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine have warned that the discipline is threatened by those who continue to trade in endangered animals. The small segment of the TCM community that insists on using endangered animal parts in the pharmaceutical side of TCM, ignoring welfare considerations and the idea of respecting biodiversity, could destroy its reputation for good, they argue.
“The balance with nature is a key point [of TCM], and the use of [endangered] animals is against nature,” Dr Lixing Lao, president of the Virginia University of Integrative Medicine, told the Guardian. “Even in the principles of TCM practice, this is not good,” Lao said, referring to Tang dynasty experts 1,500 years ago who believed 100% of TCM could be derived from plants.
TCM encompasses many things – acupuncture therapies, breathing and physical exercise, eating habits related to particular conditions of the body and a variety of views about how to strike balance within the body, alongside medicinal TCM drugs.
For Lao and others, the path of reform is to abandon the use of parts derived from endangered species such as pangolins, tigers, leopards and rhinos. The $74bn (£60bn) wildlife trade in China, pointed to as a likely source of Covid-19, has been largely perpetuated by superstition and confusion about the benefits of animal parts.
But poaching and the illegal trafficking of parts and live animals from protected species across the globe has continued. The parts are sold to companies making either TCM pharmaceuticals – dried and baked pangolin scales, for example, are ground into powder for several treatments – or for products such as tiger and leopard bone wine, advertised as having “TCM qualities”.
“This is not as much a Chinese medicine practitioner issue, it is more the industry, the people who make money,” Lao said. “This makes Chinese medicine look bad. They use our TCM name for their own purpose but we’re innocent.”
China’s government and leaders, including President Xi Jinping, have long lauded the benefits of TCM medicines. Xi is firmly behind the idea of combining traditional Chinese and western medicine, and has encouraged the acceleration of research on TCM drugs.
TCM experts such as Lao believe medicinal cures should be used only when absolutely necessary and not overprescribed in the way western pharmaceuticals often are, instead favouring deeper preventive practices to reduce the need for medicine in the first place.
Source: Guardian
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